North Korea Holding Back Mongolia Growth?

Interview of Park Se Il of the Hansun Foundation

The potential of relatively undeveloped places like Dongbei in China, Siberia, Mongolia and the Russian Maritime Province is extremely high, but North Korea’s existence is an obstacle to their development.


Delivering his lecture, ‘Issues for Reunification and Advancement in the New Year’, at the 107th Morning Consensus Forum, Park declared, “If we are going to bring about the successful reunification of the Korean Peninsula, first there needs to open up a new era of long-term growth in Northeast Asia.”

Park continued, “The stability in Northeast Asia which would be brought about by the unification of the Korean Peninsula would be welcomed by Dongbei, Siberia, Mongolia, the Maritime Province and more. In these circumstances it goes without saying that South Korea has to be at the forefront of unification efforts.”

However, Park criticized the South Korean government and citizens for being insufficiently ready for unification, saying, “The preparations for eventual unification of both our government and the people are lacking. Everybody is stuck in this Cold War mentality of division and maintaining the status quo. Nobody is proactively trying to come up with policies that will bring about unification.”

Young people’s understanding of unification is not good enough, and politicians only use the issue for political gain. This is inviting a situation whereby the history of the Korean Peninsula will again be sacrificed by the four major powers (USA, China, Russia and Japan). That would bog us down in an entirely new state of division,” Park stressed.

“Japanese experts have already cast doubt on South Korea’s ability to control the current crisis situation in Northeast Asia caused by North Korean weapons of mass destruction. They think that China is best placed to deal adequately with North Korea’s WMDs and nuclear weapons, so we need to start getting our policies in order and building up people’s awareness.”

Therefore, Park called for a strengthening of Korea’s diplomatic capacity for unification, the persuasion of the four powers and a movement to reinforce citizens’ awareness of the unification issue to break down the current situation.

Moreover, Park asserted that South Korea needs to try to ensure the North Korean people lean towards South Korea, rather than China, if and when the collapse of the regime comes.

Source : Daily NK

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