Korea is a homogeneous nation with a single language and a national
culture that has existed for over 5,000 years. The north and south
have been divided for half a century, but the entity of the north
and south as one nation has not changed.
A proposal for peaceful reunification was advanced in 1980 by
the previous leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,
Kim Il Sung. He envisaged reunification by founding a Confederal
Republic, a unified national government with the arrangement that
the north and south recognize and tolerate each other's ideas and
social systems, a government in which the two sides are represented
on an equal footing and under which they exercise regional autonomy
with equal rights and duties. Kim Il Sung started a national debate
on the matter.
The proponents of unity recognize that different ideas and
systems exist in the north and the south, and neither of them want
to surrender to the other. Reunification cannot be achieved by
means of one side imposing its own ideas and system upon the other.
Establishing a single system presupposes one side swallowing the
other regardless of the methods. If that is attempted it will
inevitably lead to fratricidal war. The status quo is fraught with
danger as outside forces such as U.S. imperialism are stirring up
trouble hoping to take control of the entire peninsula.
Many Koreans firmly believe that a peaceful solution can be
found if they are allowed to meet and hold discussions and work out
the practical politics. They estimate that it is possible for the
two different systems and governments to coexist in one national
state. This desire is based on the demands and interests of the
Korean nation, on the things that Koreans have in common as a
homogeneous nation and on the actual conditions of the country.
The movement for reunification has gathered tremendous
support, creating the Pomminryon (National Alliance for the
Country's Reunification) with a South and North Headquarters. On
May 24, 1996 Hanchongryon (south Korean Federation of General
Student Councils), representing over one million post-secondary
students, voted to struggle for reunification by confederation, and
a Korea-U.S. peace agreement requiring U.S. troop withdrawal, and
to organize in August a patriotic march from Seoul to the border to
meet with students from the north and further build momentum for
national unification. Everyone now knows that the students'
reunification festival was brutally attacked by the south Korean
police before it was able to begin, resulting in over 7,000 arrests
and hundreds of injuries.
The movement for reunification is being broadly suppressed in
the south using the hoax that anyone who raises or discusses the
issue is a "communist." The recent slaughter of the young sailors
from the crippled submarine and the accompanying war hysteria has
further revealed the fascist nature of the regime in the south and
its total servile attitude towards U.S. imperialism. The Kim
Young-sam fascist government is determined to block the path
forward for the Korean people even if it means drowning the ancient
nation in blood.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
