Korea Dispatch

Sometimes it feels like I am the only one, or at least one of only a few, naieve enough to still be thinking about Korea’s eventual reunification. I took a trip not long ago to the Unification Village in Paju, just north of Seoul, where you could literally look across the Imjin River into North Korea. The sky was clear and the mountains in the distance alluring, and I just kept thinking to myself, “You can’t go there.”

Over lunch with friends today I mentioned that of all Korea’s neighbors it seemed China presented the biggest obstacle to unification, as it benefits the most from the current status quo. I gave as proof China’s heavy investments in North Korea as it ever so surely takes over the isolated nation’s economy.

The recent visit to Pyongyang by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, a likely successor to Hu Jintao, suggests Beijing continues to value its ties with North Korea, notwithstanding the trouble its wayward ally has caused it, for strategic reasons… Indeed, China has become, by default, North Korea’s largest trading partner and source of investments.

Keep the regime afloat by taking charge of the economy, and send in swarms of Chinese tourists. Hell, China is already the South’s biggest trading partner. As an aquaintence once told me, South Korea needs China. (I’d be curious to know what China’s position is on food aid to the North, as it is reportedly facing another famine on the scale of 1997, when 3 million people starved to death.)

A more optimistc view is expressed by Professor Zhang Quanyi

Korea’s reunification is significant for Chinese, as it parallels China’s own story. The process of interaction between the two Koreas can provide Beijing with a model for narrowing its differences with Taiwan. Korea’s successful negotiations on economic, ideological and political arrangements can serve as an example to mainland China and Taiwan in dissolving their political crisis.

Still, my friends all chimed in, as if it were completely obvious, that none of the parties involved want unification. Who would want a new, unified Korea, a large country with the North’s resources and the South’s technological and military capabilities?

China (and Russia) would have a powerful new neighbor on its border, one most likely allied with the US. There would also be the issue of the millions of ethnic Koreans on the Manchurian side of the Yalu River. Would Korea try to claim the area as part of its historical territory? Hence China’s Northeast Asia Project. Japan, meanwhile, would have a reinvigorated dagger pointing at it’s heart. I imagine the US also seeks to preserve the status quo, minus the nuclear issue, as this best balances its interests vis-a-vis Tokyo.

So basically any desire on the part of South Koreans for reunification (and even that seems to be dwindling) is subordinated to super power politics, the peninsula’s perennial curse. One of my lunch companions, a Korean reporter here in Seoul, said that under the past liberal administrations, while reunification was still a far-off dream, people were at least moving inthat direction. Under Lee, he said, the country has totally reversed course.