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- Title
THE CHINA MODEL OF KOREAN REUNIFICATION.
- Authors
Conforti, Joseph M.
- Abstract
Like Germany's reunification, essentially the annexation of East Germany by West Germany, Korean reunification looms as most likely, ultimately and largely entailing South Korea's annexation of North Korea. The awesome cost borne by West Germany for reunification has been instructive to South Korea, particularly in recognition that the material and ideological gaps between North and South Korea are far greater than those which existed between East and West Germany. A possible solution to the negative implications of cataclysmic reunification may rest in gradual reunification of the Koreas, with an interim industrialization of North Korea by South Korea, based on the model of the economic development zones in southeastern China; hence, the "China Model." In such a scenario the investors in North Korea's gradual industrialization would be (primarily) the huge conglomerate South Korean corporations (chaebol) which seek cheaper labor pools abroad. Investment by such corporations, in cooperation with the South Korean government, and possibly supplemented by western and Japanese capital investment, would presumably raise levels of productivity and the standard of living in the economically and agriculturally ravished North. The North-South gaps would thus be gradually reduced as would the financial and other burdens South Korea would otherwise have to bear for cataclysmic reunification.
- Subjects
NORTH Korea; CHINA; KOREA; KOREAN reunification question (1945- ); ECONOMIC conditions in South Korea; INTERNATIONAL economic relations; ECONOMIC history
- Publication
East Asia: An International Quarterly, 1999, Vol 17, Issue 4, p54
- ISSN
1096-6838
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s12140-999-0017-9