One Korea will complete liberation

One Korea will complete liberation





Two hands hold the Korean national flag Friday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the nation's liberation from Japanese colonial rule. In a survey conducted by the Korea Times, most foreigners said South and North Korea should be unified and liberation is incomplete without unification. / Yonhap

Expats see unification not option but a must

By Jung Min-ho

Aug. 15 marks 70 years since Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule and the country will celebrate Liberation Day nationwide.

However, is Korea truly liberated and completely? Especially with the nation still divided?

Ahead of the anniversary, The Korea Times asked foreign residents of Korea and experts to share their opinion on unification of the two Koreas.

Most of them said that South and North Korea must and will be unified for themselves and the rest of the world.

"Unification is not a choice but a destined thing to happen for Korea," said Sandip Kumar Mishra, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Delhi. "Korea must be unified. A divided Korea will always be incomplete and unstable."

The Indian scholar visited Seoul last year as a special lecturer at the invitation of the Institute for Unification Education.

"A divided Korea is not like other divided countries. They share a common ethnic identity, history, culture and even a specific geographic location," he said.

Felix J. Glenk, a German official at Hanns Seidel Foundation Korea, a Munich-based think tank, agrees. Despite a long separation, he believes, the two sides still share much common ground.

"When thinking about a possible unification of Korea, as a German citizen I necessarily have to think about our own history," he said. "It was natural that we (Germans) are one nation consisting of people with the same language, same culture and same history.

"In Korea there is an even longer history of a national identity. I think the painful division that still separates this country should be overcome because both parts of Korea belong together."

While politics left Korea separated and with two contrary systems, the similarities in other parts are still obvious, he noted.

"As a person working for a German NGO, living in South Korea and carrying out projects in North Korea, I learn a lot about Korea and its people on both sides. And after 70 years of separation I still experience that the people in both parts are similar," he said.

"It's maybe like two brothers that grew up with each other and lost contact for a long time ― they are still one family, even though the time changed both."


‘It really is a bonanza'


The problem is that young South Koreans, increasingly, feel little connection with the people on the other side of the truce line.

According to a survey conducted by Hyundai Research Institute two years ago, 31.6 percent of respondents in their 20s said they don't need unification with North Korea.

For South Korea, probably the most well-known negative impact of reunification is short-term economic costs.

But the issues of unification costs, which dominate the media coverage here, prevent people from looking at far larger benefits it will bring to everyone, said Daniel Connolly, a Ph.D. candidate in International Studies at Korea University.

"Although unification will absorb a considerable portion of South Korea's GDP, saying so simply on the basis of economic costs is incredibly short-sighted," said the Canadian. "This dynamic and innovative South Korean economy is a hostage to the uncertainties of an opaque regime just beyond the border."

In fact, living beside a hostile state has never been cheap, he noted.

"Uncertainty is the price we pay everyday for not reunifying," Connolly said, adding that the North Korea's nuclear arsenal and possible attacks would remain the main factor discounting Seoul stocks.

Andreas Schaefer, vice president of Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also believes the unification will bring tremendous opportunities to everyone in the peninsula.

"If Korea manages to unite under peaceful conditions, it will greatly benefit from the combination of South Korea's industrial prowess and North Korea's natural resources and vast pool of labor," he said. "Yet while many South Koreans seem to expect this optimistic outcome, a lot of them are pessimistic about the cost. I dare to hold a different view."

The fears of mass migrations to the South and high costs seem overblown, he noted.

"A relatively small percentage of North Koreans will head to the South if the situation in their part of the country improves rapidly. The high cost of living in the South and limited job opportunities will slow down mobility," he said.

"In the case of East Germany, an average 100.000 people headed west each year after reunification. Almost exclusively skilled specialists were easily absorbed into the labor market and boosted the competitiveness of companies."

He said the example of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex shows how fast North Koreans learn new skills and how fast their productivity rises.

"So rather than worrying about the cost, both South and North Korean will be grasping the new opportunities that such a change would bring," he said. "Korean history has proven time and again how adapt Korean people are at overcoming obstacles and coming out as winners."

In fact, public opinion about the unification is getting more positive _ especially in business sector, with South Korea's President Park Geun-hye trying hard to sell it as an "economic bonanza."

According to a survey result released earlier this month by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 87.2 percent of 500 companies said they would invest in North Korea, if unification happens.

After all, the unification should be more about recovering Korean identity, not costs and benefits, Mishra said.

"A divided Korean peninsula would remain as a battleground for the great powers' politics, inflicting damage and pain to Korean people," he said. "It would only end, if Korea gets reunited."


Jung Min-homj6c2@koreatimes.co.kr