Chapter 6

Globalizing south, inward north

From the 1980s the two Koreas grew further apart, economically, politically, and culturally. As they did each became an outlier in the history of post-colonial states. Few states moved faster from poverty to ‘developed’ status than South Korea, none developed a more totalitarian, isolated society than North Korea. South Korea’s economy expanded impressively well into the 2000s, becoming a wealthy consumer society, while North Korea went through economic stagnation, decline, and the worst famine any urban society has ever experienced. Both started with authoritarian political systems; however, the South evolved into an open, democratic society while the North remained authoritarian and closed. The South became a cosmopolitan society with a globe-trotting population, internationally recognized brand companies, and a globally popular entertainment industry. The North became increasingly inward-looking, moving from a more conventional Marxist-Leninist state that placed itself within an international socialist movement to a dynastic cult state based on a xenophobic racial-nationalism.

Most Koreans continued to see themselves as part of one nation united by common ethnicity and ancestry, and they regarded the political division as unnatural and in the long term unacceptable. Yet by the second decade of the 21st century it was not certain when or if reunification would occur; nor was it clear to what extent the two Koreas were still one nation.

A dramatic reversal of fortunes in the late 1980s and early 1990s

In 1981, following a recession that accompanied the chaotic period between the death of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan’s consolidation of power, South Korea returned to fast economic growth led by surging exports. That same year it was awarded the 1988 Olympic Games, which acted as an impetus for infrastructural development. Over the next few years its economic growth rates reached 12 per cent, the highest in the world. Developing nations began to admire its achievements and sent a steady stream of observers to learn from it. The ROK was becoming the poster child for successful economic development; journalists outside the country were referring to the ‘Korean economic miracle’. But the miracle came at the price of labour suppression, long hours, and low wages. Student and labour unrest only became greater during the decade, joined by an increasingly restless middle class that resented being excluded from political participation.

In 1987 massive anti-government demonstrations broke out when the government announced that although Chun would step down as he promised at the end of his seven-year term, there would be no direct elections for a new president. It was clear Chun would simply pick another general to succeed him. Protest demonstrations became so frequent and massive that they jeopardized the Olympic Games. In June 1987, the government, responding to escalating public pressure, promised a freely contested presidential election and ended most censorship. It released most political prisoners. An election at the end of that year was won by the very candidate Chun had picked against a fractured opposition, but opposition parties soon gained a large majority in the National Assembly. Politics became more open with a lively press, organized interest groups, and freely contested elections at all levels. The military completely withdrew from politics. In 1992, a former opposition politician, Kim Young Sam (Kim Yǒngsam), was elected president. In 1997, another former opponent of the Park and Chun regimes, Kim Dae Jung, was elected. By then peaceful transfers of power were already becoming routine.

A wave of labour unrest was unleashed in 1987, as workers could now freely organize. Over the next few years wages rose rapidly, and working conditions and safety standards improved considerably. The standard of living rose dramatically, and South Korea became a modern consumer society. The streets were soon clogged with cars and the stores filled with products from around the world as import restrictions eased. After 1988, almost all restrictions on travel abroad ended and soon South Koreans became among the world’s busiest globetrotters. In the 1990s, the middle-class consumer lifestyle was becoming within reach of the average working family; the gap in living standards between them and their counterparts in the First World nations narrowed. In 1996, South Korea joined the OECD, an organization of developed nations, symbolically graduating from Third to First World status.

All this was a dramatic contrast with the economic stagnation of North Korea. In the early 1980s, Kim Il Sung, his son and designated successor Kim Jong Il, as well as other officials, travelled to China to learn about that country’s economic reforms. A few modest gestures toward opening up the country to foreign investment were carried out. Yet, rather than reform, the regime conducted more mass mobilization campaigns, using the same methods it had been employing since the 1950s to spur economic growth. It also sought more aid from the Soviet Union which Moscow, concerned about its waning influence in Asia, provided. Internally, there was no loosening of the tight grip the state maintained over society.

Even more alarming to Pyongyang than its southern rival’s economic success was its growing international recognition. As many developing countries began to see the South as the more useful model to learn from and as a source of trade and economic aid, Pyongyang’s influence in the Third World waned. The DPRK’s abuse of diplomatic privilege to engage in drug smuggling, its sponsorship of terrorist attacks on South Korea, the extreme cult of Kim Il Sung, and the promotion of his son as his successor made the Non-Aligned nations increasingly weary of the DPRK. After 1982, they ceased to put forward pro-DPRK resolutions at the UN. The Olympic Games were another challenge. First Pyongyang tried to discourage countries from attending by carrying out several terrorist attacks and spreading rumours that the ROK was plagued with the AIDS epidemic. It then insisted on co-hosting the games. When it was offered the opportunity to host a few minor events Pyongyang rejected it and then campaigned for an international boycott. Only five countries joined the boycott; the games were well attended and successful.

The biggest threat to Pyongyang was the thaw in relations between its communist allies and the government in Seoul. China, the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe sent training teams to the ROK and began inviting the South Koreans to sporting events in their countries. Hungary opened full diplomatic relations with Seoul in 1988, and the Soviet Union did so in 1990. Moscow’s establishment of official relations with South Korea was accompanied by the end of its economic aid to the North. Just how important Soviet aid was became apparent when its suspension resulted in a serious contraction of the DPRK economy. An especially hard blow was Moscow’s insistence that Pyongyang pay market prices for its petroleum with foreign exchange. North Korea had relied on cheap Soviet oil to run its economy. It now suffered from severe energy shortages resulting in power outages, plants closing, and idle trains, trucks, and tractors. Fertilizer production fell, adversely impacting agricultural production. The South Korean government sought to utilize the changing international dynamics by proposing new talks with North Korea. After negotiations the two agreed on a nuclear-free peninsula but otherwise little progress was made.

North Korea’s ‘arduous march’

By the early 1990s the character of the nearly half-century of rivalry between the two Koreas had changed. North Korea was no longer a serious rival, rather it was verging on being a failed state. Its leadership, without abandoning its official goal of reunification, became more focused on survival. Many South Koreans as well as outside observers expected the North Korean state to collapse and to be annexed by its more populous, far wealthier southern neighbour, much as East Germany had become incorporated into West Germany. Indeed, rather than worry about a North Korean invasion or political subversion, leaders in Seoul fretted about the cost of absorbing the North when its inevitable collapse came.

By the start of 1994, economic conditions in the North had deteriorated to the point that Kim Il Sung in his annual New Year’s address for the first time admitted things were not going well. In the coming months North Korea narrowly averted a conflict with the United States over its nuclear programme. In tense last-minute negotiations Pyongyang agreed to halt its nuclear weapons development in return for US, South Korean, and Japanese assistance in building two nuclear power plants and providing heavy fuel oil. The details were still being worked out when Kim died suddenly in July 1994. His son Kim Jong Il, as had long been planned, succeeded him.

The following summer unusually heavy monsoon rains brought about widespread flooding, the loss of much of the nation’s harvest, and famine. From 1995 to 1999 hundreds of thousands of North Koreans died of causes related to malnutrition in one of the late 20th century’s worst famines. The North Korea famine, or ‘arduous march’ as it was called, was a truly unusual event in world history. It was the first ever in a modern urban, industrial society that was not at war. Unlike other famines that mainly affected rural areas this hit the industrial cities of the north-east the hardest. Desperate, Kim Jong Il called on international food aid. His response was in some ways remarkable. In a country still claiming to be a paradise on earth, a model for other nations, a self-reliant state, the admission of the famine and the urgent call for mass assistance was striking. It was also a major risk to the regime.

Ordinary North Koreans had no contact with the outside world. They were told that they were the envy of their neighbours, and that their South Korean brothers and sisters were suffering from endless repression by the American imperialists and their southern lackeys. Yet, the narrative went, the spirits of the people of the South were kept up by the hope and expectation that they would be liberated one day by the DPRK and live under the brilliant Kim family. The regime now risked exposing their people to alternative views of reality which could undermine its legitimacy. Relief workers from the US, the UN World Food Program, and private NGOs including the Good Friends organization in South Korea delivered food. They were severely restricted in their movements, their contact with ordinary North Koreans was limited, but nonetheless millions of people were knowingly being fed by their ‘enemies’.

Despite these setbacks, the North Korean regime did not, as some expected, collapse but survived. It did this by modifying its ideology, adjusting some of its political institutions, and adapting to economic and social changes. Many of the ideological changes were already under way before the economic freefall and famine. They included taking a more ultra-nationalist turn. When in the late 1980s North Korea began to find itself in a changing international environment in which its very survival was at stake it responded by re-emphasizing ethnic-racial nationalism. It still called itself socialist but ‘socialist in our own style’. In effect it was withdrawing from the declining international socialist movement and retreating into xenophobic isolationism.

The regime revived some cultural traditions such as celebrating the autumn moon festival and lunar New Year. State propaganda placed more emphasis on the uniqueness not only of Korean culture but of the Korean race or bloodline. Tan’gun, the mythical founder of Korea, previously regarded as in the realm of folklore, became a real historical person. In 1993, his grave was discovered. Other discoveries included early human remains that ‘proved’ Koreans were a unique line of human evolution. This was part of a larger narrative in which all of Korean history was reinterpreted as the struggle of Koreans to maintain their independence, their own march of progress, and their racial purity in the face of foreign invaders. Fortunately, the remarkable Kim family had come along and, under their leadership, half the nation had liberated itself from Japanese rule, and had thwarted an American attempt to subdue them. The DPRK under its powerful military and inspired leadership was keeping the imperialists at bay until the time it could liberate the other half of the nation.

While elements of this narrative had existed since the early days of the regime, it now became the central story, the justification for the regime and the explanation for its hardships. The famine itself, a product of overly centralized state-directed agriculture, deforestation, and ill-conceived farming practices, was blamed on the sanctions imposed by the imperialist powers. The regime could take credit for forcing foreigners to relieve the famine that they were, in good measure, responsible for. Furthermore, unable to point to economic progress, the regime pointed to its military achievements. This led to a shift away from focusing on economic progress in state propaganda to military progress. Kim Jong Il in 1998 adopted a ‘military first’ policy giving greater visibility to its armed forces and highlighting the need for military strength to confront the threats from foreign imperialists. That year the constitution was amended to make the National Defence Commission the highest organ of the state. Military men were appointed to key positions.

Kim Jong Il’s government also adapted to the changing reality of economic collapse. Prior to the famine, most people received their food and other basic material needs through a public distribution system, but this broke down. Instead most North Koreans had begun to rely on private markets to purchase food. Once prohibited, these were tolerated and then openly permitted. In 2002, the state shifted to a more money-based economy, charging market prices for rent and other state-provided goods and services, simultaneously increasing salaries so that employees could pay for them. It allowed and even encouraged state institutions to engage in market activities to raise their own funds. State enterprises and private traders were permitted to cross the border with China to engage in trade. The state, however, never fully embraced the private market and placed restrictions on it; and it continued to call itself socialist. But in practice, in the decade following the famine North Korea developed a mixed economy. This was more an acceptance of the reality that most families and institutions were fending for themselves to survive than it was an enthusiastic bout of reform. In fact, what kinds of market activities were permitted or tolerated by the state was not clear, and subject to change. Still, incomplete, grudging, and inconsistent as state economic policies were, they enabled the North Korean people and the state to muddle through.

While North Korea was coping with its economic crisis, South Korean president Kim Dae Jung sought to improve relations with North Korea in what he called his ‘Sunshine Policy’. This offered friendly exchanges and economic assistance to the DPRK in return for an end to hostilities. The hope was to gradually bring the two Koreas closer together. In 2000, he went to Pyongyang for a summit conference with Kim Jong Il. This was followed by some limited trade. In 2002, the Hyundai Corporation of South Korea opened a tourist resort for South Koreans in the famed Diamond (Kǔmgang) Mountains of North Korea. Two years later, the two governments set up the Kaesong Industrial Complex a few miles into the DPRK. South Korean firms were given tax incentives to open businesses there. Seven years later nearly 50,000 North Korean workers were employed by some 100 southern firms. Meanwhile, Seoul provided some food and other aid; and there were some cultural exchanges.

However, the economic benefits for North Korea, always searching for foreign exchange, had to be balanced by the need to limit contact between its citizens and the people of the South. Furthermore, the explanation for economic setbacks, and the rationale for military spending and need for absolute loyalty to the ruling Kim family all required a continual threat of foreign invasion. Periods of modest cooperation therefore alternated with crises, mostly manufactured by Pyongyang. One excuse was the joint military exercises by US and South Korean troops. The North Korean regime complained that these were rehearsals for an invasion, a claim primarily intended to remind their own people of the foreign menace but also to use as leverage in negotiations with Seoul and Washington. In 2008, for example, on the same day the South Korean president Lee Myung-bak (Yi Myǒngbak) was announcing a plan to help develop the North Korean economy, a DPRK guard shot dead a South Korean tourist at the Diamond Mountain resort who had strayed outside the permitted zone. Seoul then prohibited tourists from going there. In March 2010 a DPRK torpedo sank the South Korean destroyer Cheonan (Chǒnan), killing forty-five sailors. In November that year, DPRK artillery shelled the South Korean island of Yǒnp’yǒng resulting in several deaths. The most provocative acts involved testing missiles and detonating nuclear bombs. In 1998, Pyongyang fired a medium-range missile over Japan. In 2006, in violation of its denuclearization agreement with the ROK, it tested a small nuclear device. It tested a larger one in 2009.

Although it allowed more market activity, and widespread corruption made the state less efficient at enforcing all rules and restrictions, there was no attempt at liberalizing the regime. Indoctrination campaigns continued and radio receivers were checked to make sure they were not able to receive any but DPRK state channels. Midnight inspections checked homes to make sure there were no unauthorized reading materials. Perhaps 200,000 political prisoners toiled away at hard labour in remote camps. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to wall off all information about the outside world. Traders from China smuggled in South Korean videos, which were immensely popular. Young North Koreans became familiar with South Korean pop singers and a few even adopted South Korean hairstyles. Yet there was no sign of any organized opposition.

South Korea: democratization and globalization

The Olympic Games of 1988 were a kind of coming out party for South Korea. They were used by Seoul to showcase the country’s emergence as a modern industrial nation. The ROK was also an increasingly democratic one as exemplified by the election of Kim Dae Jung as president in 1997. No opposition leader was more hated by the military rulers. He narrowly escaped execution twice, by Park in 1973 and by Chun in 1980, saved only by the intervention of the United States. But his narrow victory went uncontested and was accepted as a matter of course. Two basic political groupings—a more conservative and a more liberal one—alternated in power over the next two decades, both of which shared broad agreement on many issues. One healthy sign of political pluralism was the rise of NGOs advocating government transparency, women’s rights, environmental protection, and other interests and issues. A lively media that included investigative reporting also acted as a watchdog on the government as well as on the corporate world.

There were some limits on free speech, most notably the National Security Law, which every administration promised to repeal but each found useful. Aimed at curbing North Korean subversion it was interpreted more broadly to stifle dissent. A major problem in creating an open, transparent, and accountable society was corruption. Every president after 1987 ended up being implicated or having family members implicated in financial scandals ranging from bribery to influence peddling. The most shocking case was Park Geun-hye (Pak Kǔnhye), daughter of the former dictator Park Chung Hee, elected by the conservative party in a typically close election in 2012. In the wake of bribery and influence peddling by her long-term confidant, she was forced to resign in 2017 after massive protests and the loss of support among her own party. Despite the National Security Law, its scandals, and its frequent demonstrations, South Korea was, along with India, Japan, and Taiwan, the most transparent and democratic society in Asia.

South Korea’s economy went through an economic crisis in 1997–8, part of a wider Asian economic turmoil that began in Thailand. In 1998, its economy contracted 5.8 per cent and it had to receive a massive bailout by the IMF, one of the largest ever given. But it soon recovered, resumed high rates of growth, and paid off massive foreign loans in just three years. In fact, in the 2000s it went from chronic trade deficits to large surpluses, from a debtor to a creditor country. After 2008, the economy slowed to a 3 per cent annual growth rate, which the public and the state found worrisome but was still slightly above the average for developed nations. By 2018, its GDP per capita was on a par with the EU nations, a little above Italy, a little below Britain and France. By that time, by any measure it was a prosperous First World nation.

South Korea had been remarkably successful at keeping up with technology. By the 2010s it ranked fifth or sixth in the world in the number of patents issued, and it was a leader in developing innovative consumer electronics products. Its goods were acquiring a reputation for high quality. However, it faced stiff competition from a rising China. China after 2005 replaced the USA as South Korea’s largest trading partner. Unlike most countries South Korea generally ran a trade surplus with Beijing. But by the 2010s China was beginning to outcompete Koreans in steel, ships, and other major export sectors. It seemed a matter of time before it was able to compete in more advanced technology. Meanwhile, the shift from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based and service-based economy was occurring much more slowly than most economists thought desirable.

With its highly developed, often state-of-the-art infrastructure, modern high rises, and highways, South Korea was to all appearances a wealthy country by the second decade of the 21st century. Even in the countryside most families had nice modern homes and were serviced by good roads. It had become the most wired country in the world, with almost universal access to high speed internet. Yet income distribution, which had been one of the most equal in the developing world, began to become more unequal. The unemployment rate, lower than average for developed countries, was creeping higher. The country had a weak safety net. Social welfare programmes expanded after 1998 yet remained below the level of most advanced economies. Poverty among the elderly was becoming a problem.

Besides a growing economic inequality, South Korea made only modest progress in addressing gender inequality. In contrast to North Korea’s progressive laws on women, South Korea in the 1950s passed a Family Law that reinforced the traditional hierarchical nature of society. Men headed households, almost always gained custody of children in divorce, and the latter was extremely difficult for women to obtain. After 1987, the Family Law was reformed to create greater gender equality and in the early 2000s legislation was passed prohibiting all sorts of gender discrimination. Still, Korean women lagged behind their counterparts in almost all other developed countries and in many developing countries in their representation in government and the professions, and until after 2000 in higher education. Some things did change, such as divorce rates which more than doubled between 1995 and 2005 and by 2010 had reached European and Japanese levels. Being a single mother, however, was difficult due to continued discrimination against women in the workplace, despite laws against it.

One of the problems of South Korean society was the concentration of wealth and influence in the chaebǒls. Once closely dependent on the state, by the 1990s the chaebǒls had become ‘too big to fail’. That is, the state could no longer discipline them without endangering the whole economy. The 1997–8 financial crisis presented an opportunity to control their overexpansion. A few such as Daewoo were forced into bankruptcy; others were restructured to focus more on their core areas. But the quick recovery brought these limited reforms to a halt. The surviving chaebǒls such as Lotte, Hyundai, Ssangyong, and Samsung only became bigger. Samsung, in particular, which in 2017 became the world’s largest privately traded firm by sales volume, had an enormous influence over the country’s economy. Since the founding families still had controlling shares in most of these conglomerates, their influence was enormous. Sons and daughters of chaebǒl families often married the offspring of other chaebǒl founders, creating a small interrelated class reminiscent of the elite families that dominated dynastic Korea or of the intermarried elite of North Korea. Calls for the reining in of these powerful firms and their families became a major political issue in the 2010s.

Few achievements were more outstanding than in education. In 1945, only 5 per cent of Koreans had a secondary education; half had no formal education at all. By the early 20th century South Korea had become one of the world’s most literate nations. In the 2010s it ranked second or third in the number of people under 35 with a university degree. South Korean secondary students consistently ranked at or near the top in international comparative tests of maths, science, reading, and analytical skills. Yet, although much admired, it was a costly, inefficient, hyper-competitive system that reduced schooling to test-preparation, drove families to spend large sums on cramming schools and private tutoring, and placed enormous stress on young people. By some measures South Korean families spent a higher percentage of their income and students put in longer hours on education than in any other society. Another issue was the quality of higher education. For all its often-praised achievements in schooling few of its universities ranked in the top 100. While many company laboratories produced patent-protected products and processes, not a single Korean scientist had as of 2018 won a Nobel Prize.

The cost of education in both resources and time contributed to another major problem, the low birth rate. While South Korea’s high birth rate resulted in a vigorous state-sponsored family planning effort in the 1960s, by the start of the 21st century officials worried that women were having too few babies. In the 2010s that birth rate had fallen to under 1.2 children per woman, and was the second lowest in the world, significantly lower than in Japan. The population, which had reached fifty million by 2018, was expected to decline sharply from 2030. The reasons for this remarkable development are varied. Besides the cost of educating children, many younger women were quietly rebelling against the expectations most men had that they devote themselves to their husbands and children after marriage. Many women were putting off marriage until quite late and some were opting out of marriage altogether. Meanwhile, improvements in health resulted in South Koreans having among the world’s longest life spans. Consequently, the country was likely to become an extreme case of an ageing society.

To deal with the impending labour shortage, the government instituted some pro-natal policies, but these were ineffective. Another solution was immigration. Several hundred thousand immigrants from China, the Philippines, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and other Asian countries were employed legally under short- or medium-term contracts doing jobs that were dirty, dangerous, and difficult. But they were expected to return to their home countries after their term of employment was over. An ethnically homogeneous people that except for the Japanese colonists had not experienced an influx of immigrants in centuries, most Koreans were not comfortable with the idea of permanent immigration. Yet many experts argued that immigration was needed if the country wanted to avoid a severe demographic crisis in the future.

Continuous crisis

When Kim Jong Un (Kim Chǒngǔn) succeeded his father as North Korean leader in December 2011, many in South Korea and the international community hoped for a change in the direction of the country (Figure 10). Kim had been educated at private school in Switzerland, was young, not yet 30, and thought to be more open to new ideas, more cosmopolitan than his father or grandfather. However, in the spring of 2013, Kim manufactured another crisis, claiming the routine annual joint military exercises between US and ROK forces were a dangerous provocation. His anti-Seoul and Washington rhetoric went beyond anything previously from the DPRK: declaring the country was at a ‘state of war’ he threatened to turn Seoul into a ‘sea of fire’. Pyongyang cancelled the non-aggression pacts previously signed with South Korea, closed the border crossing, disconnected the hotline that had been established with Seoul, and shut down the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Tensions eased but relations between North and South were at a low point.

10. Satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night, 24 September 2012.

Kim Jong Un carried out the consolidation of power with unprecedented ruthlessness. Many top military and civilian leaders were purged. In December 2013, he murdered his uncle Chang Sǒngt’aek, considered the number two person in the regime, having him publicly arrested and then executed. In February 2017 North Korean agents assassinated his half-brother Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur airport. Not only was this killing of a member of the immediate Kim family unprecedented, it was carried out despite the fact he was living in exile in Beijing under Chinese protection. At home, Kim Jong Un tightened border security, making it more difficult for those trying to flee the country. Nor was there economic liberalization. In May 2016, Kim held the first party congress since 1980. The 2016 Congress was used to revive many of the old party institutions from Kim Il Sung’s days in power. It also revived the use of fixed-year development plans that had been abandoned in the early 1990s by issuing a new Five-Year Plan. None of this suggested radical change.

To the dismay of most South Koreans as well as their American allies and their Chinese and Japanese neighbours, Kim Jong Un accelerated his missile and nuclear programmes. He conducted two nuclear tests in 2016 that resulted in new rounds of economic sanctions. Despite universal condemnation and the UN sanctions North Korea carried out a nuclear test in September 2017 that was far larger than previous ones, possibly a hydrogen bomb. In July 2017 it tested two intercontinental missiles capable of reaching Alaska; and in November 2017 it fired a missile capable of reaching Washington DC or anywhere in the USA. Officials in America became so alarmed that they considered the possibility of carrying out a military strike against North Korean facilities. However, the vulnerability of Seoul, only 40 km from the border, within range of DPRK artillery and rocket attacks, as well as the possibility that a military strike could lead to nuclear war, made this a rather desperate option.

In South Korea public opinion toward the North hardened, even among many younger people. Opinion polls showed that for the first time, narrow majorities of the public were open to the possible development of the country’s own nuclear weapons. Yet in May 2017 South Koreans elected the liberal candidate Moon Jae-in as president, who advocated a revival of the Sunshine Policy of his liberal predecessors. Then, perhaps encouraged by the new administration in Seoul, Kim Jong Un in his 2018 New Year’s address offered a more conciliatory approach. North Koreans participated in the Olympic Winter Games in South Korea in February 2018, and the two leaders had an unprecedented three summit meetings in the following six months. Even more unprecedented were the summit meetings between Kim Jong Un and US President Trump in Singapore in June 2018, in Hanoi in February 2019, and at the DMZ in June 2019. North Korea was now offering to halt its nuclear and missile programmes in return for improved relations and easing economic sanctions. While many South Koreans remained opposed to any deal with North Korea, a majority was cautiously optimistic that this time it would be different and North Korea would carry out economic reforms and begin cooperation with Seoul.

Korea: still one nation?

Events in 2018 demonstrated that hopes for reunification in South Korea were not yet dead. The younger generation was not as emotionally wedded to the idea as the older generations were but still tended to see it as inevitable. South Koreans, however, were concerned about the financial burden of absorbing the costs of rebuilding North Korea and accommodating the refugees should the DPRK collapse, as seemed possible or even likely. They often regarded North Koreans as alien, ‘brainwashed’ cousins who might be too different to easily assimilate. As a result, South Koreans began to think of unification as a long-term process perhaps taking several generations. Most hoped that reunification would happen after the DPRK underwent a period of economic reform, modernization, and took steps toward developing closer connections with the South.

Yet was Korea still one nation? Were the Koreans one people and with a shared tradition that were politically divided or did seven decades of separation under such different socio-political systems create two nations? The answer was not clear. North Koreans loved South Korean TV dramas and pop music, but that was true of Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and the public in most of Asia. By 2018, 40,000 North Korean refugees had settled in South Korea. They encountered considerable discrimination by employers and neighbours who found them lacking in initiative and worried that some might be DPRK agents. Many refugees had trouble adjusting to South Korea’s hyper-competitive society and led unhappy existences. Yet others managed to assimilate and flourish.

The differences between North and South Korean society were not the only challenge to the Korean belief that they were a single, homogeneous people. South Korea was slowly becoming a multi-cultural society. The use of sonograms in the 1980s and 1990s, combined with the preference for boys, meant there was a shortage of marriage-age women. In addition many Korean women did not want to marry farmers or did not want to marry at all. So, in the early 2010s, one in seven Korean men were marrying foreign brides, mostly from China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and other Asian countries. Thus, mixed ethnic families were becoming common. Then there was also a small but growing immigrant population. As a result, some South Koreans were starting to discuss the concept of a Korean identity not based on ethnicity, but one open to people of varied cultural and racial backgrounds. Yet a public furore in 2018 over letting in a small number of political refugees from the Middle East indicated how strong the resistance to this new conceptualization of what it meant to be Korean was.

Korea had seen such radical and rapid changes since the late 19th century that its future in 2019 was not clear. Few people, if any, in 1945 or 1953 could have predicted the strange, eccentric path of North Korea’s evolution. It is not clear that anyone in the 1950s had foreseen that South Korea would in sixty years become one of the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced societies. And it would have surprised almost everyone in the 1980s that Seoul would be a global centre of popular culture thirty years later. Therefore, it would be foolhardy to predict its future course. Yet Koreans care deeply about their history. Their long tradition of historical writing, the special role given to historians in the past, and the enormous popularity of historical novels, movies, and TV dramas attest to this. So whatever changes take place in Korea, it is likely the Korean people will remain very much aware of their distinctive identity and the traditions associated with it.