Six decades ago, three nations were partitioned: Germany, British India and Korea. Today, each has a different tale to tell.
On my first visit to South Korea, in 1992, I asked to visit the newly established Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU). Earlier this year, KINU celebrated its 20th anniversary. Two decades ago, Seoul chose to create this institution after watching with alarm the unplanned reunification of the two Germanys. Today, reunited Germany has come to dominate Europe once again. Korean unification remains a distant dream — for many, a nightmare. A divided Korean peninsula remains the last vestige of the Cold War.
The bizarre scenes of organised mourning and the even more bizarre stories of supernatural phenomena marking the death of “The Supreme Leader”, the “Dear Leader”, “Our Father” and “Generalissimo” Kim Jong-il demonstrate once again that Korean reunification is no longer really about political, administrative and economic re-integration of a divided nation. It is now about the cultural, social and emotional re-integration of two very different nations.
When I visited KINU in 1992, I met a group of young researchers who had been drafted from the best academic institutions in the United States and tasked to study the German reunification process to draw appropriate policy lessons for South Korea. When I revisited the institute in the mid-1990s, I was told that the most important conclusion of these studies was that the economic costs of reunification would be far too burdensome for the south.
Germany’s experience had scared the Koreans. The two Koreas, they concluded, would be better off “managing” their division rather than seeking reunification. In some ways, the south’s “sunshine policy” was a logical response: reach out to the north, help them prosper, but let them be.
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Initially, in the 1990s, many Germans in the west were cursing the laggards of the east for imposing a heavy burden of reunification. Was the east’s political liberation worth it?
All the same, Germany’s ability to bounce back and dominate Europe once again, as the region’s strongest economy, may encourage a new generation of Koreans to reconsider their view. Or will it?
Can people who have grown up under the constant gaze of an Orwellian and Goebbelsian regime easily adjust themselves to a country where an entire new generation has grown up in an open society and an open economy?
It may well take the lifespan of another new generation for the proposed “one state, two systems” model to work. North Korea does not appear like another East Germany from the visuals we have seen this past week.
The German people may have been divided by political ideology and military power during the Cold War, but the underlying sentiment of German oneness was powerful enough for the reunification to succeed within the span of just one decade. Born and brought up in East Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged as the most powerful German leader in a long time. The two Koreas appear to be nowhere near throwing up leaders capable of handling the trauma and trials of reunification. Each of the three tales of post-War partition has run a different course.
Consider the third country that was partitioned six decades ago. For at least an entire generation, many in India mourned the subcontinent’s partition. From secular pacifists who yearned for Hindu-Muslim unity to religious extremists who sought the dominance of one over the other, there were forces that did not come to terms with the partition.
Yet, today that sentiment is nowhere to be seen in India. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid tribute to Lahore’s Minar-e-Pakistan and buried his party’s “Akhand Bharat” theory, no Indian has sought reunification of the subcontinent. Indeed, the subcontinent’s second partition, the creation of Bangladesh, and the recent success story of Bangladesh’s economy and polity have further solidified the regional divide. A self-confident and resurgent Bangladesh is quite happy to be an independent country. It looks at both Pakistan and West Bengal with disdain, mocking their economic woes, while celebrating its own success.
Pakistan, on the other hand, appears to be degenerating into a North Korea-like self-imposed schizophrenia. Its economic downslide has been made worse by its political paranoia. Worried about religious extremism and sectarianism at home and living under the constant fear of a return to military rule, Pakistan’s elite are disinvesting in their home country. Rarely have I seen Pakistan’s self-assured, self-confident and highly westernised elite so much on the defensive as one finds them today. For two generations after the partition, middle-class Indians who had climbed the ladder of academic success and professional achievement would find themselves intimidated by the upper-class snobbery of the Pakistani elite — better fed, better dressed and better looking!
No longer. India’s quiet success and its gradual rise, in the face of huge developmental and security challenges, have made the difference. If Germany has regained its élan thanks to reunification, India has regained it despite its partition. Only Korea remains on the threshold of doubt and uncertainty.
The writer is director for geo-economics and strategy at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, and honorary senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi