Avoiding Unification 
By Michael Breen
The Asian Wall Street Journal
April 18, 2000

Mr. Breen, a noted author and Korea-watcher,
is the managing director of Merit/Burson-Marsteller in Seoul.

The announcement last week that the top leaders of the two rival Koreas will meet in June for the first time was greeted in Seoul with euphoria. And deservedly so. In the 50 years since the civil war that sealed their separation in hatred and blood, it's the most sensible and uplifting thing the Koreas have agreed to do.

But euphoria is short-lived, and in this case did not help the ruling party of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in last Thursday's parliamentary elections. Despite all the excitement the summit announcement generated in newsrooms, South Koreans have good reasons to moderate their expectations.

That's because this is a historic announcement they've heard before. A summit was scheduled in 1994, but North Korean leader Kim Il Sung died just beforehand. His son and heir, Kim Jong Il, could have taken his place in a rescheduled summit, but the South Korean president at the time, Kim Young Sam, didn't want to meet with him. Rather than say so, he deliberately soured the atmosphere by accusing the not-yet-buried Kim Il Sung of being a war criminal. Summit plans were dropped.

South Koreans also know that one agreement to have a summit does not make peace; a lot more agreeing must come. And agreeing is not something that Koreans do easily. At the truce village of Panmunjom, for example, the two sides once argued over whose wee flag on the conference table was bigger. It was resolved only after an escalation during which delegates from both sides tried to squeeze in flags that were too big to get through the door. Aware of their own fractious, belligerent nature, Koreans know it is possible that nothing may come of this summit; Kim Dae Jung may well return from Pyongyang with nothing more to show than photographs.

Considering what Koreans on both sides live with as a consequence of division, this would be a shame. Several million Koreans remain separated from direct family members by the DMZ. The entire male populations of both sides must go through years of military service. North Koreans continue to suffer deprivation akin to the post-war years, with widespread famine reaching epidemic proportions. They shrink economically, and literally -- the height of your average North Korean soldier has declined over the last decade -- as the hearty South Koreans embrace the Internet economy.

Still, there is an underlying sense in Seoul that something is different this time. This is because through the 1990s an area of common interest has developed which could easily lead to an agreement between the two leaders: It is that both sides realize that neither really wants reunification. Of course, this frankness amounts to heresy, and will never be acknowledged by the main actors. Nevertheless, this sense persists.

For decades, Seoul and Pyongyang rejected the right of the other to exist and ordered its policies under an overall objective of national reunification. What "reunification" meant in reality was the removal of the enemy system and a restructuring of the whole peninsula under its authority. Since their creation as separate countries in 1948, North and South Korea have engaged in a furious rivalry over which of the two Koreas -- pro-Western Seoul or Stalinist Pyongyang -- would emerge triumphant.

In the years immediately following the 1950-53 Korean War, the outcome was by no means assured. Both Koreas were economically backward, on a par with Haiti and Ethiopia. Both were vicious human rights abusers. One, the North, had a vision of a better society, but espoused the biggest fallacy of the 20th century to pursue it. The South's vision was in a sense reactionary: a Korea without communists. But this determination drove it to embrace first a free-market economy in the 1970s and 80s and, later, democratic reforms in the 90s. Now, South Korea is one of the world's major economic powers and -- in my biased view -- the most democratic country in Asia. North Korea, meanwhile, remains stagnant and muddled. The clear disparity on the peninsula and current events elsewhere soon relegated thoughts of reunification to the distant future.

Following the unification of the two Germanies, South Korea realized that it simply couldn't handle the absorption of North Korea: The economic and social costs would be too much. And in the early 90s, a new word began to be heard in Seoul's official circles: "gradualism." Now, the South Korean public broadly accepts the "gradualist" goal of reconciliation, with political unification mentioned for political correctness -- but put off for a future generation to deal with.

At the same time, North Korea's communist leaders received a jolt of reality when the Soviet Union fell. The North would never be able to subdue the South, its leaders realized. If victory couldn't be achieved even with the considerable backing and support of their Stalinist ally, how could it be done now? The regime's new concern is simply survival.

Isolated and deprived, the North became even more distrustful. All the talk about "reconciliation" struck a false chord; Pyongyang didn't trust Seoul's claim to oppose the collapse-and-absorption formula for unification. When it looked at Seoul and Washington, North Korea saw them through the lens of its own belligerent mentality and was convinced the allies sought its destruction.

But now, over two years into Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy, the North appears to understand that the South does not mean it harm. And so reconciliation becomes more than rhetoric; it becomes a distinct possibility. After 50 years of headbanging, that a summit can happen on the basis of such an understanding is historical.

This point could have been reached several years ago. That it has now is to the credit of Kim Dae Jung. He is the right man in the right place at the right time. On the issue of North Korea, he combines the historical vision, the political shrewdness, and democratic good sense to do what previous South Korean presidents have been unable to do: To engage the North, and not feel threatened by the North's bad behavior into retreating into the containment approach.

Similarly, credit should go to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. His efforts over the past decade to shift the country away from the old-fashioned communism of his father's generation may eventually bring the North out of the cold. He has also managed to prevent collapse and chaos, which -- however much outsiders wish it -- is the last thing the gradualist government in Seoul wants to see.

What will the two men talk about? Well, enough pundits have been telling us. But it won't be unification. That's for the future. What they want now is the practicalities of reconciliation. Ironically enough, in doing so they have an opportunity to make Korea whole.

Copyright (c) 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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