ABSTRACT
Sangkeun Lee and Chung-in Moon discuss South Korea’s unification policy in Chapter 11. They claim that the concept of Korean unification is not uniform. There are several different forms of national unification including federation (yeonbang), which has been proposed by North Korea, and union (nambuk yeonhap), which has been proposed by South Korea. Given the protracted social, political, and economic heterogeneity of North and South Korea, it will be very difficult to materialize unification under one state. Thus, while recognizing that the ultimate form of national unification should be a single unified nation-state, South Korea has been proposing a step-by-step approach to the goal through the transitional union of the North and South Korean states. Unification policy in South Korea has varied from unification by force to unification by absorption and by consensus. Lee and Moon argue that the best-case scenario is unification by consensus but conclude that several challenges lie ahead in pursuing it, including domestic polarization in South Korea, North Korean hesitance, and big powers’ reluctance to endorse an incremental unification by consensus.
