Contemplating Korean Reunification(NK collapse can come quicker than expected)

WSJ ^ | 01/03/10 | PETER M. BECK

[TigerLikesRooster]

Contemplating Korean Reunification

The North could collapse more quickly than we think.

By PETER M. BECK

North Korea's nuclear program has preoccupied foreign policy makers for years, but it's not the only problem on the Korean Peninsula. Kim Jong Il's regime looks increasingly unstable and could collapse. That could lead to North Korea's reunification with the South and could present foreign leaders with the expensive task of modernizing the North's economy.

There are three plausible scenarios for a Korean reunification. One would be sudden and bloodless like what Germany experienced. The worst would be a reunification marked by the kind of violence Vietnam suffered. The third is somewhere between the first two and akin to the chaotic post-Communist transitions of Romania and Albania.

Any one of these outcomes would be expensive. The North's economy is in shambles. It collapsed in the 1990s amid a famine that likely killed hundreds of thousands of people. Fixing the economy will require new infrastructure, starting with the power grid, railway lines and ports. This alone will cost tens of billions of dollars. Few of the North's factories meet modern standards and it will take years to rehabilitate agricultural lands. The biggest expense of all will be equalizing North Koreans' incomes with their richer cousins in the South, whether through aid transfers or investments in education and health care.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Yes, Christians will play important role. Pyongyang was the center of Christianity in Korea until Kim Il-sung turned up and made it a communist hell hole. It is their historical duty to take back their religious bastion.

[SevenofNine]

WHOA maybe Chia Pet is really ailing if they planing this

Hey Tiger do me a favor when Chia Pet died send me video of Pyanogang Patty really crying I want see real tears ROFL

You know one you see in Spanish soap operas LOL!

[highlander_UW]

China will not allow any reunification.

I don't see anything that would benefit China from the reunification of Korea...so it seems unlikely that they would permit it.

Well, in slightly deeper consideration, one thing China gets from Korea now is a focus for the West other than China itself. The only way I see this transpiring is either that China is taken by surprise by the swiftness of it, or they no longer need the distraction, which would be a very bad condition for the West.

[Republic of Texas]

However it happens, South Korea’s economy will be ravaged for years to come.

[bert]

It seems to me that a major and probably most important player has been omitted from the discussion.

What of the Chebol?

Will not they be the primary force implementing the merger? Won’t they be charged with building the infrastructure, new factories, labor training, food production?

Don’t they have contingency plans for dampening the turmoil and creating order?

[TigerLikesRooster]

I don't know much about their contingency plan. Still, I doubt that they are pushing the unification. For their perspective, the current situation is fine: their outsourcing to China and making money off China's stimulus projects.

However, if unification happens, they may well relocate much of their production facilities overseas to N. Korea.