South Korea Prepares for Reunification
BusinessWeek reports:
Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- South Korea named the North Korean regime as its “enemy” and promised to combine a stronger military deterrent with a renewed push to prepare its totalitarian neighbor’s 23 million people for reunification.
Plans presented to President Lee Myung Bak by the Foreign and Unification Ministries today also signaled a harder line against the North and a diplomatic drive to win global support. While Lee conceded multinational talks were the only option to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, policies aimed at undermining Kim Jong Il’s regime and the focus on planning for reunification are likely to rile the North.
“As the future of North Korea is becoming increasingly unpredictable, such preparation is necessary, ” said Park Joon Young, professor of international relations at Ewha Womans University. “Steering North Korean residents toward that goal is the thing that North Korea hates the most.”
Lee has found revived public support for the tougher approach to North Korea he promised when elected in 2008, after two attacks this year raised tension on the peninsula to its highest in decades. North Korea shelled a South Korean island last month, killing four people, and was blamed for sinking the Cheonan warship in March, in which 46 sailors died.
Lee replaced his defense minister and army head following the Nov. 23 artillery barrage, vowing to strengthen the military and respond more harshly to any further North Korean attacks.
A poll by the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies released four days after the shelling showed more than 80 percent of South Koreans believed their government should have displayed a “stronger military response.” Anger at the artillery barrage spurred a 37 percent jump in applications to join South Korea’s Marine Corps this month from a year earlier.
