korean unification studies

I reckon this extract from a Reuters report on the re-establishment of rail links says a lot about what drives South Korean unification policy:
Cargo trains will cross the heavily fortified border dividing North and South Korea every day from next month, restoring a link severed for more than half a century, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said on […]

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What does this long list of South Korean ministers responsible for unification tell you? Has there ever been a period in which the civil service has been led by a minister for unification for more than a few years? Or does it say more about the position of ‘unification minister’ and the fact that policy […]

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Good article by Andrei Lankov on Korean unification over at Asia Times. To sum it all up - Romania style collapse is coming soon to country near you (if you’re in South Korea). Give it a read!

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‘Reunification cost’ is not an inappropriate term in the context of current ROKG unification policy according to a recent article on korea.net. With an underlying faith that North Korea will not collapse, the article states:
Think tanks, major financial institutions and individuals are busy estimating how much it may cost to reunite South and North Korea. They often refer […]

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With estimates on the cost of unification providing such alarming figures (as in the last post), it is natural for people to wonder where the money will come from. A paper by Yang Un-Chol at the Sejong Institute gives a good summary of how this could be achieved. Amongst the methods, he lists:

Inter-Korean cooperation projects. Basically, […]

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An ROK National Assembly Special Committee on Budget and Accounts has estimated that unification could cost around 1 trillion dollars - yes, 1 trillion - with the cost increasing further over time.
The report notes the difference in timing. If unification occurs in 2015, it could cost around $858 billion over 10 years to absorb the North. If unification occurs in 2030, it could cost […]

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Song Min-Soon will visit the United States next month to discuss a Korean War peace treaty to replace the armistice. There has already been, and there will be much more, talk on the role of US forces on the Korean peninsula after the signing of a peace treaty.
On Friday, Foreign Minister Song stated that US […]

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I don’t know, but I think this may be going a bit far… Lee Su-Hoon, chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative in an article on Korea.net gives his impressions of Kim Jong Il:
Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea too showed calmness in his posture. But there was strength in his […]

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