The future of the Korean peninsula, with all of its complex ramifications for international security, U.S. foreign trade and the welfare of the people of that divided land, was examined at a panel discussion held at the Students’ Building at Vassar College on Wednesday, Sept. 19. Jung Jiweon, the labor attache of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Washington, Ambassador Charles “Jack” Pritchard of the Korea Economic Institute and Jordan Heiler, a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs, delved into such thorny issues as dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the Korea-U.S. Free Trade agreement and the prospects for reunification.
Titled “What Is Next For Korea?”, the talk was moderated by James Olson of the World Affairs Council of the Mid-Hudson Valley, and was co-sponsored by the council, Vassar College, and the Korea Economic Institute.
“The two Koreas, so different as states and societies, are – or should be – a topic of enormous interest for all Americans,” Olson said during his opening comments, while recalling that his earliest memory of hearing about foreign affairs in the media was listening to Lowell Thomas talking about the Korean War on the radio.
And why is the peninsula so important? Besides the obvious matters of the 27,000 American troops stationed in the South, the large numbers of Korean immigrants and students in the U.S. and the fact that South Korea is our seventh-largest trading partner, there is always the seemingly intractable problem of what Olson called “The Hermit Kingdom” – the totalitarian, sealed-off, nuclear-armed rogue state of North Korea.
Pritchard, a longtime Korea watcher who is the author of the recent book “Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got The Bomb,” and has served as a special envoy on the peninsula for nuclear and trade issues, gave a detailed account of that development, narrating how the Clinton administration was able to halt that state’s plutonium-based weapons program in 1994, only to have its successor discover in 2002 that the North Koreans had switched to uranium.
Although the government of President Kim Jong Il agreed to shut down and seal its nuclear facilities and open them to international inspection in January of this year, Pritchard related the various subterfuges the North Koreans resorted to in order to complicate the process. He urged vigilance and continued engagement with a problem he believes is going to be with us for some time.
“You are not going to have a systematic political settlement for the Korean peninsula as long as Kim Jong Il is still in power,” he told the Dutchess Beat before the talk. “He will not just hand over the keys. But reunification will come. North Korea will not last the time of history.”
A complex society
Jiweon gave a detailed presentation of the dynamics and problems of South Korean society. While stressing its economic dynamism and technological sophistication, he acknowledged that there was to some extent a second division on the Korean peninsula – within the South’s society.
“Social polarization has become a big issue, with some people talking about a divided society,” he told the audience. “It is a problem seen in many developed societies, proceeding from an education gap and an income gap.” Jiweon affirmed that his government was successfully addressing the problem by increasing its social welfare investment. Wheras once the military budget had been supreme in South Korea, the social welfare allocation passed it in the 1990s and even overtook the economic investment budget a decade later, a shift from “guns to butter” that he said was a manifestation of the society’s successful passage from dictatorship to democracy.
An example to follow?
Pritchard heartily seconded this assessment of South Korea’s progress, and hinted that perhaps it had surpassed the U.S. in terms of democratic efficiency. Noting that the presidential campaign season there is a mere two months long, he quipped, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could follow their example?”
The panel stressed the importance and size of the U.S.-South Korea trade relationship, and affirmed that this aspect of the countries’ ties had to a great extent replaced old Cold War preoccupations.
“For the first 50 years, the relationship was largely determined by security concerns,” Pritchard told the Beat. “These have of course not gone away, but trade has assumed an increasing role. And they are not unrelated. Because of the dynamism and attractiveness of their society, South Koreans believe that unification will come with a benign, soft-landing ending. But there will be great economic costs. The great disparity between the Koreas in terms of development means that reintegrating them will cost trillions of dollars.”
But not much blood, in the view of Jiweon.
“Korea has a homogenous culture that is thousands of years old,” he said. “Unification will not lead to chaos and disruption. There is no possibility for sectarian conflict, for instance. And the German experience is a viable benchmark.”