Life inside the North Korean Bubble (with video)
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
There was at least some exchange between West and East, nothing like the complete isolation of North Korea. East Germans could just turn on their TV and watch some West German television when they wanted to compare systems. (Areas the West German TV signals couldn’t reach were called “Valleys of the Clueless” :) East Germany was also one of the most “progressive” eastern bloc states, supposed to be a showcase for actually existing socialism. And, as far as tyrannies go, one of the milder ones, while Kim Jong-il is all the way up there with Hitler and Stalin.
Then there is time: East Germany survived for forty years, North Korea is in its seventh decade. It survived the last twenty years without a cold war keeping it alive (except the one between North and South Korea, I guess).
The German unification cost billions and caused many problems. By no means an easy process that’s now, twenty years after it started, by no means completely finished. So I kind of can understand South Koreans who are weary of the prospect of unification. Unification did work out ok. I don’t know whether that would have been the case had East Germany been a lot more like North Korea.
This of course despite the fact that many older generation Koreans would feel compelled to have some kind of punishment for the "communists" (in quotes because the word is abused in South Korea by the older generation to the point of being meaningless) and their various crimes against the South. Of course this would further complicate reunification.
I think beyond just hearing what South Koreans say, look at what they do. The Kaesong Industrial Area is cited in the South as a way to try and drag at least some portion of the North's populace into the 21st century. Because if reunification of any type did happen, the consensus is that they are virtually without any useful skill to the South. Ultimately, reunification means that the Northerners will have to become productive, job holding, members of society. All of the BS they spend time drilling on in school, like the great works of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il and learning how to perform in mass games and create propaganda ballets about dam construction, are absolutely meaningless in a modern industrialized world. If the two Koreas reunified tomorrow, they would have to figure out what to do with 20 million unskilled laborers.
The bright side is that the pragmatists see this as a way of perpetuating the cheap labor pool requirements for an export driven economy. South Korea has started bringing in labor from places like Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam, etc. because they can use these laborers on low waged manufacturing jobs. If 20 million North Koreans suddenly became available, it would greatly simplify things (in theory) for the manufacturing chaebols in the South. They'd simply bus in Northerners at $10-20/day to build TVs and Ships and Construction equipment and all the other odds and ends that South Korea needs to produce to stay wealthy. Kaesong is supposed to be laying the ground work for that eventual day.
I think likely, if the regime collapsed in the North, they'd move to keep the two countries in place, but with very close economic ties, (perhaps like the U.S. and Canada, with a lax border) for at least a couple generations and use the North as a cheap labor pool and industrial center very similar to how many countries use China. Once the standard of living increased in the North to the point that the South could reasonably absorb the North, and/or the Northerners were demanding wages too high to keep the export model afloat, they'd probably reunify.
That’s exactly what some people in West Germany and also East Germany proposed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It ultimately didn’t happen but that was a real debate.
Some people think the opportunities for manufacturing and development in North Korea are going to be great and are excited to have more Korean companies do their manufacturing in NK instead of China going forwards.
Many of the younger people are excited about the idea of no longer needing two years of mandatory military service, which is currently required mostly because of the North Korean threat (the older generation was more patriotic towards military service, the younger generation seems to see it as a bit more of a burden).
Some people are afraid of the ripple effect on the economy, in fact a lot of the Koreans I asked were aware of the West Germany/East Germany example you mentioned.
The general sentiment seems to be about 50/50 - half in favor of unification the sooner the better, half in favor of having North Korea as a separate state but with much friendlier and greater cooperation between them, and with a better government in the North. The older people seem more in favor of a short term unification, the younger people seem more disposed towards having North Korea be a separate state until they're ready to join back up.
Everyone - everyone in South Korea hates Kim Jong-il, and most people seem kind of embarassed and blush when you mention him.
This is a quite popular opinion to express publicly, but I think the support for it is rather shallow. When push comes to shove, unifying Korea would have immediate economic impacts to South Koreans more severe than the United States swallowing Mexico.
(South Korea has 48 million people who have essentially Italian living standards. North Korea has 23 million people and is desperately poor. The day the border goes down every man under the age of thirty in North Korea would try to cross to South Korea, looking for any available job. That historically does not endear large immigration populations to their host nations.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...
What about this, which came from B.R. Myers's book "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters":
"Even in South Korea there are those who feel the Kim Jong-il regime, under which they themselves could not live for a single day, to be somehow more "authentically" Korean."
It covers about a year in the life of a family who have two young girls training in preparation for the Mass Games. Utterly compelling and handles a very difficult subject matter with sensitivity and without passing judgement.
North Korea is on China's borders, thousands of people each month sneak into China from North Korea, and their crazopathic government is next door to China no matter what. I think China being very mildly pro-NK is a case of "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." North Korea is probably the biggest potential threat to China if relations were to break down between them.
The documentary mentions that North Korea survives thanks to food from the World Food Programme. Cut all imports, and I wonder how long the régime would last when even the army starts starving to death.
Of course, it's possible millions of people would die in the process.
EDIT also the border between north and south korea is pretty tight
A few thousand unorganised migrant workers who are trying to smuggle themselves in with no more than a suitcase each and try to hide in the corners of soceity when they get there is quite different from a massive uniformed army with tanks and trucks who then try to take over the running of the government when they get here.
Also the army was legally allowed and ordered to shoot the Germans who were trying to come over, whereas they is not the political will to shoot migrant workers.
Edit: Some discussion over at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426919
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1406757 (more interesting discussion there)
"Look, we are the good guys, we have changed. We even allowed that one video."
I disagree it's a simplistic analysis, and I even disagree that a "simple" analysis is inherently bad. But I think we both agree that people dying is a bad thing.
So much of South Korea's population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area and within range of hardened, well-hidden North Korean artillery that it makes it a near certainty that any hot-war on the peninsula would come at the price of hundreds of thousands to millions of South Korean deaths. Add in nuclear weapons, unconventional warfare (who knows how many sleeper terrorist agents the DPRK has in the South), and conventional battlefield losses and you get a horrific butcher's bill on both sides for any likely engagement. Stacked against that the ongoing horror visited on North Korea's citizens by its own regime is not enough to warrant such sacrifices, sad as that is.