The Words of the Barry Family
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The Words of the Barry Family |
Earlier in August, cash-strapped North Korea offered to repay its long-standing debt with former socialist ally, the Czech Republic, through barter and offered 400 tons of ginseng. The Czechs responded that they only use one ton a year, but would accept zinc ore as repayment. Then on August 15, in his Liberation Day address, South-Korean president Lee Myung-bak proposed the nation adopt a unification tax to prepare for unification with the North, reflecting an anxiety about North Korea's near-term stability and potential for collapse. These two events raise questions about North Korea's current condition and the costs and benefits of reunification.
The North's economy remains in dire economic straits. It had considerably worsened from the early 1990s after aid was drastically cut from the Soviet Union and China. Floods and severe food shortages beginning in 1996 compounded the hardships of life for North Koreans, and perhaps two million died of hunger in that decade. Even this year, with humanitarian food aid at a low, it has been extremely difficult for its people to feed themselves from the spring through the summer; and major flooding again has compounded these problems.
China regularly provides additional food and energy supplies to the North to maintain stability on its border. Its northeastern provinces also have increased their investment in North Korea, which the North welcomes in the short-term, but is very wary of in the longer run. Koreans, north and south, express concern that China could gain enough economic leverage in the North to make it impossible for the North to remain independent or for Korean reunification to be arranged without Chinese assent.
North-Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, suffered a stroke in 2008, and is regarded to be in declining health. He has apparently selected his third son, Kim Jong-eun, 27 or 28, as his successor, with his brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, acting as a modern regent. The youngest Kim has no official title yet, but that could change when a Korean Worker's Party meeting is held next month. A succession may be in place by 2012, the 100th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth.
North-Korea's March sinking on March 26, 2010 of the South Korean navy vessel, the Cheonan, may have been credited to Kim Jong-eun as a way of beefing up his credentials before the North's military. The rationale for the sinking, however, reportedly was the lack of a response by South Korea's conservative government to the North's request for a third summit meeting.
Kim Jong-eun also is said to have been behind the North's disastrous currency reform last November, which wiped out the savings of the North-Korean elite and emerging middle class. Rather than strengthening the regime's grip on power, this reform is reported to have created great bitterness toward the Kim family and worsened the people's economic plight. Now, when possible, North Koreans hoard Chinese yuan rather than North Korean won.
Yet, North Korea has become more porous in recent years. Nearly 200,000 people possess legal cell phones, and many more illegal ones are owned by North Koreans along China's border, allowing Northerners to call relatives in the South. Moreover, South-Korean movies, TV dramas and music, smuggled in on tapes and DVDs and watched on cheap Chinese players, are popular among many North Korean teenagers and college students. This has enabled them to compare their lives in the North with life styles in the South and in China.
Does all this mean North Korea is ripe for revolution or collapse? Those who know North Korea best say the regime most likely will continue to muddle through, since it has endured greater hardships during and after the Korean War and at other points in its history. Much speculation about instability or collapse reflects the wishful thinking of those who compare North Korea to the former Eastern European socialist states. This is not to say that discussions among the U.S., South Korea and China about the North's possible collapse should be off the table. But the safer bet is to find ways to influence a North Korean evolution away from totalitarianism while gradually building the North's economy to a level where its reintegration with the South will be less drastic. Some say normalization of U.S. and Japanese relations with North Korea will help balance China's overbearing influence in the North, and in particular, establishment at an authoritative level of a more trusting relationship with the U.S. will quell the North's nuclear program.
A unification tax may not be enacted anytime soon, and the North surely regards the tax idea as a sign of a South-Korean intention to absorb its northern neighbor, but it is right to start thinking about the goal of unification. The fact is, this year is the 60th anniversary of the Korean War and is being notably commemorated by the Little Angels Children's Folk Ballet, in a tour of the 16 nations that fought on the UN side. The war remains unresolved and is technically in an armistice. At some point, a permanent Korean peace agreement needs to be achieved, with the support of the United States, China and the United Nations.
What about the costs and risks of Korean reunification? Usually, South Korean governments have been informed by the German experience of reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. East Germany's economy was about one-third that of West Germany's. But South Korea's economy is 37 times greater than the North's. This disparity makes unification very unappealing to South Koreans, since the costs seem almost unbearable, and sure to lower standards of living.
But last September, Goldman Sachs, the leading investment bank, issued a study arguing that the German model is the wrong one to follow, that better models for Korean reintegration would be the reform of the economies of Vietnam, Mongolia and the former Eastern European socialist states. Moreover, it said, the two Koreas have remarkable synergies, including talented human capital and rich mineral resources in the North. Goldman Sachs saw Korean unification more of a win-win scenario that could be far less onerous than previously thought. It projected that by 2050 a united Korea's economy would exceed that of Britain, France and Germany, and possibly Japan. Last week, the world's largest economic analysis firm, IHS Global Insight, went even further, saying Korea would surpass Japan in per capita income by 2031 (meanwhile, this past quarter, China became the world's second-largest economy). Clearly, a united Korea is poised to become a powerful force in the world; even this November, Seoul plays host to the G-20 economic summit.
One can argue that, at whatever pace Korean unification is eventually achieved, the attitudes of the Korean people, especially in the South, will be pivotal. On this subject, in his 80th birthday address in February 2000, Rev. Moon observed:
"…Healing the division between North and South is not a simple process. As fellow patriots struggle to bring this about, they will need a determination of heart to work through many sleepless nights, transcending time, and overcoming all manner of difficulties. 'I truly want to live with them. I don't want to die unless I can die with them. I don't want to live unless I can live with them.' The movement for North-South unification begins when both sides have such a heart toward the other." Korean unification cannot be a zero-sum game; both sides need to become winners. The South has the far larger population and economy, and is a democracy with religious freedom. Most likely, real progress in inter-Korean relations will take place when the South demonstrates such overriding concern for its brethren in the north, both in public policy and the diverse actions of the private sector.
Contributed by Dr. Mark P. Barry, a senior fellow for public policy at the Summit Council for World Peace, and adjunct professor at Unification Theological Seminary. The views expressed here are his own.