NIS 41B, South Korea, Country Profile/A House Stands Divided
A House Stands Divided (c)
First session in Seoul of the North-South Red Cross talks; South Korean delegation on right
The rationale for Pak's assumption of autocratic powers in 1972 was the newly-opened dialog with P'yongyang. Whereas alarm at student demands for direct talks with North Korea had provided the immediate occasion for the coup in 1961, a decade later Pak had come to feel that the changed international situation required Seoul to take some initiative on the basic issue of Korean reunification. His first feeler was the August 1971 proposal for talks between the South and North Korean Red Cross societies, which led to secret high-level political talks that were not made public until 4 July 1972. These talks continue with considerable caution and hesitation by both sides, but are kept alive by mutual self-interest and world trends, as well as by the fundamental longing of all Koreans for their historic unity.
National unity remains the ultimate goal. As a natural geographic and economic entity which ages ago produced a unique ethnic homogeneity, Korea was the least divisible of the postwar divided countries. The Korean people are ever-mindful of their 1,000-year-old history as a unified nation, contrasting, for example, with the long separatist history of the Germanies. Today, though they have been separated for a generation, all Koreans remain deeply motivated by the underlying desire for unity.
The problem of reunification has figured large in all postwar Korean governments, but it remained for the Pak regime specifically to replace Syngman Rhee's strident demand for a military "March North" with the present call for "peaceful competition for reunification of the fatherland." Seoul's 5-year plans have been dedicated to building up the South's economic strength so that it might become a "magnet" for the people of North Korea. Pak's recent reforms and constitutional revision specifically prescribe ad infinitum the fundamental goal of a universal effort to achieve national unity.
Following the Korean war, Seoul's official formula for Korean unification remained U.N.-supervised elections throughout the peninsula, a formula which P'yongyang has always rejected. North Korea has always refused to recognize any role for the United Nations in Korea. The development of an East-West detente and growing doubts about the permanence of a U.S. role in the ROK's defense largely determined Pak's decision to open the dialog with the North. Security conditions remain vital. Rhee had refused to sign the 1953 truce agreement ending the Korean war, thus leaving the two Koreas still officially at war, and huge opposing forces still stand constantly alert all along the Demilitarized Zone. P'yongyang has ceased its efforts to foment revolution in the South by infiltration and guerrilla raids, and Pak apparently desires to use the present dialog to involve P'yongyang in a relationship that may preclude further hostilities. Finally, in light of Korea's tragic history, both North and South have a common interest in solving their problems without foreign intervention.
Thus far, the talks have served to reduce tensions between the two Koreas, but at the same time they have shown each side how little it can influence the other. It is clear that there is little prospect of unification in the foreseeable future, but there may be steps toward some humanitarian, cultural, or economic accommodation, as Seoul has proposed. P'yongyang professes to desire more far-reaching steps, particularly in the field of disarmament, but Seoul is certainly unlikely to concur with the North's demands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Seoul's anxieties stem from a long-standing sense of inferiority vis-a-vis the North. It wishes to postpone indefinitely the departure of American forces and to continue the U.S.-supported modernization of its own. It will resist the dissolution of the U.N. Command, though it has now acquiesced in the termination of the United Nation's political role in Korea, represented by the U.N. Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK), which actually has been moribund for some time. Since P'yongyang's recent successes in following the ROK's example of winning greater international recognition and respectability, Seoul has given up its rigid diplomatic refusal to be represented in any country or international organization where P'yongyang is present. Its new flexibility now extends to recognition, not of the North Korean regime, but at least the de facto existence of two Koreas. This major policy switch, announced in June 1973, tacitly recognizes that the peninsula will remain divided for the foreseeable future. North Korea's President, Marshall Kim Il-song, so far rejects President Pak's proposal for dual representation in the United Nations as perpetuating the division of Korea, and calls for a "Confederal State of Koryo," named after the first Korean dynasty, to unify the entire peninsula. However, Kim has accepted observer status at the United Nations.
Pak's use of the unification issue to justify imposition of the most restrictive political controls the South has known since 1963 has its rationale in the fear that the talks with a seemingly less hostile North may weaken his people's resolve to keep up their guard. On the other hand, should it become apparent that the talks are getting nowhere, the Southerner's restiveness with these onerous controls might reintroduce the instability that delayed all progress under preceding regimes.