Should Korea Give Up on Reunification?

My brief thoughts on Tomasz Wierzbowski's thought-provoking article.

Tomasz Wierzbowski, an adjunct professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, argued in NK News that we should give up the goal of Korean unification. His argument is that Korea had been divided in the past, it had never been a unified modern-day nation state, that histories currents left many former empires divided, and that unification would bring more harm than good.

One part addresses their shared culture:

It is unquestionable that both Koreas share, in general, the same language and culture, and that they are rooted in the same history. 

But such linguistic and cultural connections are not exclusive to the Korean Peninsula, and these examples show that such commonalities in no way require political unity.

Take the case of the U.S. and Canada. These North American neighbors share a common language and display cultural features shaped by their intertwined colonial past, yet they retain distinct national identities.

In South America, nine of the thirteen countries have Spanish as their official language, and while retaining distinct cultural characteristics, they also share many similarities as a result of their colonial histories.

Australia and New Zealand present a similar story. Differentiating between the flags of these two nations would likely pose a challenge to me, a reflection of their interlinked pasts as part of the British Empire.

— North and South Korea should abandon the chimera of reunification

My thoughts: the two Korea’s have a shared ancient and historic culture but not a shared modern-day culture. Even if the Kim regime were to fall, it would take a long time for North Korea to develop a new democratic political system, institutions, and a democratic political culture. South Korea had to suffer through decades of dictatorship and pseudo-democracy while developing its economy and political culture before it finally established the Sixth Republic in 1987.

What would happen in the meantime? How would South Korea deal with the influx of cheap labor coming from the former DPRK? What kind of social clashes and grievances would exist between North Koreans and South Koreans? (North Koreans refugees already deal with culture shock and discrimination—nowhere near comparable to what they suffered in the DPRK—in South Korea.)

Would the ROK hold elections in the northern half of the peninsula? What would the results of those elections look like? If they don’t hold elections—or hold heavily regulated elections—how would they rhetorically justify it? (Holding elections in a state that has no experience with democracy and no democratic institutions or political culture is a recipe for chaos, not democracy. Look at the U.S. attempts to impose democracy by force on countries without a democratic background.)

People have raised these problems before, and satisfactory answers haven’t been suggested.

Also, some on the Korean left who use the word “unification” have a fantasy that the tyranny of the Kim regime would suddenly disappear or something. They don’t answer what they think unification means.

The reality, obviously, is that any kind of unification whatsoever could only happen after the Kim regime disappears (by war or revolution). Unification, meaning having a single country, would mean either the Kim regime in the North giving up its tyrannical hold on power, which it would never do voluntarily, or the South giving up its democracy and freedom and submitting to Kim’s rule, which South Koreans wouldn’t and shouldn’t do.