The long road to reunification: South Korea had never looked so favourably at reuniting with the North—but then the US resumed raking over the Cold War coals - Currents: Korea

New Internationalist, July, 2003 by Iggy Kim

ON l5 June 2000 -- 10 days before the 50th anniversary of the start of the Korean War -- the leaders of South and North Korea capped off an historic summit with a declaration to work towards peaceful reunification.

In August there was a second milestone: a meeting of 200 family members separated by the war. The reunion was the subject of a day-long live telecast. Watching it, like millions of other Koreans, I was overcome by a mixture of hope and han. Han is a term with no English equivalent. It refers to an intense feeling of frustrated national hope in the face of historical oppression in a small country where invasion and national division have been enduring wounds in the popular psyche.

In those heady months of 2000, Koreans felt an exuberant hope that reunification was now within their grasp. Even the conservative media in the South warmed to North Korea's leader Kim Jong-II with some affectionately comparing him to a Teletubby!

The South Korean state was founded at the height of the Cold War by an ultraconservative US-sponsored elite whose rule was legitimized by anti-communist fear-mongering. Even modest reform following the April 1960 student uprising was violently crushed. Today, it is still common to see government billboards advertising a hotline number to report 'reds'.

But the liberal-democrat elite, so long frozen out of political influence in the South, is now in the driving seat, thawing out South Korea's Cold War culture. When Nobel Peace Laureate President Kim Dae-Jung stepped down from office last year, he left behind high hopes for 'sunshine diplomacy' between North and South. His successor, ex-dissident human-rights lawyer Roh Moo-Hyun, was elected last December.

This political shift is underwritten by economic changes. During the 1990s, South Korean big business -- once protected by a capitalist command economy replete with five-year plans -- was exposed to greater international competition and a budding, reform-hungry labour movement. Many capitalists looked towards North Korea where the Soviet collapse and crippling natural disasters had forced the opening up of its economy. There, just a few hours' drive from Seoul, an educated, disciplined labour force could be found -- socially supported by a stable and cost-free state.

In 1992, companies in South Korea began sending materials and equipment to the North to undertake 'processing-on-commission' manufacture. Inter-Korean trade last year totalled $641 million, 59.3-per-cent more than 2001 and a near-threefold increase since 1998. Business transactions stood at $342 million, 45-per-cent greater than 2001.

This economic-led rapprochement with the North has emboldened and legitimized a popular outpouring of han. Last November mass candlelight rallies swept South Korea following the acquittal of two US soldiers who had run over and killed a couple of schoolgirls. There are 37,000 US soldiers currently stationed in South Korea. Sparked by an impassioned email posting on a discussion list, the first rally on 30 November attracted 10,000.

By the next weekend it had spread to 36 towns and cities. By mid-December, the Seoul rally had reached 100,000, with tens of thousands more in 90 other towns and cities. This rebounded back at the top, with Roh Moo-Hyun winning the 19 December presidential election on a promise of greater independence from the US.

The US is presently stoking confrontation to legitimize its military presence in the South, which threatens to resurrect hardliners in both Korean capitals, Pyongyang and Seoul. Short of a mass revolt against the US alliance, the liberal elite in the South can retain the initiative only by appeasing the anti-North camp and bowing to Washington's lead in dealing with Pyongyang. This is partly what motivated Roh to send troops to Iraq in April. Such appeasement, coupled with the Iraq war (which offers a glimpse of what may now await the Korean peninsula) will intensify feelings of national humiliation, and drive Korea once again away from the reunification that so many had stepped towards.