The Contradiction in Some Koreans' Unification Discourse
They desperately hate their child going to the army — and in the same breath ask, “why unify?” Choosing division means choosing division's costs. And the most concrete of those costs is your own child's uniform.
Listening to anti-unification arguments in Korea, there is one contradiction I find hard to understand.
They intensely hate the idea of their own child going to the army.
They hate longer service terms, hate accidents in the military, hate a year and a half of youth given to the state. Delayed studies and delayed employment because of conscription are a problem too, they say. They rage that soldiers are treated poorly, and their complaints about the draft itself run deep.
And yet at the same time they say:
“Why unify at all?”
I struggle to see how these two thoughts coexist.
What is the most fundamental reason conscription persists in the Republic of Korea?
Because a massive military force sits just above the armistice line.
Because for decades the two Koreas have faced each other militarily, and the national security system must be maintained on the premise that clash is possible at any time.
They argue for keeping that structure intact — while saying they hate their own child serving in it.
That is a rather strange position.
Of course, unification would not abolish conscription overnight. The process could produce considerable security costs and disruption; depending on how it unfolds, the military burden could even rise in the short term.
But think long-term, at least.
If the two Koreas remain hostile states and the peninsula's military tension persists, the next generation keeps paying this structure's costs.
They must serve.
They must keep funding defense.
They must guard the armistice line.
They must live with the possibility of war.
They must keep managing the nuclear problem.
And every military flare-up hits the financial markets and the economy.
To whom do those costs ultimately return?
To their own children.
Yet strangely, Korean society is full of people like this:
“I don't want my son going to the army.”
“Conscription is too harsh.”
“Why must only the young sacrifice?”
They say all that,
and immediately after:
“Unification? Absolutely not.”
So they say.
Then I want to ask:
what exactly do you want?
You want to keep the division.
Keep the military standoff.
Keep the hostile military state called North Korea exactly where it is.
But the military service required to maintain that state of affairs — you'd rather your child not do it.
That is less a policy position than an attitude of shifting responsibility onto someone else.
One can oppose unification.
One can judge the costs too great, consider integration with the Northern system unrealistic, or argue that a two-state arrangement is in fact more stable.
That, in itself, is a legitimate political view.
But then one must also accept the cost of that choice.
Maintaining division means continuing to pay division's costs.
And those costs are not only the defense budget.
They include the possibility that your son, your grandson, and the young people of the generation after that keep wearing the uniform.
What, then, is the most irresponsible stance of all?
No to unification.
No to conscription.
No to higher defense spending.
No to the North's nuclear weapons.
No to depending on America for security.
But let's keep the peninsula's current structure exactly as it is.
No such option exists in this world.
For a nation, every choice carries costs.
Unification has costs, and division has costs.
Not unifying is not a choice to do nothing, either.
It is the choice to pay, every year, the cost of maintaining the current system.
If anything, I think the first question Korean society should pose when discussing unification is this.
Don't ask only “how much does unification cost?” —
ask “what is the cost of maintaining division for the next fifty years?”
And there is a question more direct than money.
“Opposing unification, can you accept a structure in which your children and grandchildren keep going to the army?
If so — did you obtain their consent, those future children and descendants of yours?
And if not, are you not simply loading the burden onto future generations?”
To desperately hate your own child's military service,
without ever having obtained anyone's consent,
while insisting on eternally maintaining the geopolitical structure that requires that army to exist at scale — that is a serious problem.
At minimum, it's worth looking once at the contradiction inside one's own thinking.
This is not a demand to support unification.
It is a plea to know what costs the national arrangement you choose demands — and choose knowingly.
If you choose division, you choose division's costs too.
And one of the most concrete forms of that cost is precisely this:
your own child's uniform, and their sacrifice.