From compatriots to mortal enemies, why are North and South Korea always-for-tat?

On August 15, 1948, 73-year-old Syngman Rhee stood on the high platform of the Central Hall in Seoul and proudly announced the establishment of the Republic of Korea. Holding the thigh of the United States, he finally became the founding president of South Korea.

But at this time, he could never have imagined that twelve years later, he would also be ousted here.

Not to be outdone, 71 days later, Kim Il Sung in the north proclaimed the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Korea in Pyongyang.

In this way, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two halves of similar size at 38 degrees north latitude, and the peoples of the same origin began to separate themselves for more than 70 years. So, why are South Korea and North Korea always going toe-to-toe? And how did they face each other?

North and South Korea,-for-tat for decades

According to the archives of the US military government in South Korea, on the day Kim Il Sung announced the establishment of the Pyongyang regime, the South Korean side cut off all postal communications between the two places, and even the letters of the people had to be transmitted and sent through the Japanese side.

However, this stalemate of cold confrontation did not last long.

On June 25, 1950, with the acquiescence of the Soviet side, Kim Il Sung issued an offensive order to the Korean People's Army with the unifying determination to "touch the southern land with a bayonet."

The Korean War officially broke out, tensions escalated rapidly, and the two camps of the United States and the Soviet Union, the big brothers behind South Korea and North Korea, launched a military contest on the Korean Peninsula. And in addition to the real battle between the two sides, they are also racking their brains in psychological warfare.

For example, the United States used bombers to drop a large number of leaflets to persuade them to surrender, which either read such tempting words as "abandon darkness and turn to light, and share peace," or printed the favorable material conditions of the "United Nations Forces," or depicted all kinds of preferential treatment and benefits that might be obtained after surrendering.

In the face of the sugar-coated shells of the US military, the DPRK is not a vegetarian, and although it does not have absolute air supremacy, it has played the "pathos card" and used woodblock prints to depict the scene of "the massacre of innocent children by the US military", which was secretly posted in South Korea's large and small cities and villages through underground organizations.

By the end of the Korean War in 1953, the population of the entire Korean Peninsula had decreased by 12.3 per cent compared to 1945, and countless families had lost their sons or husbands. National hatred and family hatred are intertwined, accumulating sufficient energy for the subsequent confrontation between the two Koreas.

In the early post-war period, North Korea, which was backed by China and the Soviet Union, launched a vigorous "Maxima Movement", and soon ushered in a bright moment, achieving rapid economic development. Chung Ok Soon, a female worker at a textile mill in Pyongyang, set a world record for operating 128 looms at the same time; The "main iron" developed by Kim Il Sung University is claimed to have better performance than Japanese steel;

In order to demonstrate the superiority of its main body, the DPRK has also erected 10 100-kilowatt radio towers in Kaesong to broadcast news that "Pyongyang citizens get free Volga cars" to the south 12 hours a day.

In contrast, South Korea in the sixties was much inferior.

At that time, South Korea's economy was among the lowest in the world, and in order to have enough to eat, many Korean women had to become comfort women, providing services to American GIs in exchange for food; Their husbands and brothers went to the U.S. military base to pick up unwanted leftovers, and in the disdainful eyes of American soldiers, they mixed these leftovers and cooked them, which is the historical origin of the current Korean delicacy "army pot......

What is even more ironic is that the South Korean government also glorified these US comfort women as "patriots" who have made special contributions to the country.

At the same time, North Korea's "leaflet war" did not stop, according to the data of South Korea's central intelligence agents in 1975, at that time, South Korea intercepted about 3.7 tons of northern leaflets every month, and the content mostly focused on housing distribution and medical security and other pain points in the lives of South Koreans at that time.

More radically, in 1968, North Korea also sent a 31-member death squad to secretly infiltrate South Korea in an attempt to assassinate then-South Korean President Park Chung-hee, but it almost succeeded.

But there must be a mistake in Baimi, they never thought that the reason for their exposure was because of their shoes, and the black shoes they wore were completely different from the leather shoes of the army stationed in Seoul, which made the patrol officers patrolling nearby feel that something was wrong.

A fierce exchange of fire ensued between the two sides at a distance of 100 meters from the Blue House, and the North Korean death squads were outnumbered and failed. Although it failed, it showed the great confidence of the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in his own strength at that time.

In the 70s, South Korea also "branched", created the miracle of the Han River, and achieved economic take-off.

South Korea, which was suddenly full of self-confidence, also began its own public opinion propaganda war.

For example, the first "Hyundai Motor" advertising brochures were launched in hot air balloons in the direction of North Korea, and these color albums printed on fine coated paper deliberately showed imported steaks piled up on the shelves of South Korean supermarkets and mink coats in department stores.

And the North Korean side is not to be outdone, and it is ruthless again.

In 1983, taking advantage of the opportunity of a high-level friendly visit to Myanmar, North Korean agents were dispatched to orchestrate a mega explosion in Aung San, Myanmar, killing Kim Jae-ik, the economic adviser to the then South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan, and many other senior South Korean officials.

South Korea's high-level leaders were almost served in a pot, which shocked South Korea into a cold sweat, and the relationship between the two sides was completely stiffened.

It was not until 1998, after Kim Tae-jung became president of South Korea, that inter-Korean relations improved after he implemented the "sunshine policy" to promote peace on the peninsula, and with 5,000 South Korean tourists embarking on a cruise ship to North Korea, the two Koreas finally stopped tearing their faces.

However, under the trend of the century of peace and development, the undercurrents behind the two sides have never stopped......

In the new century, there has been a new confrontation between the two sides

In the 21 st century, as the world has entered a new rhythm of peace and development, the relations between the two Koreas have eased considerably.

In June 2000, the DPRK and the ROK held their first historic summit meeting, during which ROK President Kim Tae-chung and DPRK leader Kim Chong-il shook hands amicably, and the two sides signed the "North-South Joint Declaration" under the lens of the media.

After decades of estrangement, North and South Korea finally see a friendly future in which they can put aside their old suspicions.....

In June 2004, with the completion of the first phase of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the result of cooperation between the two Koreas, the international community had high expectations for the peaceful reunification of the two Koreas......

In 2006, North Korea became the world's ninth nuclear power with a bang. In the face of North Korea's violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United Nations Security Council imposed severe economic sanctions on it, and South Korea was even more nervous and unable to sleep.

Later, with the accession of President Lee Myung-bak, who was "tough on South Korea," the previous "sunshine policy" was completely repudiated, and a tense and hostile atmosphere once again enveloped the entire Korean Peninsula.

At Lee Myung-bak's suggestion, South Korea took the lead in launching a so-called "unrestricted information war," increasing the number of leaflets sent to North Korea from an average of 500,000 to 2 million a year, and the leaflets contained content that vilified North Korea.

To make matters worse, in 2009, a group of "North Korean defectors" used PS technology to graft Kim Jong-il's head onto the body of a bodybuilder, triggering outrage from the North Korean side. Kim Jong Il personally ordered that North Korean artillery could use howitzers for cross-border fire.

In response to South Korea's new propaganda war, North Korea developed an electronic countermeasure weapon that could interfere with South Korea's balloon positioning system in 2014 under the personal supervision of Kim Jong-un, the third-generation leader of North Korea.

In 2016, South Korean folk groups packed BTS albums in waterproof plastic bags and transported the items to North Korea using the winter monsoon.

During the THAAD crisis the following year, North Korea sent South Korea a chart on "radiation from U.S. military bases causing cancer," and thoughtfully used a Geiger counter pattern and leukemia incidence rate to strengthen its persuasiveness.

This has caused panic among many South Korean people.

A South Korean uncle named Kim Joo-yong revealed to the media:

"Although the country in the north always threatens us, sometimes it does something with a conscience, and if it weren't for those leaflets, I wouldn't have known that the Americans had done so many bad things in South Korea, and we Koreans are really pitiful."

Behind the "leaflet confrontation" is not simply South Korea's ideological hostility, but also sophisticated economic calculations:

According to the Korea Institute for Unification:

In 2017, for every $1 South Korean leaflet, North Korea spent $12 to intercept it.

This high economic cost is undoubtedly a huge burden for North Korea, which has a perennially weak economy and a per capita GDP of less than $1,000. You know, just last year, Kim Jong-un himself admitted that "North Korea's rationing system has collapsed."

According to UNICEF, 6 million people in North Korea are suffering from hunger.

Historically, Germany was divided by the Cold War, Germany had achieved German reunification before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vietnam ended its division in 1975, and the two Koreas are still in a tense confrontation at the 38th parallel.

Are two countries with the same roots and the same origin really going to be hostile forever?

Looking at the wild chrysanthemum on the full moon platform of Kaesong, it blooms year after year over the military demarcation line, just like the people of the two Koreas, the blood instinct of the same nation, is using a covert way to eliminate the political and military division between the two countries......

An undercurrent of peace is quietly surging

In the Hunchun Free Trade Zone on the border between China and North Korea, the economic exchanges between South Korea and North Korea converge here, condensing into a friendly river of wealth. Here, South Korean fashion cosmetics are settled in Chinese labels and yuan, and transferred to North Korea.

According to the statistics of the relevant departments in Northeast China, in 2023, the FTZ achieved an economic achievement of 120 million US dollars in entrepot trade to the DPRK, as Adam Smith said: "Trade is a win-win".

South Korea receives dollar exchange for economic exchanges, and North Korean women receive additional information in a silent way through Korean labels on goods in the midst of an overwhelming official anti-South Korean propaganda.

In North Korea's warehouse in the Rason Special Zone, Samsung phones have been repackaged as "Pyongyang" smart devices, but the reserved "Blue Life and Death Love" has not been deleted, which may be one of the few entertainment for the North Korean people, who are very poor in cultural life.

The scale of this kind of trade "with the help of China's re-exports" has reached 80% of the economic exchanges during the period of inter-Korean friendship, forming a unique gray economic ecology of the peninsula.

Affected by the non-governmental economy and trade between the two Koreas, the non-governmental ecology of the DPRK has undergone tremendous changes. Different from the stereotypical image that the outside world usually imagines that "the people are serious and praise the leader in three sentences", the report of the Korean National Intelligence Agency last year showed that:

Thirty percent of high school students in Pyongyang can accurately name the members of the South Korean IVE group.

South Korean pop culture is hugely popular in North Korea, albeit secretly. While teenagers living in Pyongyang can buy Korean game skins with virtual currency, and housewives in Busan purchase matsutake mushrooms from North Korea through Chinese e-commerce platforms, these $1.2 billion inter-Korean people-to-people deals are building a material community that transcends the hostile ideologies of the two countries.

With today's 8.7 percent annual growth rate of people-to-people exchanges, perhaps one day in the future, the two countries will "survive the calamity and the Polish brothers, meet each other with a smile and enmity," and usher in a truly peaceful reunification.

References in this issue:

[1] Pei Jae-yun. A study of internal and external factors influencing South Korea's policy toward North Korea

[2] Cheng Xiaoyong. History and Reality: The Background and Origins of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

[3] Liu Xifu, Ma Yunpeng. Another Perspective on the Lee Myung-bak Administration's North Korea Policy: An Analysis Based on the Balance of Power Nuclear Deterrence

[4] Zhang Lifu. Korean nationalism and the reunification of the Korean Peninsula