South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, known for his hardline stand over North Korea, in his Liberation Day speech last month, unveiled a renewed reunification plan for the Korean peninsula. While the goal of reunification is part of the South Korean constitution, Yoon plan differs radically from what has been pursued by the previous administrations in Seoul.
Earlier governments projected reunification on the basis of trust, reconciliation and cooperation. It aims for a unified Korea on the South Korean model of liberal democracy.
President Yoon’s new plan could have been in reaction to Kim Jong-un’s abandonment of “Korea’s unification” early this year, as a goal and declaring South as an “enemy state”. Announcing plans for constitutional changes declaring South Korea its “invariable principal enemy” and other such statements means changing the dynamics of inter-Korea relations.
But then, declaring abandonment of unification goal was itself triggered by Yoon when Kim accused him of obsession with ‘unification by absorption.’ Kim had also accused Yoon of “dreaming of the collapse of our government.”
A propaganda ploy
Yoon’s three tier plan explicitly speaks of ‘spreading external information in North Korea, increasing rights monitoring, basing unification on democracy and creating a “unified ROK.” Understandably, North Korea believes it is a threat to its survival. So, it is a non-starter. At best — a propaganda ploy.
Wary of American military presence in South Korea, the North has consistently maintained that it will only engage in diplomacy if the United States and South Korea change their “hostile” policies. Yoon’s new unification formula is likely to be perceived as exactly that: hostile.
The Korean Peninsula got divided when the Japanese surrendered above the 38th Parallel to the Soviet forces and below to the American. The country was meant to be united in due course. But the Cold War and the Korean War 1951-1953 finished all hope of early unification. Technically, with only an armistice in place, a state of war remains on the Korean Peninsula.
I was serving in Seoul when the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. No other people watched those events with more envy, excitement and hope. There was a palpable sense of uneasy hush over what might the North do or if millions of poorer cousins from the north start streaming south as the allegedly ‘deprived’ East Germany rolled over into West Germany.
Cost of reunification
Newly rich South Koreans were wary that they are yet not in a position to subsidise relatively poor North Koreans like to the West Germans were doing. South Korea at that point watched, guarded itself and balked. Korea was not prepared to take that kind of financial burden which Germany under Chancellor Helmut Kohl took.
Soviet Union was on the defensive and China was only watching from the sidelines. In fact, following the trajectory of North’s policies it is now harder to force a reunion between the two halves of Korea.
Germany ended up spending about $2.2 trillion towards the cost of reunification, which is a huge sum by any standards. On the contrary studies carried out by the Korea Institute for National Unification in 2018 revealed that only one in four South Koreans favoured of a tax increase to cover the cost of reunification.
Any unification plan similar to the German model that subsumes North Korea is unacceptable to Pyongyang. They want a state in which they are equal partners.
Under the present global climate none of the two are expected to yield. South Korea, though Seoul is within the shelling range of North Korean artillery, feels emboldened by the America’s increasing militarisation of the Asia-Pacific while the North’s nuclear capability allows it to maintain its belligerent position vis-a-vis the South. The peninsula will continue to cause big power rivalries.
And with positions hardening on either side, sharper big power divisions, melting sense of détente among the major powers Korean peninsula will likely remain in its current state of flux.
Sajjad Ashraf served as an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore from 2009 to 2017. He was a member of Pakistan Foreign Service from 1973 to 2008 and served as an ambassador to several countries.
