Question

Compare the two Koreas. How do you think North Korea might benefit if the two Koreas were reunited?

(Minimum of 3 Paragraphs)

Answer 1

In order to quicken the unification, the two leaders of the North and the South should meet each other. However, unlike North Korea, South Korean politicians have a wide range of opinions on how to approach the summit talks between the North and the South. During the previous two administrations, President Kim and President Roh, left-wingers with liberal thoughts, argued that unconditional summit talks must take place. Right-wingers with conservative thoughts claimed that only after North Korea agrees to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, to solve human rights problems and to send back to South Korea all those who were kidnapped during the Korean War and the Cold War, a summit talk would be possible. Of course, this discrepancy of opinions is possible and should be respected because South Korea is based on solid democracy. The only concern here is how current President Lee Myoung-bak would persuade people with conservative views.

President Lee no doubt bases his view on the platform of the conservative party, the Grand National Party in South Korea. This party garners the largest support from the conservatives in Korea. The conservatives tend to be more suspicious of North Korea, and President Lee might be justifiably worried about losing support among the conservatives when he talks about the possible third summit talks. Nevertheless, President Lee should not waste time worrying about this possibility. Politics is always about gains and losses. You cannot win everything; you need to lose something in order to gain something. If you can gain more than what you lose, you should act on that.

Doing as Richard Nixon did, President Lee should calculate the political gains and losses wisely. President Nixon was representative of anti-communists, conservatives and right-wingers in the 1960s and 70s. Yet, he made his mark on world history by visiting communist China in February 1972. With the help of Henry Kissinger, Nixon opened a new gate to fight off the Soviet Union and ultimately succeeded in separating the two giants of communist nations. This visit might have been political suicide during the Cold War. However, his visit was possible because he was a conservative and hard-liners wouldn’t go after him.

Answer 2

For 62 years, North Korea and South Korea have been divided by the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a buffer zone that runs along the 38th parallel line and serves as the site of many skirmishes between the countries.

Despite thousands of years of common heritage, North and South Korea are not just divided geographically. Overly nearly six decades of separation, their economies and social structures have diverged and relations between the two nations are heated, often seeming only a few diplomatic missteps away from war (read more: North Korean vs. South Korean Economies).

Today, over 30,000 American troops are stationed in South Korea to help deter such an outcome. U.S. military forces regularly take part in war games in the region. Despite all the public acrimony, North and South Korea have been meeting for decades to try to negotiate a peaceful reunification of their countries. But is such a thing even possible anymore?

Some politicians and investors have speculated that reunification between the two nations could happen in the next decade. In 2014, famed commodity investor, Jim Rogers, predicted in an interview with Futures Magazine that the two nations would be unified by the end of the decade and said that a unified Korea, “will be the most exciting country in the world for a decade or two.