One Thing Matters Most Every Time I Look at the North Korea Question
Not whether unification comes or doesn't. What frightens me most is the moment history moves and the Republic of Korea is the one country that isn't ready. History sends no advance notice.
Every time I look at the North Korea question, one thing appears most important to me.
It is not that unification happens, nor that it doesn't.
What frightens me most is the Republic of Korea being utterly unprepared at the very moment history moves.
For too long we have thought of North Korea as a fixed entity. Power passed from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il, from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un, so we assume it will simply continue that way.
We tacitly assume someone will inherit the seat after Kim Jong-un, the armistice line will remain, and the two Koreas will keep living as they do now.
But history does not move so kindly.
The Soviet Union looked eternal too, and few imagined East Germany would vanish overnight. States and systems look solid on the surface, then change far faster than expected the moment several conditions overlap — power succession, economic crisis, shifts in the international order, conflict among internal elites.
There is no reason North Korea should be the exception.
And the North faces far more complicated problems ahead. Not just leadership succession, but nuclear weapons control, the power dynamics between the military and party elites, the interests of China and Russia, American intervention, and the changing consciousness of the North's own people — all of it can move at once.
And how prepared is the Republic of Korea for that moment?
I don't want to discuss unification sentimentally. Slogans — “we are one people, so someday we must be one” — solve nothing. Unification is not a ceremony that merges two flags. It is a colossal national project connecting tens of millions of people and two utterly different economic, administrative, legal, educational, and financial systems.
If the Northern system suddenly shakes, the first thing needed is not a declaration.
Who will control the nuclear weapons? Who handles security and administration in the Northern regions? How will food and medicine be supplied? How will the power grid and communications be restored? How will Northern residents' property rights be recognized? Under what legal framework will Northern enterprises and land be converted? How will currency and finance be connected? How do we respond if mass migration begins? What negotiating proposals go to China, the United States, Russia, and Japan?
The Republic of Korea must hold answers to these questions starting now.
And I don't believe this is the work of government and military alone.
Lawyers are needed; accountants and finance specialists; engineers and doctors; administrators and entrepreneurs. Reconnecting the North's cities and industries requires capability in nearly every field — power, communications, transport, housing, finance, education, medicine, software.
The whole of the Republic of Korea must hold one great transition plan.
Because if we don't prepare, other countries will.
The moment abrupt change occurs in the North, China will move by China's interests, the United States by its security strategy, and Russia and Japan will calculate their own national interests. No need to condemn that. That is simply how states move.
Then the Republic of Korea, too, must prepare for the Republic of Korea's future.
The initiative I speak of is not about pushing other countries out. The opposite. Because Korea holds the most concrete plan, America, China, and Japan all end up negotiating at the table Korea built. That is real initiative.
And the most important people in that process are, of course, the residents of the North. The North's future must be not a question of acquiring territory but of how to connect the lives of the people who have lived there to a functioning society. The moment Northern residents are treated as objects or costs, unification fails from the start.
So I don't think the question Korean society needs now is “are you for or against unification?”
That question is too old.
Ask instead:
if, ten years from now — no, five — a change we did not foresee begins in the North, what will the Republic of Korea do?
Will we still be commissioning new research reports, forming committees, and trading blame in the political arena?
Or will we already have dozens of scenarios, laws, budgets, administrative plans, infrastructure plans, and international negotiation strategies prepared — and move at once?
I believe we must be the latter.
Unification may not arrive on the date we want. Nor does the North's system change on the schedule of Korean elections.
History sends no advance notice.
So the state's task is not to predict the future precisely.
It is to prepare to move no matter which future arrives.
Those who advocate unification and those skeptical of it should be able to agree on this much:
the day unification or Northern system change arrives suddenly,
the Republic of Korea must not be the one country that isn't ready.
The moment the peninsula's future moves, the most prepared country on Earth must be the Republic of Korea.