Reunification: Exploring Ideas

Much of our group discussion during our most recent session was concentrated on the possibility of North and South Korea uniting under one flag. The first half of our conversation tried to explain why reunification remains an incredible challenge. Basically, North Korea has very effectively convinced the majority of its citizens that the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is the singular force preventing “corruptive” outside powers such as South Korea and the United States from infiltrating a society that contains the world’s most superior race. Through a relentless onslaught of state media-driven propaganda, the task of reunification seems worlds away as long as the citizens of North Korea itself continue to carry their present-day attitude towards people and countries different from themselves. We concluded that the only realistic option was repeated and increasing exposure to outside culture via foreign films that may highlight the real, personable aspects held by citizens of an outside country.

To illustrate the possibility of the reunification between a communist nation and a democratic society (both occupied by people of the same race), we looked toward a real-life example from not too long ago- East and West Germany.

The discussion about obscured reality inevitably leads us to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and its communist regime from 1961 to 1989. Like North Korea, East Germany was a repressive state that was controlled by a nasty secret police (the Stasi) and sealed off from the rest of the world by a Wall. Its citizens were manipulated by extensive propaganda activities and had absolutely no rights to express a free opinion (especially an opinion that criticizes the regime.) All these factors created a disconsolate citizenry that would push out the regime if given the chance. Hence, any manner of internal democratization or liberalization would end the regime as we know it. And that’s exactly what happened in the GDR: Germany succeeded to reunite the late 80s after months of public uprising and demonstrations against Erich Honecker’s regime. This raises the question if a similar act of liberalization could occur in North Korea or what it would take to change the mindset of the North Korean people to fight for their freedom.

Even though both states were communist per definition, North Korea takes Marx’s ideology to a completely new level. It is not just a dictatorship; it is an Orwellian nightmare, more Stalinist than East Germany ever was. Fixing North Korea is probably going to require some serious nation-wide psychiatric care for millions of people. Additionally, North is far worse off economically than East Germany. In 20 years, West Germany has transferred $1.2 trillion euros to the roughly 16 million people of East Germany. Note that North Korea has more people (23 M) than East Germany, and those people are significantly poorer per person too ($10k vs 1.7k per capita). That means the 1.2T € figure is likely too low for the North Korean case. Finally, East Germany, being located in the heart of Europe, had much easier access to information and technology. They knew exactly what was going on outside their little ideal communist world and they knew exactly that they were much worse off than their Western counterpart. 

The majority of people in North Korea, however, are deluded and woolly minded and have absolutely no clue that there is a world outside their country that may actually be worth fighting for. They don’t have enough information to create motivation amongst themselves to stand up against their totalitarian regime.