The Mirage of A United Korea
by Samuel S. Kim
Far East Economic Review
November 2006

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is back in the news and high on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council as East Asia's most active flash point. Pyongyang's announcement that it conducted a nuclear test on Oct. 9 prompted the Security Council to adopt unanimously a U.S.-sponsored sanctions resolution against North Korea. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 was the first-ever sanctions resolution based on a nuclear test that was unverified, and the first sanctions resolution China and Russia ever supported. No doubt many pundits will seize upon Resolution 1718 as telegraphing the collapse of North Korea and Korean unification by absorption.

Perhaps at no time since the end of World War II, when Korea was liberated and divided, has the prospect of Korean unification seemed closer, yet never has it been more distant. The prospects of Korean unification, shot through with ironies and contradictions, are far more problematic than abiding post-Cold War wisdom would suggest. On the one hand, it is the weaker North Korea -- far more than the stronger South Korea -- that holds the key to shaping the future of the divided peninsula. On the other hand, the future, if any, of North Korea itself depends largely on the support of outside powers, most importantly South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan and Russia, in that order. Consequently, the prospect of Korean reunification is a function of North Korea's system dynamics, a complex and ongoing interplay of domestic reforms and external support.

Predictions of Collapse

As if to compensate for their failure to predict the rapid succession of momentous changes in the international system from 1989-91 -- the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, the end of the Cold War, and the demise of the Soviet Union and international communism-many pundits in the early 1990s committed the opposite fallacy of making prematurely optimistic predictions about the collapse of the D.P.R.K. and the unification of the Korean peninsula. This resulted in a wave of euphoria that had a divided Korea heading inexorably toward German-style unification. Then, in the wake of the sudden death of North Korean President Kim Il Sung in July 1994, came a second wave of predictions: North Korea would either collapse within six months or experience a German-style unification by absorption within three years.  Even South Korea's then president, Kim Young Sam (1993-98), embraced this "collapsist" view, seeing North Korea as a "broken airplane" headed for a crash landing.

A third commotion about unification, primarily within the peninsula, surrounded the historic inter-Korean summit of June 13-15, 2000. Despite the official claim in the North that these events were "the greatest successes in the reunification movement since the country was divided into two parts," a great paradox surfaced when then President Kim Dae Jung and Chairman Kim Jong Il embraced each other before global television audiences, symbolically signaling their acceptance of each other's legitimacy. Even more remarkably, the front page of the June 15, 2000, issue of Rodong Sinmun, the official organ of the Korean Workers' Party, showcased the South Korean leader to the domestic audience for the first time as "Republic of Korea President Kim Dae Jung" and as a co-signer of the North-South Joint Declaration. The summit seemed to have brought the two Koreas to a stance of peaceful coexistence as two sovereign states, with a peace that was de facto if not fully de jure.

While Pyongyang paid mandatory lip service to the supreme task of building "one nation, one state with two governments and two systems" under the "federation system," in the wake of the summit it proclaimed publicly for the first time in Rodong Sinmun that "the issue of unifying the differing systems in the North and the South as one that may be left to posterity to settle slowly in the future." Throughout the months before and after the summit, then President Kim Dae Jung repeated his now familiar line that he did not expect Korean reunification to take place on his watch, or even in his lifetime. And the fact that inter-Korean trade more than quadrupled to $1.58 billion in 2005 from $371 million in 1999 in the face of the second U.S.-D.P.R.K. nuclear confrontation testifies to the of inter-Korean relations.

The Absorption Fallacy

Despite the hype about an impending collapse, the future of North Korea is far from certain. The collapse-and-absorption argument, which draws from German-style unification by absorption, has been marred by freewheeling conceptualization, right-leaning bias, and inattention to evidence of the many obstacles and barriers to peaceful Korean unification. It has never been clear exactly what would collapse: Would it be the economy, the regime, the system or the state? Collapsist arguments commit the fallacy of premature economic reductionism based on the misleading equation of economic breakdown with system or state collapse. North Korea's resilience since the mid-1990s and the regime's control over its citizens, in fact, speak against an economic collapse that would cause a regime, system, or state collapse.

For collapse and absorption to work successfully together, four basic conditions would have to be met. First, the D.P.R.K. would have to collapse because of its economic difficulties and without triggering another Korean war. But North Korea would certainly not collapse without a big fight or without generating a huge mess that no neighboring power would be willing or able to clean up.

Second, the North Korean Army would have to agree to lay down its arms and abandon or surrender any nuclear command and control system already in place. The various collapse scenarios often overlook the issue of how to deal with North Korea's one-million-strong army. The peaceful accommodation or demobilization of the military in the North into a unified Korea would pose a problem of unprecedented magnitude, and this alone provides North Korea with unparalleled leverage to exercise its "collapse card."

Third, South Korea would have to find the resources to politically, economically, socially and culturally absorb the land and people of the D.P.R.K.

Finally, a reunified Korea would have to give up its nuclear holdings and demonstrate that it would be a force for stability in Northeast Asia. Central to the collapse-and-absorption argument is the popular assumption that unification is the necessary and sufficient condition for securing a long peace on the Korean peninsula. Despite the primordial passions fueling so many internal wars in trouble spots in the post-Cold War world, there is nothing intrinsically empowering or enduring about national unity, especially if it is a hegemonic unity. Seoul, like Pyongyang, is hardly eager for a North Korean collapse, as evidenced in the pursuit of the "Sunshine Policy" (1998-2002) and the "Policy of Peace and Prosperity" (2003-present).

Domestic, inter-Korean and Northeast Asian factors transmitted from the past are such that after more than half a century of fratricidal politics, the two Koreas have developed different nations, states, systems, societies, cultures and identities. The notion of one homogeneous but divided nation-state waiting to be unified upon the removal of external sources of conflict is simply ethnocentric romanticism that is cherished and exploited by hypernationalists in both Koreas.  There is little doubt that the North Korean leadership is determined to use all available instruments of national military power, including weapons of mass destruction, to avert absorption by the South. Even without going nuclear, North Korea commands "the tyranny of proximity," and massive and forward-based forces deployed aggressively along the northern side of the peninsula's so-called demilitarized zone. Moreover, North Korea is believed to have the world's third-largest inventory of chemical weapons, as well as an impressive array of delivery systems. In this respect, Pyongyang's nuclear card serves not only as a cost-effective strategic equalizer but also as a cost-effective insurance policy for regime maintenance.

In the unlikely event that a system collapse were to occur, it would probably be violent and bloody, triggering internal civil violence rather than peaceful unification. Fearing the social, economic, political and military costs of German-style unification, Seoul would probably prefer to intervene to set up a separate regime or build a "Berlin Wall" to defuse the refugee "bomb" that would otherwise explode in the nation's capital. Even before the advent of South Korea's financial crisis in 1997, a fundamental change in public perception of the costs and benefits of unification had already taken place.

As South Koreans have learned about the North's massive famine and about the international expectations for Korean unification by absorption, they have become increasingly worried that their own lives would change for the worse and increasingly outspoken against unification by absorption. More and more South Koreans expect their government to prefer some kind of division between North and South even after unification, until the economic level of the North is raised.

The politics of fragmentation and regional antagonism in the South remain active despite the remarkable transition to democracy in 1987. Since the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948 there have been 12 declarations of martial law and emergency decrees, and several thousand industrial strikes. To add a collapsing North Korea and a southward flood of several million poverty-stricken refugees seems a sure recipe for another fratricidal civil war, or even the end of Korean democracy.

To quicken Korean unification by absorption would be to conflate and magnify the worst elements in two societies with separate systems and diverging identities beyond the carrying capacity of a "united" Korea. Even under the most optimistic scenario -- a peaceful reunification without much bloodletting -- a united Korea would most likely become hyper-nationalistic, posing a serious regional security challenge with the potential for extreme disruption.

A Costly Reunification

Collapsist scenarios for North Korea typically revolve around the country's economic woes. Suffering from the same systemic problems that have plagued most socialist state-run economies, North Korea's economic health has deteriorated further because of interruption or reduction of foreign trade, famine, allocation of resources to the military, and the use of scarce resources for grandiose projects glorifying the Kim family state. It is estimated that the monetary cost of rescuing a collapsing North Korean economy would be between
$250 billion and $3.5 trillion, although such figures are little more than shots in the dark given the absence of reliable statistics on North Korea and the uncertainties regarding domestic and external factors. Indeed, the focus of research and debate in South Korea on unification has shifted subtly but significantly from the question of how to achieve it, to more sobering and rational cost-benefit calculations.

The closest comparison case is reunified Germany, where unification euphoria in West Germany quickly degenerated into despair and recrimination as West German subsidies bound for East Germany ballooned to $100 billion annually, while East Germany experienced an unprecedented rise in unemployment, social alienation, and rates of death and suicide. In 1998 then Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the reunifier of Germany, was voted out of office-his singular achievement had become one of the causes of his electoral defeat. German one-nation identity proved to be a slender reed rather than a solid foundation for national reconstruction.

South Korea is no West Germany, North Korea is no East Germany, and the German precedent -- where no fratricidal war had occurred -- is not the perfect analogue for the Korean peninsula. The Iron Curtain in Germany was far more permeable than the 38th parallel is today: East Germans tuned into West German radio and television, and beginning in the 1970s, between 1.1 million and 1.6 million East Germans visited the West each year, with 1.2 million to 3.1 million West Germans traveled in the opposite direction. South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun was clear: "Korea's unification process will be fairly different from Germany's." Perhaps the most desirable and feasible lesson to be drawn from the German experience is the model of "one Germany, two states" that was in effect from 1972 to 1989.

The social impact of potential North Korean collapse and/or unification is even more difficult to calculate than the economic impact. Although much is made of the ethnic homogeneity among North and South Koreans, the truth is that the degree of similarity is difficult to assess. After 61 years behind a Stalinist curtain of nearly absolute control, how similar are North Koreans to their brethren in the South?

Whereas South Koreans are cosmopolitan and technologically adept, North Koreans are sheltered and uninformed. As has happened to East Germans, North Koreans likely would be relegated to a second-class status in a unified Korea, and the two to three million members of the military and the nomenklatura would need to be retrained and deideologized. Recognizing the differences that have developed between North and South Koreans, 78.5% of South Koreans polled in a 1995 survey by the Sejong Institute in Seoul advocated unification only after the recovery of "national homogeneity," and only 9.5% favored immediate reunification. Such evidence suggests that despite the strong emotional appeal of unification, enthusiasm quickly wanes when the costs are considered.

One of the most symbolic manifestations of diverging Northern and Southern identities is the extreme difficulty that most North Korean defectors encounter in the South, despite being offered generous financial aid, job training and other assistance. Whereas only 607 North Koreans defected to South Korea before 1989, by September 2004 about 6,300 North Koreans had defected. North Korean defectors have had trouble dealing with the competitive nature of a market society, handling money, and making wise choices among competing goods, according to several scholarly studies. They have found their North Korean education insufficient given the need in South Korea for computer skills, grasp of English and knowledge of Chinese written characters. These experiences set a poor precedent for any future integration.

It is particularly revealing that defectors from the North suffer from psychological problems far more than do immigrant workers from other countries. Many defectors criticize South Korean society and its people for being "closed" and "selfish." Defectors from the North unanimously agree that the vast majority of North Koreans harbor great love and respect for Kim Il Sung as the man who freed them from the Japanese, defeated the Americans in the Korean War and built the foundations of the national economy.

These differences in identity between North and South Korea are not without precedent in Germany. East Germany's first freely elected prime minister, Lothar de Maziere, once said, "Every day we are surprised anew that 45 years of separation had a greater impact upon us than we thought it had when the Wall came down." This may be even more relevant for the two Koreas than the two Germanys.

A Functional Approach

A scenario of unification by consensus would require that the two Koreas, especially the stronger South, take a series of practical steps toward the creation of a "working peace system" in the mode of historian and political theorist David Mitrany's functionalism. The question of how long the post-Kim Il Sung system will survive and in what shape or form has no simple answer. A functional approach to the peace process, while committed to democratic and peaceful unification as the ultimate end, proceeds from the following premises: First, national unification per se does not automatically bring about peace, power, prosperity and democracy; Second, Korean unification without a prior working peace system may be a sure recipe for catastrophe; And third, the two Koreas must first initiate the politics of regional reconciliation with changes at home and then start the functional peace process by discussing areas of mutual interest on which they can most readily reach agreement. Herein lies the logic of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Kumgang Tourism projects as de facto unification, or unification defined as the ongoing peace and reconciliation process, and also the logic of Seoul's resistance to Washington's pressures to terminate both projects in compliance with America's interpretation of Security Council Resolution 1718.

The working peace system is premised on the acceptance of identity differences and the notion that all social and economic actors in both Koreas will come together based on what unites them. This functional approach, starting in the area of economics, could provide the popular pressure necessary to keep inter-Korean dialogue alive, while stimulating the opening of more channels of communication and exchanges in related areas. This is what is meant by the "peace by pieces" approach: Pieces that can be seen as constituting organic elements of gradual social and economic integration of the two Koreas lead gradually to a working peace system.

Ultimately, this approach is not limited to actions on the Korean peninsula. It will also involve the active participation of the Big Four (China, the U.S., Japan and Russia). While the participation of the U.N. in resolving the conflict on the Korean peninsula has been limited so far, there may be an increasing role for international organizations and international NGOS to play.

In the final analysis the unification drive of the two Koreas resembles a Taoist paradox: Doing less and less is really achieving more and more. To hold together different parts of a whole, one must first let them go their separate ways.

-- Mr. Kim is an adjunct professor of political science and senior research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. He is also author of several books including most recently The Two Koreas and the Great Powers (Cambridge University Press, 2006), on which this essay is based in part.