We met Harish Anand a couple of days after reaching Seoul. Harish, 34, is from Kasaragod and he is an engineer working for GS Group, one of the prominent Korean conglomerates. Harish has been living in Korea for the past six years and has a reasonable grasp of the language. His office is in a Seoul neighbourhood called Insadong—famous for galleries of traditional goods and artefacts—located close to our hotel. Since the average Koreans were not so keen on talking about the inter-Korean summit, that, too, with two Indian journalists [most of them are willing to talk about any other subject, but not the peace process], we asked Harish to introduce us to some of his friends. To our utter surprise, some of them have not even heard of the summit. A few, however, were very well informed.
“I do not care much about tension in the Korean Peninsula,” said one of Harish’s colleagues, who chose not to be named. “But, I am sure there are many more like me. I do not think a single talk can lead to peace between South Korea and North Korea, it is more likely to be a good opportunity to give a good impression to other countries,” she said.
While we saw a large number of middle aged and the elderly Koreans eagerly looking forward to the summit, the young generation is largely indifferent. Among them, the emotional connect to the past is missing. As he steps into Panmunjom Peace Village in the Demilitarised Zone between the two Koreas to discuss peace with Kim Jong-un, President Moon has to think of ways of not convincing not just the North Korean despot about his peace plans, but also the youth of his country.
Many of them are sceptical that an eventual unification with North Korea or even a liberal immigration regime would result in a massive influx of cheap labour. Already, unemployment rate among young Koreans was 9.9 percent in 2017, according to official figures. It was the highest since the statistical agency began compiling the relevant data. Living costs are quite high. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Seoul is the sixth most expensive city in the world, even ahead of New York and Los Angeles.
The first time North and South Korea held peace talks since the end of the Korean War was in 1971. Although they agreed on basic principles of the reunification, the process soon collapsed as South Korean president Park Chung-hee saw it as a strategy to strengthen his authoritarian grip on the country, while Kim Il-sung looked at it as a tool to drive a wedge between the South and its principal patron, the United States.
In 1974, Park was attacked by North Korean agents at the National Theatre in Seoul, on the day the country celebrated its independence from Japan. Although the president survived, the first lady was killed in the attack. The same year, South Korean army patrols found a tunnel dug by the North under the DMZ, aimed at launching a surprise attack, aggravating the situation further. Another tunnel was found in 1975, a bigger one which could move 30,000 soldiers in an hour. Two more major tunnels were uncovered subsequently, but none after 1990. According to some South Korean sources, there could be as many as 84 undiscovered tunnels across the DMZ, some stretching even up to Seoul. The prominent tunnels are now major tourist spots, attracting lakhs of visitors, each year.
After two decades of unbridled hostility, in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the two Koreas once again came to the negotiating table and signed a peace agreement to kickstart a process toward ultimate reunification. In 1992, they signed the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But, North Korea later on refused to allow IAEA inspectors to monitor its nuclear installations and also opposed joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.
The first formal inter-Korean summit took place from June 13 to 15, 2000. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung travelled to Pyongyang to meet Kim Jong-il. The heads of states of the two Koreas were meeting for the first time since the division of the Korean peninsula. Although the two leaders agreed upon a roadmap to reunification through inter-Korean cooperation on humanitarian, economic, political, social and cultural issues, the arrival of George W. Bush as US president complicated matters. Bush named North Korea a member of his ‘axis of evil’ and the North responded with intensifying its nuclear and missile programmes.
Although Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, later it became clear that the summit was held by enticing Pyongyang with hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and other economic deals. Two members of Kim Dae-jung’s cabinet were indicted for the scandal and it created a huge wave of public opinion about such summits.
The second inter-Korean summit was also held in Pyongyang from October 2-4, 2007. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun crossed the border to meet Kim Jong-il. The summit came in the backdrop of the six-party peace talks also attended by the United States, China, Japan and Russia. Present President Moon, who was then chief of staff to President Roh, was among the key organisers of the summit. While the summit resulted in a peace agreement, it collapsed soon as North Korea started preparing for the leadership of Kim jong-un because of his father Kim Jong-il’s frail health, and also because of a controversy that erupted in South Korea about President’s Roh’s offer during the summit to redraw the Northern Limit Line, the sea border between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea. The South Korean conservatives alleged a sell out and blocked all further concessions.
The April 27 summit, therefore, comes up in the backdrop of a series of failures. Historically, peace initiatives in the Korean Peninsula have come when liberals are in power in South Korea. Both inter-Korean summits in the past happened under liberal presidents and the present one is being hosted by yet another liberal president. The cooperation of the conservatives, who are equally, if not more powerful in the South, is a prerequisite for any summit to succeed.
At Panmunjom, the single-point focus of Moon would be to secure denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, followed by a peace agreement to mark the end of the Korean war. For the North, the key is security guarantees to ensure the survival of the regime and a relaxation of sanctions in order to promote its economic revival. In a break from the past, North has announced a moratorium on nuclear tests and has not asked for the withdrawal of American troops (around 25,000 US troops are stationed in South Korea). For a start, it looks promising. Only a successful inter-Korean summit can lead to the proposed summit between King Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, which could take place either in late May or early June.
Yet, keeping in mind the vexing problems of the past, one can only hope for the best, while preparing for the worst, as Kim Jong-un is all set to become the first North Korean leader to cross into the south and shake hands with his estranged elder brother.