Not exactly a new subject, but I think it’s becoming more topical because for the first time during my life in Korea I can see unification of some kind on the horizon. Like within 2 or 3 years. I named a section on my side blog Post-DPRK Collapse Theories, which was meant to be a layman’s view of a post-DPRK South Korea.
It’s an idea I haven’t been looking forward to and have been pretty negative about, yet I think I’m qualified to write about it and I think it’ll make for some interesting discussion. Just yesterday I started considering the scouting possibilities, and that perked me up a little. However, in general, I think the reality of it will be a bad thing for foreigners living in Korea.
I really started thinking of North Korea collapsing in a concrete way when I read Kushibo’s post –Is North Korea’s currency revaluation the straw that will break the people’s back? That got me back into reading the One Free Korea blog every day, something I’d stopped doing due to time constraints when we started EWC I. Also timely are a couple new books about North Korea. I’ve read a number of books on the country and, while I haven’t read these yet, I have no doubt that they’ll be amongst the best books on the subject. I’m especially excited to read The Cleanest Race by Brian Myers (NYT excerpt here), who I’ve written about on EWC a number of times.
I bought the Barbara Demick book for my Dad for his birthday, so I’ll probably read that in the not-too-distant future. One Free Korea gave it a glowing review, which you can find here.
19 responses so far ↓
1 DJ // Feb 2, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Dude, why would anyone in the South want this? Does ethnic nationalism still trump common sense in this world?
2 Matt // Feb 3, 2010 at 10:37 am
I’m not sure what to think about reunification. On the one hand, it’s something I think its something the country needs, but I worry about the growing pains the South will endure bring Norks into the 21st century.
How long would it take for some Nork ajeosshi to get into a fist fight with an expat on the subway? 5 minutes after the country reuninified? 10?
3 Tassano // Feb 3, 2010 at 11:30 am
Great article in Slate by Christopher Hitchens talking about the revelations he’s had since reading Myers book. Title of the article is “A Nation of Racist Dwarves.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2243112/pagenum/2
4 Marc // Feb 3, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Any possibility of KBO teams in the north in the future then?
5 DJ // Feb 4, 2010 at 4:08 am
Is in Tassano or Shinsano? It’s like two Aarons in one. Kind of like Lost last night…
6 DJ // Feb 4, 2010 at 4:16 am
On a bit more of a sobering note, check out Hitchens’ typically engaging (and really frightening) coda:
“Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.”
All I can say is this: “Yipes.”
7 Matt // Feb 5, 2010 at 9:41 am
I think it would be quite a few years before a KBO team would find it’s way to the north. Cultural differences aside(supposedly Norks don’t play baseball. It’s too individualistic), there are more important things to do in North Korea than baseball.
8 Marc // Feb 5, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Is anyone else having problems with being redirected to spam from this website? It takes about 10 seconds before I wind up on a website from Spike TV, the China Sex Museum, or some other strange (and probably virus loaded) website
9 Jackson // Feb 5, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Hi Marc
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10 baekgom84 // Feb 10, 2010 at 9:05 am
This comment will probably expose my shocking lack of understanding about how economies work, but wouldn’t re-unification at the very least create a huge number of jobs and provide countless new opportunities for industries? Maybe also the cost of land and housing would go down?
11 John Brooks // Feb 10, 2010 at 9:29 am
but wouldn’t re-unification at the very least create a huge number of jobs and provide countless new opportunities for industries?
Like, Germany though at its re-unification it is going to cost the South Korean government billions to acclimate the North Koreans into a unified Korea. The North is very poor, true there might be more jobs, but its going to cost a lot.
12 John Brooks // Feb 10, 2010 at 9:33 am
Also if you found that bad I dare you to watch this, this and this footage of Kim-il Sung’s death, its a sickening 27 minutes.
13 kushibo // Feb 10, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Reunification will come whether or not South Koreans want it, just as national division remained, whether or not South Koreans wanted it.
Anyway, glad I could help you rediscover OFK. It’s a great site.
14 DJ // Feb 11, 2010 at 12:49 am
I watched some of that footage of KIS’s funeral. What’s the big deal? I’ve heard that all Korean funerals are like this: keening, crying, rending of clothes. Right?
As for the economics of reunification: It would be a short-term nightmare for the South as perhaps millions of utterly unskilled, malnourished, and nearly brainwashed workers head south for jobs. This will put an amazing squeeze on the existing labor market. Wages could collapse without significant government intervention. And such intervention would no doubt be seen by workers in the north as an effort to keep them unemployer–which, frankly, it would be. Maybe the government could put a jobs program in place in the north, but that would be extremely costly. And would the workers of the south want to pay for it?
In the long run, the natural resources in the north would probably lead to a pretty robust work force–but that could take a generation or more.
15 baekgom84 // Feb 11, 2010 at 10:43 am
Yeah – didn’t mean to suggest that the economic situation would be rosy following reunification. Obviously it’s not going to be pleasant. But I thought that given the massive amount of work that will need to be done in terms of redeveloping the North’s infrastructure, among many other things, surely there would be plenty of employment opportunities, and lucrative ones at that?
16 John Brooks // Feb 11, 2010 at 10:51 am
Yeah, there would probably be a massive amount of reworking to do to the North’s infrastructure, but I think the cost of bringing the citizens of the North into a unified Korea and the cost of re-educating North Koreans would probably out-cost the number of employment opportunities. I honestly don’t know where Seoul would get the money from to rebuild Korea, from the US?
Moving a little off-topic, the second thing I’m worried about a re-unified Korea is how the Chinese military would respond. Its my belief that they accept the North as a buffer zone against a unified Korea as I think there scared of it IMHO. I doubt that China will like numerous South Korea and U.S. troops on their border.
17 Shinsano // Feb 11, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I think South Korea could absorb a lot of the costs unification would bring, at least at the outset. This country is 50 billion dollars in the black…don’t forget, they spend relatively little on military because the U.S. is here.
I think you guys are on the right track. The South would move quickly to try and create jobs, particularly in the North. North Koreans would immediately replace the immigrant labor workforce that currently exists in the South. I think that would have both good and bad consequences.
Another “workforce” that would be replaced are the foreign wives that have been arriving in the South in recent years. Scant numbers of Korean men would choose a foreign bride over one from the North. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see a number of the foreign brides already here “fired.”
I realize I sound very pessimistic on the subject of reunification — and, well, I am. I’d likely leave the country shortly after it happened. But don’t get me wrong, I think the division of the country is a sad and tragic story.
18 DJ // Feb 12, 2010 at 5:41 am
Brooks-san’s point about the Chinese can’t be overstated. No way would they put up with a unified Korean peninsula for long. What would be worse for them: A huge U.S. military presence right across the river? Or no U.S. presence on the peninsula–and a fast-militarizing, uber-nationalistic unified Korean state? They’d pick the third option, I’m sure: A direct Chinese military presence in a puppet Northern state.
19 baekgom84 // Feb 12, 2010 at 10:16 am
But is a unified Korea really that much more of a threat to China? The theory that China will not stand for Korean reunification is popular but one that I’ve never fully understood. What exactly is the threat posed to China by a unified Korea? With regional stability more or less restored, there’s no need for Korea to militarize aggressively, and the military service will probably be abolished too. I can see China being worried about Koreans stirring up problems in the border regions where apparently many ethnic Koreans live, but surely that’s not a problem worth propping up a NK puppet regime for? If anything, wouldn’t the economic setbacks caused by the costs of reunification give China a chance to play a bit of catch-up?
And I definitely think the current generation of North Korean men and women would quickly be groomed to replace the migrant labor force, or migrant ‘companionship’. There would be a lot of ugliness in the years following reunification… but to be honest, I think it would also be a really exciting time to be here. I would definitely consider making the trip up North once they inevitably start requiring English teachers.
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