Koreans wonder if U.S., Japan support unification

By Edward Neilan
Special to World Tribune.com

TOKYO--A sense of insecurity in the South Korean psyche has been asserting itself again in a series of seminars in Seoul looking ahead to the 21st century and back on the 20th century.

The renewed anxieties are expressed over the possibility, even the likelihood, that the United States and Japan are more interested in the stability of the Korean Peninsula than in its eventual unification.

That is not exactly hot news, since the Korean Peninsula has been divided for more than 50 years.

The one serious attempt at unification in that period was by force from North Korea, with backing from China and Russia, in the Korean War launched in mid 1950. It was a serious miscalculation in conception and in execution.

Today's Korean geopolitical situation amounts to unfinished business for which responsibility is borne by the United States, Russia, China, Japan and of course, North and South Korea. All arguments about diplomatic seating and furniture are moot; those six nations must all be a party to an eventual settlement.

But North Korea, bellicose as ever, is the only one of the parties that seems to be seriously interested in unification after five decades, albeit on its terms. It is North Korea, after all ,with its missiles and spy boats and one million men under arms which sets the agenda.

The United States and Japan earlier this week (May 3-4) asserted their intention to cooperate on Korean issues for stability in the region (Washington's requirement) and closer attention issues affecting Japan's security.

Any unification scenario has further complications for Japan which has 700,000 Korean residents as part of the hangover from its colonial adventure on the peninsula.

"I look at a unified Korean peninsula and all I see are 70 million Koreans with guns," said a Japanese commentator, hinting at a notion that bothers other Japanese, at least subliminally.

China is too busy with its own development strategy to get involved in Korean unifications except to make sure that a pro-American unified Korea does not become its neighbor.

Crippled Russia would be an unwanted but important guest at any settlement talks.

South Korea used to talk a lot about unification and there are university research centers and other think tanks studying the prospects of "how"and "when"an the all-important "how much will it cost?"

But there is no plan beyond a general "sunshine policy" toward the North. Public sentiment is that unification would be too disruptive and too expensive, at least until Korea's digs its way out of the Asia financial crisis.

It has been a tough and tumultuous century for the Koran peninsula. The treaty that concluded the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 recognized Korea's complete independence. But in 1910 Japan forcibly annexed Korea, an occupation that lasted until 1945.

At the Potsdam conference of July 1945, the 38th parallel was designated as the dividing line between occupying Soviet troops from the North and American forces from the South.

Russian troops entered Korea on August 10,1945 and America troops entered on September 8, 1945.

"At least here we have no renewed killing as in Europe," said a Seoul-based Western diplomat who has spent his career studying and waiting for Korean unification. "As it now appears, actuarial tables will determine the outcome of the Korea. equation. That is, when the North Korea leadership grows old there will be a change, not before."

All of this forms a backdrop against which to view the mood of to recent seminars in Seoul expressing uneasiness about the positions of the U.S. and Japan vis-a-vis Korean unification.

A ranking U.S. diplomat strongly refuted suspicions in Korea that America is inwardly opposed to the reunification of the two Koreas. "Some (Koreans) even think the United States wants to block their reunification." said Richard Christenson, deputy chief of the U.S. Embassy in Korea, at a seminar in Seoul. "A reunified Korea, however, is the necessary key to building a more stable and prosperous Northeast Asia. And that is very much in the U.S. interest."

Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.