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Youngsters born from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s in Korea have been called the "2030 generation," also named "generation Y," "echo boomers," or "the Internet generation" in the United States. The "2030 generation" is the fastest-growing segment of today's workforce. In today's terms, a generation gap separated by institutional age segregation often refers to perceived differences between younger people and their elders regarding beliefs, politics, values, etc. in any society including the two Koreas.
In South Korea, watching the ideological differences between the 2030 generation and the older "4050 generation" is worth noting. Regarding national security, a majority of the 2030 generation thinks the military tension in Korea on account of the wooden-box land mines and artillery provocation was generated by the North, and that military retaliation is necessary against the provocation. Unlike the so-called radical leftist fringes of the 4050 generation, who think the United States has sustained authoritarian rule with their cronies for far too long, the majority of the 2030 generation thinks the United States is the most important partner in the world, exceeding such tendencies of the earlier generation.
The conflict between the existing 4050 generation and the emerging 2030 generation will be an important variable in making national policy, in the unforeseen process of looking toward the reunification of the divided peninsula
On the other hand, inside isolated North Korea, reports have it that one of the key variables for social change is the distinction between the 2030 (in-between) generation, that emerged during the great famine of the 1990s and working as the seeds for future changes, and the 4050 (black market) generation, pretending to worship the Kims' cultish regime while undergoing capitalistic influence. They (the in-between black market generation and their children) learned, by tagging along with the 4050 adults, how to peddle goods in the black markets and make money. They have unprecedented access to technology and outside information. They don't wait for the government or for institutions to bail them out.
The proportion of the 2030 generation in the North accounts for one fourth of that country's population. They are more individualistic than their elders (the 4050 generation) in a bid to eke out their livings by engineering their own survival. Under the strict one-man dictatorship, it might not be easy to plot to overthrow the regime. But as more children born into the black market generation support the in-between generation in the years ahead, the 2030 generation will punch much more holes in the regime.
The 2030 generations on both sides of the Korean Peninsula will no doubt have considerable impact on the future as tomorrow's leading groups. They may foster crucial effects not only for the maintenance of national entities but for the reunification of the Korean peninsula in the decades to come. The generation gap cannot disappear in any community, but it might be shrinking in connection with changes in lifestyles and even with technical progress in Korea.
We have to watch with keen interest and guidance what will be the upcoming turn of history evoked by the 2030 generations on the Korean peninsula with respect to the forthcoming approaches for the betterment of the nation, whether the peninsula will be under the maintenance of a South-North division or under inter-Korean reunification to be attained in the not-too-distant future,
The writer is an outside director of Samyang Tongsang Co., Ltd., in Seoul. His e-mail address is kexim2@unitel.co.kr.
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