Overhead series: If North and South Korea are reunified, a monster on the Korean Peninsula is born!

On the geopolitical map of East Asia, the issue of the Korean Peninsula has always attracted the attention of the international community, and although the two countries on the island share the same clan and race, they have gone completely opposite paths because of the game between the major powers.

What will happen if North and South Korea complete reunification? Historically, the Korean Peninsula is located in the northwest of the Pacific Ocean, between China, Russia and Japan, and is one of the earliest regions to enter human civilization.

Historically, almost all wars between China and Japan have been related to the Korean Peninsula. Since the Han Dynasty, Korea has been under the influence of the Chinese Dynasty, accepting China's political, economic, scientific, technological, cultural and cultural relics and cultural relics system, forming mutual connections and interactions between East Asian countries, and jointly creating East Asian regional civilization.

However, since the beginning of modern times, the situation facing the Korean Peninsula has become more complicated than before, and a situation has emerged in which Japan, Russia, the United States, and other countries are vying for hegemony, and various forces are converging and intertwining here. In February 1876, Japan signed the Treaty of Ganghwa Island with Korea by force. North Korea was forced to open the ports of Busan, Wonsan, and Incheon, and obtain extraterritoriality and duty-free trade privileges.

After the Crimean War in the 60s of the 19th century, Russia also decided to shift its strategic focus to the East and began the "Eastern Strategy", focusing on Northeast China and North Korea. It was not until the 80s of the 19th century that a clear trend of thought emerged in Russia, preaching that it was Russia's "historical mission" to merge the East into the Russian Empire and to bring it together. It was precisely because of the effectiveness of this strategy that Russia, the predecessor of the Soviet Union, intervened in the division of the Korean Peninsula at an early stage.

In 1910, under the game of many forces, Japan easily annexed the entire Korean Peninsula from the weak Qing government, turning it into a colony. Of course, Japan's aggressive behavior did not rely entirely on its own strength, but was also tacitly approved by the United States, Europe, and other powers.

Japan's colonial rule lasted until the end of World War II, and when Japan was formally defeated and surrendered in August 1945, the people of the Korean Peninsula thought that they would have the dawn of independence. However, an order from the American, General MacArthur, shattered that hope.

This was a military order on the surrender of Japan, and the document was accompanied by the decision of the "38th parallel," in which the Americans, without communicating with Britain, France, and China, privately reached an agreement with the Soviet Union to jointly manage the Korean Peninsula with the 38th parallel as the boundary until its post-war economic recovery.

On the surface, the Soviet Union did agree, but because of the proximity of the Pacific theater, the Soviet Union's layout was significantly earlier than that of the United States. Not only did the Soviet army occupy the north, but it also personally summoned a number of Korean political forces in exile to return to China one after another, and arranged for Chistyakov, commander of the Soviet Union's First Far Eastern Front in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, to take the lead in completing the political reform in the north.

Then, in September 1950, the U.S. "United Nations Army" carried out a landing operation from Incheon, leaving the North Korean People's Army in a predicament of being exposed to the enemy, and had no choice but to withdraw backwards. At the beginning, the U.S. military made extremely smooth progress, spreading rapidly across the peninsula like a violent wind, forcing the North Korean army to retreat all the way to the banks of the Yalu River, and with the rout of the war in the north, North Korea turned to China for help and launched the "Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea" campaign.

After three years of warfare, the development situation between the DPRK and the ROK has become more and more stable, and for several decades, with the economic and political support of the United States and its allies, the ROK has been garrisoned by the US military to defend national defense and security.

In contrast, North Korea, which was once under the protection of the former Soviet Union, once surpassed South Korea in economic development, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country's conservative economic system and closed political atmosphere have always made the country a layer of "foggy and flowers" to see.

Obviously, with the merger of the two countries, South Korea has more economic advantages, coupled with North Korea's strong demographic dividend and nuclear weapons strength, the advantages of reunification definitely outweigh the disadvantages, and a comprehensive political, economic, and industrial power will emerge in the East Asian political circle.

In terms of land area, it will reach 225,000 square kilometers. North Korea currently has a territory of about 125,000 square kilometers, and South Korea has a territory of about 100,000 square kilometers. The reunification of the national territory will significantly increase the country's resource reserves and development potential.

The population has increased exponentially, alleviating the contradiction in the birth rate of South Korea's population and greatly improving the population and labor force. In recent years, South Korea has one of the lowest births in the world, and if the two countries merge, the total population will reach 75 million, and the reproduction rate will help increase the reproduction rate, and it is expected to exceed 100 million in the short term.

As the population and territory increase, the pressure on education, employment, health care and social security in this new country will greatly increase, which will not only stimulate North Korea's development, but also provide more economic opportunities for the country.

In terms of national defense and security, the country will have a huge army of more than 2 million active-duty soldiers. South Korea's modern military strength, which once relied on the military protection of the United States, has also greatly fed its strength with advanced military equipment. The list of weapons includes nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and more than 700 third-and-a-half- or fourth-generation fighter jets.

The new country will directly continue South Korea's strong industrial manufacturing capabilities, including the world's second-largest shipbuilding industry, the world's third-largest automobile industry, the world's top 10 arms industry, the world's first semiconductor industry, and the world's top 10 petrochemical industry.

South Korea's international consortiums, such as Samsung, Lotte, and LG, supported by the Americans, will become a solid "money bag" for the new country, allowing the newly unified country to complement each other's advantages in economic, military, industrial, and natural resources to form a stronger national strength.

However, how to discuss the merger of the two countries and what kind of social system to choose are the most critical questions to ask. Kim Ye-jin, a researcher at the Institute of Research under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suggested in 2015 that the two Koreas could consider reunifying the peninsula through "one country, two systems," in which two systems are maintained within one country.

This line of thinking was mentioned as early as 1972 in Kim Il Sung's "Three Principles for the Reunification of the Motherland," which shows that the DPRK has been thinking about this aspect for a long time. Resolving the issue of the reunification of the Korean peninsula through peaceful means remains the most ideal option. In general, the reunification of North and South Korea will require overcoming many problems, but if the two countries can work together to solve them, the prospects for development will be very bright.

But for China, the only neighbor on the periphery, neither socialism nor capitalism is necessarily a good thing. The 1,420-kilometer border has completely deprived the mainland of the security buffer zone between China and the United States, and our martyrs once exchanged decades of peace for us with the sacrificial spirit and strong combat effectiveness of "fighting with one punch, lest a hundred blows come", all of which will come to naught with the establishment of this new unified country.

Resources:

Phoenix Satellite TV's "Big News and Big History" column/"2024 The Resurgence of the Korean Peninsula" 2024-01-21

"North Korea-Korean History Research 14 Series", co-published by the Chinese Society for the Study of Korean History, the Center for Korean Studies, Fudan University, and the Institute of Korean and Korean History, Yanbian University, 2013-08, 1st edition

"North Korea-Korea History Research 15 Series" / China Korean History Research Association, Department of History, Peking University, and Institute of Korean History, Yanbian University, 2014-09 1st edition

Modern History of the Korean Peninsula / by Bruce Cummins / Left Bank Press / 2022-06