Kim Jong-il has now been added to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace necropolis in which his father, Kim Il-sung, resides. Given that the world generally regards Kim Jong-il as a brutal, if not sadistic, dictator, it is unlikely that anyone other than Kim Jong-un, the many sycophants of the Kim family, and some dignitaries of China will attend the memorial.
Lenin and Stalin shared the Red Square necropolis from 1953 to 1961, when Stalin was removed and buried near the Kremlin wall where so many other people important to the Soviet Union are buried. The situation with North Korea is a little different given that the now dead dictator's son has assumed power. Only if the military wrests control away from the chosen Kim or the country implodes does it seem likely that either of the dead Kims will be evicted from their mausoleum any time soon.
Emily Kaiser, a Reuters Asia economics correspondent, wrote a timely article, How to reunite Korea without going broke or creating chaos.
Kaiser wrote that a Korean reunification might be "better served by a go-slow approach like Hong Kong's return to China rather than Germany's swift union."
This is not comparing apples with oranges, it is comparing apples with bowling balls. Hong Kong was a world-leading center of commerce, while China was a backwards country. The speed of reunification really did not matter because Hong Kong residents had a very good life of their own, i.e. no one was dying to move to mainland China.
Germany is the only relevant role model for Korea. As is seen on newsreel footage and movies like Goodbye Lenin, many people quickly and permanently left the DDR when given the opportunity.
But even Germany is not quite a perfect role model. East Germans knew how their Western cousins lived because of the West's television and radio broadcasts. This was typical for Eastern Europe; Tallinn was within television broadcasting distance of Helsinki, so they knew what they were missing. But North Koreans are ignorant of just how poor they really are. Barbara Demick's depressing book Nothing to Envy was only one media source to discover that people in North Korea are taught to sing songs which attempt to convince them that North Korea is actually a country which the world admires and respects.
Kaiser went on to drastically underestimate the cost of Korean reunification, writing that it would be "tens of billions of dollars to more than $1 trillion." Given that North Korea has no power grid -- photos taken of North Korea at night are mostly black -- the infrastructure would need to be built from scratch. And power generating plants would need to be built to power the newly-built grid. In 2008 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel estimated that a new 300-megawatt coal power plant would cost over $1 billion in the USA. It is difficult to compare the USA and the Korean Peninsula, but it is assured that each new plant would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The power grid and generating plants alone might approach $1 trillion.
And the power grid is only one issue. There is also the matter of building telecommunications networks in the major cities. The railway network and ports certainly need updating. The educational system must be upgraded to the standards of the South. Given how pathetic its food production is, the entire farming system will need massive aid, including thousands of tractors. And so on.
Kaiser alluded to a misconception often held by people who do not study fallen dictatorships. She assumed that North Koreans could be controlled after their government collapsed. The reality is that they would travel southward by the tens of thousands after they discovered that no one would shoot them for attempting to leave. This happened in the Soviet republics after Gorbachev refused to employ machine guns against his people. South Korea would have a choice: set-up machine guns in a blocking force, allow the refugees in, or work to quickly improve their lives enough so they would remain where they are.
Kaiser noted that "South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has promoted a form of integration that is more Hong Kong-esque than German."
One hopes that she misquoted him, as that attitude is naive. Once the locals realize that the good life can be obtained via a short walk south, they will emigrate in very large numbers.
Kaiser wrote that "Goohoon Kwon, a Goldman Sachs economist based in Seoul, published research in 2009 arguing that a unified Korea could overtake France, Germany and possibly Japan in 30 or 40 years."
Kwon needs to read the CIA World Factbook. He would learn that the top ten exporters are, in order: China, Germany, the USA, Japan, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, Italy, the UK, and Russia. South Korea is already nipping at the heels of the Netherlands. With very little improvement, a reunified Korea would overtake France's fifth-place standing.
And this is the reason why expenditures from the South would quickly reap dividends. The South could persuade corporate giants like Hyundai and Samsung to only open new factories in the North, eschewing China. Not only would it be impossible to restrict Northerners to the North, it would be economically shortsighted. Creating jobs in the North would be the only way to prevent a welfare state from arising.
Kaiser noted that the North has far more mineral deposits than the South. This is another factor which would allow a combined Korean economy to quickly expand from its current level.
In the DDR, factories failed almost immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall because Easterners wanted to buy only Western goods. This resulted in many people losing their jobs. This situation never really improved; until only recently, the unemployment rate in East Germany was double that of West Germany. This factor must be taken into account.
On a side note, the German government really blew it by not demanding a concession from the European Union to allow it to grant tax breaks for locating factories in Eastern Germany, to prevent those factories from being built in Eastern Europe, China, and other foreign countries.
Der Spiegel noted that a good course of action might be to extend a hand to Kim Jong-un. It quoted Die Welt as advising that the "Americans and the world should outstretch their hands and offer the inexperienced Kim Jong-un a way out of international isolation, similar to Burma where this approach seems to be working."
It is worth a try. If he is a sociopath like his father and grandfather, it will be quickly apparent, and then we can return to the old rules. It is unlikely, but perhaps Kim 3.0 could be educated to allow partial freedoms like Gorbachev did.
Kaiser noted that "Germany's model of swift integration may be prohibitively expensive for Korea." Yes, it certainly will be, but once it starts there will no stopping it.
And we would not want to stop it. The other role model is Russia, which has returned to its old ways, only instead of a communist system, it has a gangster system rotten to the core. Russia never had to admit its complicity in WWII, unlike Germany, so it continues to delude itself that its motives were pure.
The reunification of Korea will cost far more than current estimates indicate and its speed will shock almost everyone. As soon as North Koreans learn that they are some of the poorest people on the planet and the butt of jokes worldwide, they will do anything to improve their lot in life. Planners had better take this into account.
Lenin and Stalin shared the Red Square necropolis from 1953 to 1961, when Stalin was removed and buried near the Kremlin wall where so many other people important to the Soviet Union are buried. The situation with North Korea is a little different given that the now dead dictator's son has assumed power. Only if the military wrests control away from the chosen Kim or the country implodes does it seem likely that either of the dead Kims will be evicted from their mausoleum any time soon.
Emily Kaiser, a Reuters Asia economics correspondent, wrote a timely article, How to reunite Korea without going broke or creating chaos.
Kaiser wrote that a Korean reunification might be "better served by a go-slow approach like Hong Kong's return to China rather than Germany's swift union."
This is not comparing apples with oranges, it is comparing apples with bowling balls. Hong Kong was a world-leading center of commerce, while China was a backwards country. The speed of reunification really did not matter because Hong Kong residents had a very good life of their own, i.e. no one was dying to move to mainland China.
Germany is the only relevant role model for Korea. As is seen on newsreel footage and movies like Goodbye Lenin, many people quickly and permanently left the DDR when given the opportunity.
But even Germany is not quite a perfect role model. East Germans knew how their Western cousins lived because of the West's television and radio broadcasts. This was typical for Eastern Europe; Tallinn was within television broadcasting distance of Helsinki, so they knew what they were missing. But North Koreans are ignorant of just how poor they really are. Barbara Demick's depressing book Nothing to Envy was only one media source to discover that people in North Korea are taught to sing songs which attempt to convince them that North Korea is actually a country which the world admires and respects.
Kaiser went on to drastically underestimate the cost of Korean reunification, writing that it would be "tens of billions of dollars to more than $1 trillion." Given that North Korea has no power grid -- photos taken of North Korea at night are mostly black -- the infrastructure would need to be built from scratch. And power generating plants would need to be built to power the newly-built grid. In 2008 the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel estimated that a new 300-megawatt coal power plant would cost over $1 billion in the USA. It is difficult to compare the USA and the Korean Peninsula, but it is assured that each new plant would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The power grid and generating plants alone might approach $1 trillion.
And the power grid is only one issue. There is also the matter of building telecommunications networks in the major cities. The railway network and ports certainly need updating. The educational system must be upgraded to the standards of the South. Given how pathetic its food production is, the entire farming system will need massive aid, including thousands of tractors. And so on.
Kaiser alluded to a misconception often held by people who do not study fallen dictatorships. She assumed that North Koreans could be controlled after their government collapsed. The reality is that they would travel southward by the tens of thousands after they discovered that no one would shoot them for attempting to leave. This happened in the Soviet republics after Gorbachev refused to employ machine guns against his people. South Korea would have a choice: set-up machine guns in a blocking force, allow the refugees in, or work to quickly improve their lives enough so they would remain where they are.
Kaiser noted that "South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has promoted a form of integration that is more Hong Kong-esque than German."
One hopes that she misquoted him, as that attitude is naive. Once the locals realize that the good life can be obtained via a short walk south, they will emigrate in very large numbers.
Kaiser wrote that "Goohoon Kwon, a Goldman Sachs economist based in Seoul, published research in 2009 arguing that a unified Korea could overtake France, Germany and possibly Japan in 30 or 40 years."
Kwon needs to read the CIA World Factbook. He would learn that the top ten exporters are, in order: China, Germany, the USA, Japan, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, Italy, the UK, and Russia. South Korea is already nipping at the heels of the Netherlands. With very little improvement, a reunified Korea would overtake France's fifth-place standing.
And this is the reason why expenditures from the South would quickly reap dividends. The South could persuade corporate giants like Hyundai and Samsung to only open new factories in the North, eschewing China. Not only would it be impossible to restrict Northerners to the North, it would be economically shortsighted. Creating jobs in the North would be the only way to prevent a welfare state from arising.
Kaiser noted that the North has far more mineral deposits than the South. This is another factor which would allow a combined Korean economy to quickly expand from its current level.
In the DDR, factories failed almost immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall because Easterners wanted to buy only Western goods. This resulted in many people losing their jobs. This situation never really improved; until only recently, the unemployment rate in East Germany was double that of West Germany. This factor must be taken into account.
On a side note, the German government really blew it by not demanding a concession from the European Union to allow it to grant tax breaks for locating factories in Eastern Germany, to prevent those factories from being built in Eastern Europe, China, and other foreign countries.
Der Spiegel noted that a good course of action might be to extend a hand to Kim Jong-un. It quoted Die Welt as advising that the "Americans and the world should outstretch their hands and offer the inexperienced Kim Jong-un a way out of international isolation, similar to Burma where this approach seems to be working."
It is worth a try. If he is a sociopath like his father and grandfather, it will be quickly apparent, and then we can return to the old rules. It is unlikely, but perhaps Kim 3.0 could be educated to allow partial freedoms like Gorbachev did.
Kaiser noted that "Germany's model of swift integration may be prohibitively expensive for Korea." Yes, it certainly will be, but once it starts there will no stopping it.
And we would not want to stop it. The other role model is Russia, which has returned to its old ways, only instead of a communist system, it has a gangster system rotten to the core. Russia never had to admit its complicity in WWII, unlike Germany, so it continues to delude itself that its motives were pure.
The reunification of Korea will cost far more than current estimates indicate and its speed will shock almost everyone. As soon as North Koreans learn that they are some of the poorest people on the planet and the butt of jokes worldwide, they will do anything to improve their lot in life. Planners had better take this into account.
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