Perception of unification

If you ask the average South Korean man or woman what they think of unification, the answer is highly predictable. Every patriotic Korean (well, indeed, every Korean) is supposed to say that unification should be the major political goal.

By Andrei Lankov

If you ask the average South Korean man or woman what they think of unification, the answer is highly predictable. Every patriotic Korean (well, indeed, every Korean) is supposed to say that unification should be the major political goal.

But, such statements are uttered in public situations. After a few glasses of soju you might notice that your Korean interlocutor’s zeal for unification begins to wane ― especially if they are young. A minority might even tell you privately that unification is not a good idea at all, although in most cases you are likely to be told that unification is surely a great and glorious event, but it should happen as late as possible, since Korea is not prepared to handle the associated challenges properly.

Such talk is very common among the younger generation, but only twenty years ago, any doubts about the need for immediate unification would be considered heretical, and there were not many such heretics until the mid-1990s.

Indeed, from the division of Korea in 1945-48, all political groups in Korea were united in their belief in the supremacy of unification. It was often assumed that the national division is the root cause of all real and imaginary evils of Korean society. The right and left might have had seriously different views about how unification should be achieved, but they were unified in their almost religious belief that unification was the destiny of the nation.

Things began to change in the early 1990s. Change was ushered in by a number of different factors.

The generational shift was important. By the early 1990s, the vast majority of Koreans were people who did not have first-hand memories of national division. Even if they had relatives north of the DMZ, they did not know these people personally.

Concurrently, it became clear in the 1990s that North Korea is a very poor place. One cannot but be surprised how many ``progressive-minded” South Korean intellectuals of the 1980s sincerely believed that North Korea was a prosperous country, the embodiment of social welfare, workers’ rights and proper, wholesome ``Koreanness.” But these illusions became completely unsustainable with the exposure to the bitter realities of North Korea. Since the early 1990s, South Koreans could speak with refugees (both in South Korea and China) and occasionally even could visit the North. Therefore by the end of the decade, even the most stubborn South Korean Leninists (and there are many more of them than Western expats believe) could not deny the obvious any more.

The news of North Korean destitution looked especially bad when juxtaposed with the troubling reports from post-unification Germany. Understandably enough, Koreans saw post-unification Germany as an example of what might happen to Korea. Much to the astonishment of everybody, the unification of Germany did not produce a new economic powerhouse in Europe. Rather it led to a prolonged period of stagnation and economic difficulties. At the same time, the per capita income gap between East and West Germany was around 1:3, according to conservative estimates. Concurrently the similar gap between the two Koreas was at least 1:15, by optimistic estimates.

By the mid-1990s, it began to dawn on the South Koreans that unification with the North would be very costly and would deliver a heavy blow to their hard-earned prosperity. At the same time, South Koreans began to feel alienated from their supposed brethren in the North. North Koreans were increasingly perceived as strangers, so many younger South Koreans began to doubt whether they should sacrifice their prosperity for the sake of national unification.

However, there is an interesting twist in this situation. Even though, as almost everybody with experience of life in Korea can testify, younger South Koreans are not particularly enthusiastic about unification, no public figure has expressed these doubts loudly or openly.

There are good reasons for this silence. Korea is a democracy to be sure, but nearly all “ideological packages” which are on offer include ethnic nationalism as an important component. Needless to say, the idea of primordial unity of the entire Korean nation is an important part of this nationalism. No public figure can afford to challenge it.

For any South Korean professor, journalist, or politician, it would be suicidal to say that unification should not be South Korea’s goal. At most one can say that unification should be postponed until a better future is realized.

Frankly, the South Korean public have become prisoners of their own ideological worldview, which does not allow them to articulate their actual feelings. And this is probably a good thing, as the present author does believe that unification should be the supreme goal of Korea, so I have no problem when people who have the opposite (and in my humble opinion, seriously wrong) opinions on the subject have no choice but to keep their mouths shut. I hope readers will forgive me for being so cynical and non-democratic.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.