China expert skeptical about German model for Korean unification
2014/05/14 13:48
BEIJING, May 14 (Yonhap) -- The swift reunification that Germany experienced in 1990 is a "completely untenable" scenario for a Korean reunification because there is "scant possibility" that the North Korean regime will suddenly collapse, a Chinese foreign policy expert said Wednesday.
There is still a remote possibility for a reunification of South Korea and North Korea, which are still technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War was ended with a ceasefire. North Korea, despite its economic backwardness and international sanctions, has shown no signs of abandoning its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The so-called German model is often cited as a best-case scenario, because of its bloodless integration in spite of huge costs, for South Korea's reunification policy. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, during her visit to Germany in March, said Germany is a model for Korea to follow.
However, Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, in an interview with the state-run Global Times newspaper, voiced skepticism about Park's idea of following the German model.
"German reunification was brought up with the intact West absorbing the faltering East through a spectrum of economic and political means including humanitarian aid," said Yang, who had served as director of Korean Peninsula affairs at China's foreign ministry.
"This represents a rare and special case in the post-World War II era and is not duplicable," Yang said. "Therefore, Park's policy to draw on the experience of the German model is completely untenable because there is scant possibility that Pyongyang will collapse."
Yang said the North Korean regime has lasted despite decades of predictions of its demise.
"During the past 20 years the theory of a North Korean collapse has been lingering, but the world's last frontier of the Cold War is taking on some positive signs of development," Yang said.
"Any policy formulated or organization established on account of such an assumption that the North is no more than a passive and pathological state dragged by a defunct economy is a mistake by the Blue House (the South Korean presidential office)," Yang said.
South Korea's government has estimated that a reunification with North Korea would cost more than US$1 trillion.
(END)