THE PRICE OF A NUCLEAR FREE NORTH KOREA & REUNIFICATION
A major justification of South Korea’s unification policy is that by continuing to help North Korea, through the “Sunshine Policy,” they are facilitating both an atmosphere conducive to good relations and a way to help North Korea rebuild itself. The idea is that if North Korea is more prosperous, it will be able to rebuild some of its own infrastructure, thus reducing the cost of reunification in the future.
Besides overlooking the glaringly obvious fact that if North Korea is prosperous enough to begin to rebuild its infrastructure it will have no need to reunify, which is after all the goal of the current regime, there is another angle, covered by Professor Hwang Eui-gak of Korea University:
An economist specializing in the North Korean economy has said the longer Korean unification is put off the more expensive it will become when it finally happens. “In order to reduce the costs of unification, we must quickly unify, and North Korea must end its one-sided devotion to politics and the military and open up substantially” … According to Hwang’s estimates, the cost of unification would have been US$312 billion in 1990, US$777.6 billion in 1995 and US$1.204 trillion in 2000… [emphasis added]
At the same time, many political analysts in the South are paying attention to this:
A Korean affairs analyst said the North Korean nuclear issue would only be resolved by the communist country and the United States, not by the two Koreas… The report quoted Leon Sigal, a senior analyst at the Social Science Research Council in New York, as saying that it’s been “clear to everyone for a long time” that the nuclear impasse is not a matter for South and North Korea. “That is something that’s going to be resolved, if ever, between the U.S. and the North Koreans in the six-party (talks),” Sigal told the RFA. [emphasis added]
Even the U.S. analyst the South Koreans are quoting, Sigal, notes the importance of the Six-Party Talks, but the South is still trying to appease the North by suggesting that direct U.S.-DPRK talks would help. Of course some in the U.S. also advocate such an approach, which would be as about as useful and the UN. President Bush has been very consistent on this issue.
If the South Koreans want a) to resolve the nuclear issue, and b) to reduce the cost of reunification, they need to look for more rational and logical policy alternatives to what they are doing now.
But the South Koreans – government, media, and one must assume average citizens – just do not want to hear this, according to Bruce Klinger in the Asia Times Online. First a bit on what occurred:
The dichotomy between the positions of the United States and South Korea in their perceptions following the recent summit of presidents Roh Moo-hyun and George W Bush is so broad that Seoul and the populace may well feel betrayed once it becomes apparent that the US has not altered its intention to increase pressure on Pyongyang over its nuclear program… Although both countries were eager to portray the solidarity of their alliance, neither president was willing to compromise on their diametrically opposed convictions regarding the nature of the North Korean regime and the most viable policy to alter its behavior. As a result, each president will continue to pursue his own policy, self-assured in its righteousness but risking misfortune due to an unwillingness or inability to accommodate the other… [emphasis added]
And media portrayal of what the meeting meant:
US media reporting was generally dismissive of the presidential summit statements as bromides designed merely to reduce short-term tensions between the two allies and were not reflective of a change in Washington’s policy objectives…
Conversely, South Korean media were universally praiseworthy in their coverage of the summit, characterizing it as having attained US agreement to Roh’s advocacy of diplomacy and putting sanctions against North Korea in abeyance… The South Korean government and media clearly assimilated the portion of the US message pledging to seek a diplomatic resolution, but were dismissive or in denial of the remainder of Washington’s intent of the eventual need to resort to “other measures” once, not if, negotiations failed. As a result, Seoul will continue to pursue its engagement policy, having declared that the summit achieved “breathing room” for continued diplomatic overtures, apparently unaware that the US is not fully on board with the South Korean approach. The summit meeting did not delineate a deadline for moving beyond diplomacy, nor articulate a common strategy for escalatory measures. [emphasis added]
Read the rest here.