Editorial Board
Chosun.com (South Korea)
August 28, 2004
Former Prime Minister Goh Kun has revealed that when a major explosion took place in Ryongchon, North Korea in April while he was acting as the president, he could not sleep at all for concerns about the situation on the Korean Peninsula. It was because of a judgment that if the Kim Jong-il regime suddenly collapses to create a power gap in the North, a pro-China puppet regime might be set up there, and the fact that under such a situation South Korea totally lacks a means of influencing North Korea, he said...
If they realized that the possibility for China to grasp the North Korean regime is not an imaginary scenario but a realistic problem over which the administration's top leader could not sleep, the ordinary people wouldn't be able to sleep with ease. To expect the way to unification to open if and when something happens abruptly in the North and the regime collapses is nothing but a value hope of ours that does not apply in international politics. Whatever happens in North Korea, South Korea has no right to unilaterally intervene in terms of international law. Our constitutional provision that the North Korean people and territory belong to the Republic of Korea has only the effect of domestic law.
If it is to play a major role when an abrupt change takes place in the North, South Korea must secure realistic influence in international politics. Under the current circumstances, it is doubtful whether any of the four countries that would exercise influence, direct or indirect, over the Korean Peninsula if and when the North Korean regime falls abruptly -- the United States, Japan, China and Russia -- would support South Korea's intervention in the North. In the wake of the collapse of the East German regime, Britain and France opposed West Germany's unification policy and Russia hesitated. The United States, however, firmly supported the policy and provided the greatest motive force to the German unification. It's no exaggeration to say that for that day, West Germany had persistently endeavored to win American trust for four long decades.
In light of the experience of German unification, it's not an imaginary scenario that a decisive moment on the Korean peninsula could turn the peninsula into the arena of severe competition among the four powers and plunge the entire peninsula into the vortex of crisis, let alone linking it to unification. Thus viewed, it is alarming that mutual trust between South Korea and the United States is shaking, that no one is now convinced about the future of Seoul-Washington alliance, and that our relationships with Japan and China have yet to be stabilized. Our concerns increase because it is doubtful whether the core of the incumbent administration are agonizing over these problems enough to skip sleep.
