>Of course the northern leaders
>would like to unify on their terms, but that is not
>likely without a military conquest, also not likely.
I suspect that North Korean leaders too are looking for unification on capitalist terms, given recent policy directions. North Korea, despite its image of willful & mysterious isolationism that predominates the Western mass media coverage and the minds of LBO-talkers, has been courting foreign investment, encouraging tourism, and otherwise traveling the capitalist road, just as China & (to a much lesser extent) Cuba have. It just has been much less successful in its attempt to do so, I think.
> In the south it is clear that many yearn for unification.
>But, there is also considerable trepidation and caution.
>They are struck by how hard the German unification
>turned out to be. The official ROK Ministry of Finance
>plan for unification involves not linking the currencies at
>par, limiting migration from the north to the south,
>renationalizing land in the north and then reselling it or
>leasing it quickly, and borrowing from abroad to cover the
>costs involved. Those costs were estimated for this plan
>(in 1993) to be US $980 billion. No wonder there is trepidation.
I'm pleased to hear that South Korean officials, unlike Dennis R., have learned a lesson from Germany and are approaching the question of unification cautiously. The plan sounds terrible & terribly costly, though. I think that in Korea it takes a democratic man like Kim Dae Jung, who doesn't govern in the style of military dictators favored by the West in the past, to make the masses, of North & South, swallow the costs.
> BTW, the DPRK has about twice as many men under arms
>as the ROK, about twice as many tanks and combat aircraft,
>and far more helicopters and submarines. Of course, the
>quality and support of all this stuff is way behind that in the
>ROK. OTOH, Seoul, fifth largest city in the world, is only 30
>miles from the border. Would not be hard to grab it quickly
>and sue for a favorable deal.
Well, Seoul was in the same location 20 years ago, too. Why didn't it occur to North Koreans to attempt an easy grab when North Korea was in a better economic shape? They must be really, really stupid!
Yoshie