Sometimes I dream, sometimes nightmare: is the ambition of a single Korea realistic?

Under the leadership of their two leaders, negotiations have intensified in recent years, but the obstacles are enormous. the enormous cultural differences, the cost of the process, the objections of young South Koreans and the model to follow are some of the challenges

SEOUL.- The calm also dominates the two banks in the afternoon of autumn of Saturday. On the north side of the confluence of the Han and Imjin Rivers, the villagers walk and patiently inspect the bare crop fields that surround the city. On the south side, hundreds of young people are having lunch late, drinking coffee or shopping in the avant-garde art village of Paju Heyri.

The village and the village are separated by about 2,000 meters of water, a handful of miles of land, years and years of mistrust and confrontation and so many decades of development that seem centuries old.

Until 1948, when today there are two countries, there was one, Korea, and only one people, Korean. Then, the country, already marked by decades of Japanese intervention and a process of division begun in 1945, inaugurated another chapter of pain with the final score: the North allied with the Soviet Union of the time and the South in the United States.

Nearly 71 years later, the 38th parallel is no longer a dividing line, but a real abyss, thanks to wars, dictatorships, famines, communism, capitalism and nuclear programs.

Today, however, with the advancement of negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, the two Koreas are encouraged to speak emphatically to return to what they were, a single country in which peace and security prevail. the atomic threat. This worries the world so much.

The ambition of reunification belongs to its two presidents, the North Korean,

Kim Jong-un,

and South Korean,

Moon Jae-in;

the challenges too. And they will be the case, innumerable, huge and of an impact still uncertain in the peninsula and in the rest of the world.

The most obvious challenge will be to reconcile the daily life of a people so divided by time and development that they seem to live in different times and places.

The crack of every day

In the north of the country, villagers and nearly 26 million North Koreans share an annual GDP of 40,000 million dollars. For the first time in a long time, they can enjoy uninterrupted power for several days in a row and are just starting to indulge in the fury of phones. cellular

In the South, the GDP is 50 times larger, the technological advance is such that the country is one of the largest exporters of integrated circuits on the planet and that the 51 million South Koreans have become, about 10 days ago, the world's first citizens to have 5G cellular networks.

The gap has so deepened with the pbadage of years that it has moved from the economy to the physiognomy and daily habits. Cyclically hit by hunger and unproductive land, hostages to a primitive health system and devoid of inputs, North Koreans measure on average 10 centimeters less and 10 kilos less than their brothers in the south.

Several experts and organizations warn of internal flooding that could lead to the end of borders. Thousands and thousands of North Koreans would be moving south in search of the well-being they had missed for more than seven decades, they said. However, everyday life in the South would not be so easy for them.

To begin with, the language was also cracked and the "Korean" prevailing in the South does not get along very well and is not very well understood with the hard, closed and sharp debates of the North.

Once the linguistic gap is bridged, they would find themselves with an even bigger hurdle for the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans accustomed to a state that dominates everything: adapt to a dizzying life, filled with small individual skills to survive or to access one of the best universities and ensure a prosperous future, that is to say, to keep a job that will finance the education of children, the greater vigilance of South Koreans.

The coming to power of Kim Jong-un, in 2011, has somehow begun to prepare North Koreans for a life less subjugated by the state and more open to competition. Aware that the endemic poverty of his country was a risk for the survival of the regime and the family dynasty, the young president has released a little the reins of the economy. They were only a few inches and without much fanfare, enough for black markets to grow and Pyongyang to start attracting more tourists.

Politics and reconciliation

Jeong Yong-soo, journalist of the prestigious newspaper
JoongAng Ilbo, has been 50 times in North Korea in the last 10 years and counts
THE NATION that the contrast between what he saw during the first trip and the last one is incredible.

"The changes are visible: it is not only the more than 400 black markets or the biggest consumption, but also the change of perception of the young people or the leaders, they say:" We change, we are not the past, we are another Country. & # 39; Now, ideology has given way to pragmatism, now the important thing is to eat, "he says.

Behind President Kim's pragmatism, there is also an old family aspiration. "His predecessors have always wanted reunification, that's why he wants to fulfill that dream."

The first Kim wanted to fulfill this wish with an invasion. In 1950, Kim Il-sung ordered his troops to enter the South, then poorer and less powerful, to annex it. the measure ended with a war of more than three years, five million dead and the two Koreas more confronted than ever.

The second, Kim Jong-il, who is in charge of an already very poor country, left the war strategy and relied on diplomatic bases to launch the nuclear program in order to counterbalance the threat of the US military presence in the South.

The third, the young Kim, has exhausted this program to make it his best weapon, the most effective way to bring North Korea back to the world and on the road to reunification. "The nuclear project has reached its ceiling and now wants to make another leap forward.Use this plan to negotiate the development of North Korea, the economy needs it," Jeong said.

One of the main promoters of this negotiation is South Korean President Moon Jae-in. It was he who used all his juggling spirit to bring together two strong and narcissistic personalities such as Trump and Kim after North Korea had shown signs of relaxation at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Today, his greatest ambition is peaceful coexistence, but, son of North Korean parents, Moon has never hidden that his dream was also that of reunification. Two years ago, when he came to power in the midst of the debacle of a corrupt right, this progressive local leader had a strong mandate to convince South Koreans that the time had come to move forward reunification. Today not so much.

The South Korean economy is losing power and unemployment has reached its highest level (9%) in a decade in January; None of these data help Moon, whose popularity drops, while conservatives resume their duties.

The ideal model

Reinforced by the recent electoral triumphs, the right doubts Kim's reconciliation will and warns that if reunification is realized, it should be yes or yes, according to the terms of South Korea, with the North Korean nuclear plan under control in Seoul. Such an idea should make Pyongyang laugh.

"The unifying model Kim wants is probably Vietnam [el Norte absorbió al Sur, tras el fin de la guerra en 1975]. But his most likely alternative is that of a confederation. Although in reality, Kim would not last long in this scenario because it would open North Korea and would lose control of the country, "he warns.
THE NATION Bruce W. Bennett, Korean specialist at the Rand Institute.

Vietnam, Germany, European Union, a mixture, none of them … Finding the model of negotiated and peaceful unification is another of the great challenges of both governments.

Kim, accustomed to dictatorship and making decisions without question, is convinced that the power and threat of his nuclear plan will allow him to impose conditions, to demand the withdrawal of troops from the states South and choose the model of the new Korea.

Moon, democracy and negotiation of each measure would prefer a model like that of the European Union and know that his country has an influential weapon to impose conditions: money.

The estimated price of a possible unification is five billion dollars, about 10 times the GDP of Argentina. Someone should pay for this account and the numbers are taken by South Korea, another challenge for one and the other president.

"For the South Korean government, supporting North Korean citizens and baduming economic responsibility will be a heavy burden." Secondly, there is another more complex problem: the wages of North Korean workers are $ 100 a month. South Korea earns $ 3,000 a month as its first average salary. There is therefore a gap of 30 times. If the unification of the two Koreas takes place, the duality of the labor market will worsen. South Korea, there is a political division, if we see the percentage of political popularity, we confirm that it divides 40% for the government party and 30% for the first opposition party, then after the Unification, if we add a socialist party [del Norte] in the badembly, the political environment will be even more difficult, "he explains.
THE NATION Chunuk Hong, economic badyst at Kiwoom in Seoul.

The challenges of South Korean democracy in unification go even further. Polls show that a growing majority of South Koreans support the idea of ​​becoming a single country, but the youngest, under-35s, are unsure of wanting to pay the bill and even less so. A Kim be in charge or close to power in a unified Korea.

It is they who will direct the moment of reconciliation, and for the moment their mistrust seems much greater than the distance that separates them from the confluence of the Han and Imjin Rivers.