By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
South Korea should consider North Korean defectors ``ambassadors'' and educate them as part of efforts to prepare for the post-unification era, a German scholar said Tuesday.
Bernhard Johannes Seliger, a representative of the Hanns Seidel Foundation branch in Seoul, made the recommendation based on experiences from the fall of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War.
During a seminar in Seoul, he said the South Korean government has to ``make defectors ambassadors of change for North Korea'' and ``prepare massive investment in education.''
He also advised that Seoul needs to prepare to deal with human rights and social reconciliation after unification, citing survey results that 63 percent of East Germans found more differences than similarities in West Germans.
A unified Korea will likely witness South and North Koreans feeling more hostile toward each other after unification since the South is currently struggling to integrate a small number of North Korean defectors here, he added.
Saying there could be a ``vacuum of values,'' Seliger recommended that the government prepare to fill it.
Under the motto of ``in the service of democracy, peace and development,'' the Germany-based foundation has made efforts for reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula and preparation for possible unification.
Koh Myong-duck, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a co-organizer of the seminar, advised the government to make an exclusive body responsible for collecting information on the North Korean economy.
``Germany underwent some aftereffects of hurriedly-made policies to integrate economies,'' he said. ``We need to figure out North Korea's economic situations more accurately to avoid these kinds of aftereffects.''
In the seminar, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek also stressed that it was important to prepare for social integration after unification.
``We learned from German unification that it is not an end but leaves a new mission of social integration,'' he said. ``We also learned that internal unity can lead to genuine unification.''
Saying Korean unification should be peaceful, the minister said that resolving the North Korean nuclear issue was the ``cornerstone'' of this matter.
``The government has sought mutual benefits and co-prosperity between the two Koreas,'' Hyun said. ``Recently, the government proposed a Grand Bargain deal. It guarantees security and promises international support if North Korea gives up its nuclear program.''
Hyun also urged the secretive state to return to the six-way denuclearization talks and have inter-Korean dialogue.
``This is the most beneficial way and the only path that North Korea can take,'' he said.