A Bridge Too Far? Koreans On The Future of Korea
by Taesuh Kim
(Editor’s note — August 15 is The National Liberation Day of Korea and commemorates victory over Japan in World War II, when US and Soviet Forces ended decades of Japanese occupation of Korea. It is the only Korean public holiday that is celebrated by both North and South Korea.)
On August 4, 2015, two South Korean soldiers patrolling the Demilitarized Zone of the border with North Korea stepped on a wooden-box mine. One soldier lost a leg and another soldier lost both. After an investigation, the Ministry of National Defense and the United Nations Command conducted a joint investigation and concluded that North Koreans planted the mine.
The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement saying North Korea would “pay a harsh price proportionate for the provocation it made.”
As a result of the incident, the entire Army of the Republic of Korea (South), including my regiment, was placed on emergency standby. Ammunition and grenades were distributed to each soldier, and we were ordered to be ready to deploy. In 2010 North Korea killed two civilians and two soldiers after shelling the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong. In response, South Korea shelled North Korean positions, triggering fears of a wider conflict.
Fortunately for us, the box-mine situation didn’t escalate and we were eventually ordered to stand down. Despite the fact that hostilities between the North and South ended nearly 70 years ago, the incident was a shocking reminder that I am a citizen of a country still at war.
Despite the fact that hostilities between the North and South ended nearly 70 years ago, the incident was a shocking reminder that I am a citizen of a country still at war.
On April 27th, leaders of North and South Korea met to build a framework for converting the Korean Armistice Agreement into a lasting peace treaty. While there is no concrete agreement yet, the talks are laying the groundwork for putting a formal end to the Korean War. North Korea even went a step further, promising denuclearization. They demonstrated their commitment by destroying the Punggye-ri nuclear test site just a month after the inter-Korean summit, inviting foreign journalists to watch the destruction of the test site tunnels. On June 12th, President Donald Trump and North Korean Kim Jong Un met in Singapore to discuss permanent denuclearization of North Korea. Experts warn that despite warming on the issue, North Korea is not dismantling its nuclear capabilities. Even so, any positive steps on the issue wouldn’t have been imaginable just months ago.
The turn of events on the Peninsula made me curious about how others with a stake in Korea viewed the latest developments and if they thought the apparent thaw in relations meant real and lasting change.
“There is the difference,” said Jingon Kim, a professor of Chinese literature in Hanbat National University in Daejeon South Korea. “It is whether you see North Korea as a subject of conflict or coexistence,” he said. Kim was born in 1964, just ten years after the end of the war, and served in the Army of the Republic of Korea from 1989 to 1990. He remembered the 80s as a time of turbulence.
While Kim was in the military, Roh Tae Woo was President of South Korea. Though a military dictator, Roh rose to power through elections after nine years of dictatorship under Chun Doo Hwan. Roh attempted to establish his legitimacy by stressing the threat from the North. Dissenters were branded as communist sympathizers, a tactic used to suppress genuine democratic movements in universities, among religious groups (most notably the Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice) and in the labor movement. Roh constantly wielded the possibility of invasion from the North to instill fear in the South that should that day come, they would be forced to live as slaves under Kim Il Sung. The strategy was particularly effective with older South Koreans traumatized by the Korean War. Throughout Roh’s tenure, nationalism took precedence over democracy.
Kim Il Sung was the supreme leader of North Korea until his death in 1994. While most people viewed Kim simply as a dictator, Jingon felt he deserved some credit for attempting to free North Korea from the grips of imperialism. But because both Koreas built their legitimacy on the North-South conflict and were heavily economically invested in their militaries, it was impossible to find genuine rapprochement. Although some families separated by the Korean War took were reunited in 1984 and in 2000 and afterwards, these efforts were seen as more political theater than an honest effort towards reconciliation.
Jingon said recent developments between the North and South have reduced tensions to an all-time low. The success of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics was followed by a South Korean artistic group’s visit to Pyongyang, which ultimately led to the historic meeting of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South Korean president Moon Jae In in the Inter-Korean Summit. Jingon believes South Korea has begun to shift its perspective on the North from that of a hostile nation to one with which they need to cooperate and coexist. “It is going to be a gradual,” he said, adding “but incessant change, it is indisputable.”
Moon Young Hwang, a pastor at Amherst Korean Church, thinks that while the North Korean regime hasn’t really changed much from the 1970s and ’80s, the people of North Korea have been changing immensely and the future will turn on that fact. Hwang served in the Korean Army from 1976 to 1979 during the Axe Murder Incident in which two United Nations and US military officers were killed by North Korean troops wielding axes. US and South Korean forces raised the alert level to DEFCON III, the third highest state of military readiness. It provoked one of the most serious escalations in global tensions ever.
The Axe Murder Incident, which resulted in the death of two officers, triggered DEFCON III, the third highest state of military readiness. It provoked one of the most serious escalations in global tensions ever.
“The North Korean regime cannot keep the people blindfolded forever,” Hwang said, adding “The flow of technology is just too strong and exposure to that technology is simply inevitable.” He said that as North Koreans are more fully exposed to technology, the internet and SNS, they are becoming more aware of the world and are developing a taste for freedom. The process is inevitable, he said, and Kim Jong Un knows it, which is what drove him to the negotiating table with the Americans: He wants to insure the survival of his regime. But for the moment, Hwang doubts Kim Jong Un’s sincerity until Un’s promise of denuclearization is fulfilled.
That taste for freedom that Hwang sees coming in the North is something that some in the younger generation feel will come at too heavy a price. Ye Won Hong is a junior computer science major at Mount Holyoke College whose grandmother is from North Korea. While she thinks reunification is inevitable, she said many South Korean youth reject the idea of reunification out of hand because the relatively prosperous South will suffer economically as it absorbs the impoverished North. But she thinks it will happen.
“It is a must,” she said. “North Korea can no longer be isolated from the rest of the civilized world. Reunification is a must and it is only a matter of when it should happen.”
Still, as she watched the Inter-Korean Summit and the US-North Korean Summit, she felt it was too soon to trust North Korea entirely. Despite progress, past experiences with North Korea’s dual strategy of engagement and antagonism prevents her from completely trusting the North’s intentions. But she said she remains positive about the pursuit of peace.
Hoseung Baek is a computer science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a former Marine for the Republic of Korea. He spent most of his time at sea under the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission as a Civil Military Police unit in Ganghwa Island, on the western border of the Demilitarized Zone. In his time on the island, he used thermal imaging to watch North Koreans farm using technology from the 1960s. He believes that the South needs to help North Koreans, but not through the North Korean government, which he believes can’t be trusted. He said any attempt to help the North through political means only enables the North Korean regime. The general atmosphere in his military Company was one of hostility towards North Korea.
Hoseung trusts neither Donald Trump nor Kim Jong Un and believes that reunification will come only through the constant exchange of ideas and information between North and South. He sees the gestures between President Moon Jae In, President Trump and Kim Jong Un as merely political posturing, but he is hopeful that somehow progress will continue and that they will reach a new era of prosperity through reunification. He points to Germany and Vietnam as examples of possible paths forward.
Hoseung roots for the North Korean national team when they play an Olympic sport, not because he is a communist sympathizer, or because he agrees with the ideology of their regime, but because he is of the same blood.
“There will finally come a time when people come together to stand against this injustice once and for all,” Hoseung said. “People from all over the world are going to unify and protest against the injustice of North Korea. In fact, I’m going to be one of them. I want to see our country unified, beautiful and whole. And I know the same goes for everyone who loves our country or has sacrificed time or their very lives protecting it. Not yet. Nothing will change yet. But to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the sky. And I always have hope.”
Taesuh Kim is a junior at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass. He’s double majoring in Accounting and Philosophy and in his spare time he enjoys reading good books and playing intramural soccer for Gundesliga.
