Korean Unification: The Model and Politics Behind The Last Cold War Conflict.

The Cold War ended over a decade ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Soviet Union. The Korean War has never ended. Since 1953 North (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea) have been in a sort of permanent armistice on the Korean Peninsula. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the burgeoning capitalist economy starting to take shape in China, the North finds itself increasingly isolated with its Command Economy and Communist Ideology. In the South, Authoritarian rule is changing to Democracy, and Capitalism has lead to an economy that is in the top 10 of all nations, and growing. For many South Korean's, these changes are giving hope to something that was once thought to be inconceivable, Reunification of the two nations on the Korean Peninsula. Hope, though, can be a dangerous thing, especially with all of the factors that combine to prevent reunification. Besides the fact that the two nations can't even agree on the name of their country, mistrust and economic issues cloud the question of reunification. And the political powers in the region also want to have a say in just how, when or even if the reunification of the Korean Peninsula will ever happen.

To understand the present situation in Korea, one has to begin by looking at its past. The area that now makes up North and South Korea was at one time the home of three unique kingdoms. In what is now South Korea, there were the kingdoms of the Paekche, and the Shilla, while in the area above what is currently the DMZ lies the former home of the Koryo kingdom. These kingdoms battled for centuries before the Paekche were defeated and the Shilla and the Koryo kingdoms finally united the peninsula for the first time in 668 A.D. in an effort to fight off the Chinese. The Shilla would eventually overtake the Koryo Empire and maintain the empire on the peninsula. However, cultural differences remained between the three areas. Japan, and China have always seen Korea as a prize. China has conquered and ruled the Koreans several times since the Shilla Kingdom united the nations. And Japan has also ruled over the Korean Peninsula. The final, and most brutal rule came before World War II when Japan occupied Korea. The Japanese stole the daughters of Korea to become sexual slaves for their soldiers, and their sons to be their craftsmen. The Japanese even went so far as to try and purge the Koreans of the language and culture by forcing them to learn Japanese, and Japanese customs and religions. To this day, many Koreans still have a deep-rooted hatred for the Japanese over these events. Korea has spent more time conquered than it has spent as one nation under its own rule. A further sense of mistrust can be seen at the three main powers of the region. "One thing that unites all Koreans is a sense of han (grudge) against the casual carving up of their country by foreigners - including supposed friends - in the past century. In 1905 Japan seized Korea with tacit US approval. In 1945, it was the US that initiated the 'temporary' division." A "temporary division, but a division that separates at least 1.8 million families.

The results of this division are staggering. The border, unable to visit, write, or even call on the phone family members on the other side, has separated families since 1953. Even in Berlin, Germans separated by the wall were eventually able to mail or call family members on the other side. While it is now possible to take a tour of a particular mountain in North Korea, "South Koreans can still be jailed for attempting to visit the North without permission." Now, "people on both sides of the ceasefire line still speak the same language, but their vocabularies have diverged dramatically. On TV; southern soccer announcers use many Western terms such as 'goalkeeper' or 'penalty kick'; Northern Announcers have invented their own words for such terms, rendering their play by play almost incomprehensible to southerners."

Conflicts still are waged between the North and the South as well. The North continually antagonizes the South. Since 1953, some of the more famous incidents involved an axe murder along the DMZ by North Korean soldiers who were in the process of chopping down a tree that blocked their view into the South. This left one American and three South Korean soldiers dead, along with the two North Korean soldiers who wielded the axe. Another incident occurred in 1987, when the North downed a Korean Airliner and killed 100 people.3 The most recent summit between the two leaders of the Koreas even took place on the one-year anniversary of the sinking of a North Korean ship by South Korea. "The southern navy sank a northern boat with up to eighty dead...after a clash in disputed waters, rich in crabs west of the peninsula."

Another way the two Koreas differ is in their economy. Like Japan, both Koreas have a mountainous terrain and lack any substantial natural resources, thus making them heavily dependant on natural resources. "It should not be surprising then, that South Korea's industrialization began with import substitution. Manufacturing designed for import substitution, when successful, not only reduces foreign trade deficits, but also serves as the basis for developing export oriented industry. South Korea made such a transition, to the point of becoming one of the ten largest economies in the world." The North, on the other hand suffers problems from its Marxist era Command style economy. "Partly this is to the loss of East European markets and the withdrawal of Soviet aid. The result? North Korea's foreign trade fell (in 1991) from a paltry $5 billion to a miniscule $2 billion, of which 10% was spent dealing with the south. The few travelers who have penetrated the north (also in 1991) reported food and fuel shortages, and factories working at 40 to 50% of capacity." In comparison, South Korea's economy in 1991 "grew 8.4% after a decade of even faster growth."

The economic problems are one of the main factors preventing the two Koreas from reunification. While reunification would reduce the amount of money both sides spend protecting themselves from the other, the money saved would not be enough to cover the cost of a sudden reunification. In one scenario for reunification, the Marxist government in North Korea would fall due to their economic woes, much as the Soviet Union did. While conditions in North Korea have improved since 1991, drought and famine still persist with floods alternating. Any easing in tensions over famine has been a result of food aid provided to the North. "The United States has thus far been of greater assistance to North Korea than Russia," its Cold War ally. This is even despite the fact that the American policy of "starving them