Korea and Reunification

I follow stories about Korea fairly closely, mostly because I lived there for a year in the 1990s. Of course Korea's been in the news a lot lately because of North Korea admitting they have a nuclear program. I won't discuss that right now. But what I will talk about is the issue of South Korea and reunification. Over the last few months, the Asia Times has published several stories about this issue. If you don't read Asia Times, I suggest it highly. They often have very interesting stories that are not always related to Asia.

South Korea has some interesting issues to work out concerning the eventuality of reunification with the North. For one thing, they have some constraints that they don't always like. For instance, Korean culture considers all people with the same last name related. As there are literally millions of people with the last name of "Kim", you have very large families on both sides of the border. Even without the last name issues, like any civil war the Korean War split many families apart. Second, the Korean constitution guarantees citizenship to any North Korean who gets to the South because the South claims they are the rulers of all Korea. For a long time this wasn't much a problem because so few North Koreans got to the South. But as the North sinks deeper and deeper into desperation, more North Koreans are trying to get to the South, via China.

The problem stems from the fact that the South Koreans don't actually want North Koreans in their country. These are not people who are real big on social welfare and they have to do a lot to help North Koreans adjust to the South, a task that is extremely difficult. Recently, they cut the subsidies to defectors but considering what North Koreans are used to, poverty in the South is probably still going to look pretty good to them. South Koreans considered their northern brethren second class citizens and do not treat them well when they meet. Honestly, I am having some trouble wrapping my head around this one. I'm not sure if this status is based on poverty or perhaps the fact that they think the northerners should be working to overthrow that government. I suspect that North Koreans remind South Koreans of the poverty that they so recently (20 years at the most for most people) escaped. They don't want to be reminded of their peasant past. So they resent the North for this. Strictly a theory, but one that may have some truth in it.

When I was there, the big concern South Koreans had about reunification was the effect it would have on their economy. They watched what happened to the German economy after the West and East reunified and they did not want that to happen to them. This is probably pretty smart because they were quite aware that their economy could not match Germany and thus in becoming responsible for an indigent North, the whole peninsula could collapse. But it also seems awfully coldhearted.

Meanwhile the one silver lining to the 52 years since the war continues--that of the DMZ being a nature preserve that is protecting the last habitat on the peninsula for several species, including some large cranes. Both Koreas are among the worst nations in the world in environmental policy. Once the DMZ goes, who knows what will happen to these species. There are South Korean developers who want to turn it into a series of golf courses, presumably once all the mines are cleaned out. Or maybe not since it would certainly make for some interesting playing. South Koreans love hiking and nature, even as they destroy it (once of the paradoxes of Buddhist nations I have found) so there might be significant sentiment for turning a lot of it into national parks. What I fear though is that whenever the North collapses, thousands upon thousands of starving and desperate North Korean refugees will flood the DMZ in search of food and shelter and wipe out the remaining animals.