18 September 2015

Interview: What Prospects for Korean Unification?

By Rafał Tomański

Cho Han-bum of the Korea Institute for National Unification on inter-Korean relations and the specifics of unification.

Professor Cho Han-bum is a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), a think tank funded by the South Korean government focusing on issues related to unification between the North and South. Earlier this month, he spoke with Rafał Tomański regarding ties between the two sides and the specifics of Korean unification. An edited version of that interview follows.

You have been dealing with the feasibility studies on the potential costs of Korean unification. Could you describe this briefly?

The South Korean government has been preparing for unification by launching the Presidential Committee for Unification Preparation in July last year. It has also allocated $1.2 billion for an Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund since 1991.

Regarding the unification costs, the government has been preparing various means but has not been actually implementing this in earnest. If unification is suddenly achieved, as in the case of Germany, it is possible to cover the costs in the form of policy loans and national debt.

In the previous Lee Myung-bak administration, there was a fundraising campaign for unification costs called the “Unification Pot” but it did not receive substantial funds. Currently, a private-run major newspaper, The Chosun Ilbo, is campaigning to raise fund for unification costs and hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised. Some NGOs have made efforts to do this, but this is at a minor level.

There is no way of giving the exact amount of money needed for conducting the whole unification process. I’ve been responsible for establishing those costs approximately for many years and still haven’t been able to give any real budget. We don’t know what kind of unification might eventually take place. And keeping in mind that the differences between the North and South are far more than between Eastern and Western Germany in the last century, it is really extremely hard to estimate them.

Read the full story at The Diplomat