Captain Sukjoon Yoon believes South Korea should use its economic prosperity to its advantage by bringing a future unified Korea up to the South’s standards. That promise of affluence is important to prevent North Korea from remaining impoverished and under China’s thumb. “The problem again is China. They will not allow South Korea to buy North Korea. This is because China wants to dominate the North Korea market—indeed, they already dominate it—but they want it to stay that way.” Beijing certainly would be wary of a unified Korea that keeps the U.S. alliance and American forces stationed nearby. Moreover, China is certainly looking at the vast unexploited resources in North Korea, as well as the fact North Korea’s market and cheap labor have yet to be tapped by international trade and finance.

In fact, Captain Sukjoon Yoon is upset that South Korea is not working together more with Japan in order to “keep China off the Korean peninsula,” and out of any future unification. He thinks that while the history of Imperial Japan’s occupation of Korea is a problem, tensions with Japan are often played up by the South Korean left in order to benefit the progressives in South Korean elections. He sees strategic cooperation with America and Japan as two keys to ensuring an eventual full reunification. That cooperation includes intelligence sharing and also ensuring that, in the event of a war or North Korean collapse, American forces do not cross the demilitarized zone. That is crucial because Captain Sukjoon Yoon has talked to many Chinese military scholars and is convinced that if U.S. troops crossed the border, Beijing would have no choice but to react by sending in their own forces—a disastrous outcome for peace and unification.

Dr. Min Gyo Koo also is concerned with who would dictate the terms of any unification. He confirmed that unification is a higher priority than denuclearization for most South Koreans. However, his concern is not about North Korea’s nuclear weapons, but rather about how to eventually achieve unification and what it would cost. He says while President Moon Jae-in is hyping the economic possibilities of inter-Korean trade, many South Koreans are skeptical and are worried about having to pay more in taxes since North Korea is so poor.

However, if Pyongyang ever did open up and sanctions were removed, that would mean North Korea could develop on its own and would not be as behind when unification happens. As a result, South Korea would not have to spend as much money modernizing its neighbor. Dr. Min Gyo Koo illustrated this with the example of planting trees in North Korea. “I definitely prefer economic cooperation through Kaesong. This is necessary because one government official told me, ‘we have to just plant trees in North Korea while the North Korean authorities control the North Korean people.’ Meaning that it will be way more expensive to plant trees in North Korea in the future. You will have to pay their salaries in the future, but the labor is free right now. So use the free labor while you can, and make the economic infrastructure available under North Korean control. Otherwise, if North Korea is being capitalized suddenly, the labor costs will increase a lot, which means more economic burden for the international community, including South Korea. So, ideally, North Korea will do their own homework while they maintain their power against its own people and build a modern economy. Of course, you know, they will have to survive this misery for a while. But, that’s what we did during the Saemaeul Undong (New Korea Movement)—the labor was free, and our mountains were bare right after the Korean War. And then South Korean President Park Chung-hee planted the trees using almost free labor in the 1960s and 1970s. So the nuclear issue aside, there are a lot of things we can do before Western capital and investments enter North Korea; because North Korea’s infrastructure is just completely disastrous. If you want to develop and rebuild North Korean infrastructure from a capitalist perspective, the cost will be too much. But, under the UN sanctions, it is impossible.”

Ultimately, many Deterers want unification, but it must be on Seoul’s terms. They don’t want to be dominated by Pyongyang or Beijing. That, in turn, means maintaining a strong military but also possibly opening up trade with North Korea. Such an exchange will be necessary since they are also concerned with the cost—after all, German reunification cost two trillion euros. As Dr. Min Gyo Koo puts it, “The top priority is not denuclearization, it is reunification. As long as we can reunify, maybe in loose terms like a federal system—one country two different systems, under the title of Korea—North Korea will be run by their elites who have nuclear weapons. That is fine because it is two different systems but one country, so you are not using nuclear weapons against your own people.”

Editor’s note: John Dale Grover is a Korean Studies fellow at the Center for the National Interest. He visited Seoul for a week in early November 2019 to interview nine experts in South Korea for this project. This is the third piece in a five-article series, “How South Korea’s Politics and Military Impacts Strategic Stability with North Korea.” This series examines the two South Korean views—Engagement First vs. Deterrence First—over how to best interact with North Korea. The first piece introduces the problem of conflict escalation and stability in the context of North and South Korea’s militaries. The second piece looks at the Engagers’ point of view, and the third piece at the Deterers. The fourth piece sees where both groups agree and disagree, and the fifth piece concludes with how each side can help avoid a Second Korean War. Support for the reporting of this article was provided by a fellowship from Atomic Reporters together with the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and funding from the Carnegie Corporation, New York. The quotations in this article have been edited for length and clarity.

Image: Reuters