Up to the Koreans
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By Lyman McLallen
Kick a stone in anger, and you will hurt your own foot. — A maxim of old Korea
Surrounded by Japan and China since its beginning, Korea has had to be wary of its neighbors. Having lived amidst giants that have been indifferent to them at best and at worst set out to conquer them, the Koreans have had to keep their instincts honed for survival because they’ve always been in danger of being handled roughly by those close-at-hand.
Having their own language and culture and living in their own land since ancient times, the Koreans have one of the oldest sovereign countries in the world, and no country can exist for as long as Korea has merely on luck. All through their history, the Koreans have had the smarts to deal with rivals much more powerful than they were and the tenacity to stand up for themselves, no matter what.
But at the end of WW2, as we all know, the Americans and the Russians split Korea at the 38thParallel as part of their spoils of war, so that now there are two Koreas, and despite their sporadic but deadly clashes, both continue to survive, though in stark contrast to each other.
In spite of this, their similarities are more striking than their differences: they speak the same language, live on the same peninsula that has always been theirs, have the same family names and most of them are descended from the same great-great grandparents. They’re blood kin, family, and close family at that, and have a common history that goes back 5,000 years. And then — in the middle of the 20th century — they were separated.
So now, the Koreans are caught in their latest squabble — plus the U.S., China, and Japan, if not committed, have involved themselves — and once more the two Koreas must avoid destroying each other, for they’re the only ones who’d suffer if they did, because nobody else really cares, not really. Why should they? Ultimately, it’s won’t affect the U.S, China, or Japan, regardless of how it turns out for the Koreans. The world will go on whether the two Koreas annihilate each other or not.
The difficult thing for the two Koreas, it seems, is for them to become friends instead of staying enemies, but this could be easier for them than people imagine because there’s every reason for them to work together in harmony, and no reason for them not to.
According to a 2009 Goldman-Sachs report “A United Korea?” posted on the Internet at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC
, should the two Koreas embark on becoming partners — rather than fighting each other as enemies — then by 2050, there’s the distinct possibility their combined efforts would rank them economically in the top three nations, along with the U.S. and China, and ahead of France, England, Germany and, yes, Japan.
The report notes that the two Koreas could succeed at this because they complement each other with their resources: the North with mineral wealth and a young, disciplined workforce, the South with infrastructure, expertise in high-tech manufacturing, prowess in global markets and abundant capital.
So it’s more than for historical and family reasons that the two Koreas should become allies. As it is right now, they haven’t gone to war against each other, and even though relations between them are as bad as they’ve ever been, they can fix that. Whatever happens in Korea, whatever their fate will be, it’s up to the Koreans, and nobody else.
The writer is a professor in the English College of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. His email address is
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