Korean Unification: Inevitable Challenges

Since the conclusion of World War II, the Korean people and the international community have contemplated a unified peninsula, but a divided Korea remains one of the last visible vestiges of the Cold War. What will removing this specter entail? And with what should it be replaced?

Similar to the unification of East and West Germany, merging North and South Korea is likely the only means of achieving stability and lasting peace on the peninsula. However, after decades of a divided existence-with South Korea now thriving as a democracy and North Korea barely subsisting as a Stalinist dictatorship-this task will be monumental. What form of government would likely emerge, given the North Korean regime’s practice of completely controlling its population? How would its citizens, indoctrinated by decades of Juche ideology, be assimilated into a larger community of capitalists? What would become of North Korea’s military of 1.2 million? How would a reunified government exercise control over the North’s starving masses?

These questions are only some of the core issues addressed in Korean Unification: Inevitable Challenges. Jacques L. Fuqua Jr. argues that diplomatic, humanitarian, cultural, and military solutions must coincide to create peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula that could thus extend to elsewhere in Asia.