DTN News: German Unification Not The Model For Korea

DTN News: German Unification Not The Model For Korea *Source: DTN News / Int'l Media (NSI News Source Info) SEOUL, South Korea - December 28, 2009: When it comes to unification, many people in Korea look towards the German experience but the ambassador said there are better models to choose from. Herald Media CEO Park Haeng-hwan (right) and German Ambassador Hans-Ulrich Seidt [The Korea Herald] "My personal recommendation would be not to follow the German example because the situation is different, I would recommend looking to the Chinese example," German Ambassador Hans-Ulrich Seidt told Herald Media publisher Park Haeng-hwan during a recent courtesy call. The ambassador's statement reflects a different environment and political settings. "Look how China managed Hong Kong, Macau, and now they are managing Taiwan," he pointed out. Since the middle of 2008, when Ma Ying-jeou took the reigns of Taiwan, the relationship between Taipei and Beijing has changed tremendously making it without a doubt one of the most important developments of recent history. The Unification Flag is a flag designed to represent all of Korea when both North and South Korea participate in sporting events. The flag was first used in 1991 when the two countries competed as a single team in the 41st World Table Tennis Championship in Chiba, Japan and the 6th World Youth Football Championship in Lisbon, Portugal. The two countries' teams marched together under the flag in the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, and the 2006 Asian Games in Doha; however, the two countries competed separately in sporting events. The flag was not used in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, due to the decision made by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), that the two teams would enter separately. The flag represents North and South Korea. The background is white. In the centre there is a blue silhouette of the Korean peninsula, including the island of Jeju-do to the southwest. In 2006 however, the two nations both agreed to use the flag which includes Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo in Korean). The flag has no status as the official flag of either country. One of the first steps to warmer relations between Taiwan and mainland China was opening up direct flights. In the past, a Taiwanese traveler wanting to visit the mainland had to take a connecting flight from either Incheon or Jeju Island just to name a couple. Today there are more than 200 flights per week between the Taiwan Strait. "This means that some kind of economic integration is underway," he said. "Slowly, not formulized in a political way, but something is underway." "So if I look at the trend I would say that in 10 years from now, if the trend continues, the economy of mainland China and Taiwan will be very closely integrated," Seidt said. This means that this economic synergy will also have an impact on the Chinese Diaspora throughout the world. "This is a real development and if this economic integration slowly but steadily continues, one day they will start to cooperate militarily and for me the most interesting day is when the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese start military operations," he added. Following the course of that logic, then it would be possible to see the navies of both China and Taiwan patrolling the Taiwan Strait and their surrounding waters. "These are developments and possibilities of reunification that are closer to the Korean neighborhood and could be also a kind of model," he said. Still, why not the German model? Many local scholars and politicians keep plugging it as a possible avenue for Korean unification. To put it simply, the German model is not exclusive to Germany. At the same time as the wall came down in Berlin, there was the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, a liberalization movement in Hungary and in the Baltic republics of the former Soviet Union. "So the developments leading to German reunification were embedded into a European process that started in the late '70s," Seidt said. One example would be the Charter 77 which was an informal civic initiative in Czechoslovakia from 1977 to 1992. The Charter was the most prominent opposition to the process of normalization. Charter 77 criticized the government for failing to implement human rights provisions of a number of documents it had signed and also described the signatories as a "loose, informal, and open association of people united by the will to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world." There was also Andrei Sakharov, an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist who advocated civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. One cannot forget the Solidarity Movement in Poland which was the first non-communist-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement. "So there was already, at that time in Eastern Europe, a fermentation process underway that went far beyond the individual trends in East Germany," he said. "East Germany was probably the country least affected and last affected by these dynamics." Seidt added that he does not see this fermentation process in North Korea. "However I have the feeling that there is some fermentation process underway in particular in the economic field, otherwise this monetary reform wouldn't make sense." For the ambassador, the monetary reforms by the North Korean regime is an indication that something is getting out of control and they have to react, probably because there is too much money or free market in the local and regional level in North Korea. Secondly, the population in Eastern Europe already had a democratic tradition. For example, the Czech Republic between the world wars was a very democratic and liberal society. Same is true for other countries. "They had a liberal democratic experience sine the end of the 19th century, a modernization process, all this is lacking in North Korea," he said. What there is in North Korea is something very archaic. "I would say it's not communist, it's something different, it's a monarchy with a one family rule," he said. "So if the legitimacy of the family goes away then the system would collapse." By this regard, even a military collective leadership would not be in a position to replace this kind of family legitimacy set by Kim Il-sung. Seidt said that unification of the two Koreas needs to be done slowly and carefully by strengthening the economic and social segments in the North before political cohesiveness can be attained. "Steps like Kaesong for example, trying to open up economically and make use of the comparative advantage of the lower wages in North Korea, bring them up to South Korea's standards over a longer period of time, try to cooperate on the exploration of the natural resources of North Korea; this would be a longer process, a longer unification process."