ed Prospects of a thaw

One solid step at a time, Koreas should move forward

A day after Koreans greeted Ipchun, onset of spring on the lunar calendar, Red Cross officials brought them warming news Wednesday. For the first time in three years and four months, 100 elderly citizens each from South and North Korea will meet their long-lost relatives from the other side Feb. 20-25.

It took the Koreas less than five hours to reach an agreement, reflecting their leaders’ dire needs to restore inter-Korean ties. Kim Jong-un badly needs to improve the North’s devastated economy and upgrade his people’s standard of living, while Park Geun-hye has to prove that her “trustpolitik” is not just an empty word during her second year in office.

Still the accord coming after many complications is significant. For instance, Pyongyang did not take issue with the reunion event that partially overlaps the period of the annual Korea-U.S. joint military drills. Before that, the allies decided not to include B-2 and B-52 bombers in this year’s war games, to avoid unduly raising inter-Korean tensions. Such mutual concessions and compromise tell a lot about the mentalities and attitudes that both Koreas should maintain in future negotiations.

That said, the reunions of hundreds of people a year are too few and far between to let the hundreds of thousands of dispersed family members see their long-separated relatives even once before they die. This is why the Koreas, especially the North, should turn far more positive to expand the scale of the reunions, and better still, make them regular events unaffected by political and military developments.

Granted, the risks are far higher for North Korea, a tightly closed and impoverished state, if and when a rapidly growing part of its population is exposed to the far richer and freer people and culture of the South.

Still, Seoul has to persuade Pyongyang to keep its door open through brisk economic aid, including food and fertilizer, on an irresistible scale. The Koreas should keep in mind that German unification started with family reunions on a massive scale. President Park was right to call for both sides to allow dispersed family members to confirm whether their loved ones are dead or alive through exchanging mail, either directly between the Koreas or with the help of international humanitarian organizations. Pyongyang should respond positively.

President Park is also going in the desirable direction to have Seoul prepared to help the North in agriculture and forestation, provided the isolated country shows sincerity regarding exchanges and cooperation with the South and expands the ties to joint programs in sports, culture and youth. Park’s theory of unification as “hitting a jackpot” retains currency only when it is backed up by such “bottom-up” efforts, instead of “top-down” schemes to shake or topple the North’s leadership.

Inter-Korean hawks who call for unification through absorption, citing the German example, might have watched only the final moment of the Berlin Wall going down, while failing to see the long, painstaking preparations West Germany had made prior to it, step by step.

The South’s generous aid may prolong the grasp of power by Kim Jong-un and its coteries a little longer, but not for very long. Even if they remain in power, the regime will be drastically different from the current one.