There is a single moment from history that should animate everything we currently think about North Korea.
In October 1973, First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Todor Zhivkov, had a conversation with then-North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung. South Korea’s economic boom was pulling into top gear at the time, a Northern takeover of the South looked increasingly unlikely, and competition for the minds of everyday Koreans was being lost to the promises of capitalism.
With the battle for reunification looking more difficult, Kim Il-sung was entertaining a new strategy, and new terminology. Hearing it repeat throughout their conversation, Zhivkov asked his comrade “more specifically” just what he meant by “confederation”.
The Bulgarian was thrown off – how could two countries with such different political systems ever merge together short of complete consolidation. And yet, recognising the rapidly changing landscape before them, and their new limitations, this was seen from North Korea as a slow burn toward, and backdoor into, their control and domination of South Korea.
At first it wouldn’t seem like much, little more than a goodwill gesture of sorts. Both countries would retain exactly what they had, agreeing to nothing more than the coordination of a single policy portfolio, something that people don’t tend to feel the impact of in their daily lives – Kim Il-sung had foreign policy in mind.
“Both countries will act independently” and yet from that small, innocuous moment, “South Korea will be done with”.
Successful experiments are generally repeated. So foreign policy would soon enough become agricultural policy (“[we] will want to establish such cooperative farms there too”), then labour, transportation, the economy, and so on. And even before this, the blending of portfolios would mean both countries eventually reducing the size of their militaries (only logical considering that each would now represent less of a security threat).
And with joint control over foreign policy, American troops in South Korea would soon be withdrawn also. In a nervous panic, South Korea could try to block all further integration, or even the singular implementation of risky strategies like these, but the decision would not be entirely theirs to make. They would be part of a political confederation, and so their accomplice would get to have a say also.
This is where it all gets interesting. If it were happening today, South Korea would have twice as many citizens needing supranational enfranchisement than North Korea would (based on current populations). But no country is ever going to enter such an agreement as a less-than-equal partner. So voting percentages would be shared 50-50 between the two Koreas.
As a plural, open democracy, the South Korean vote would be split, whereas the North Korean vote would be stable, consolidated, and unanimous. From here the slope becomes easier to see.
Think about the European Union, its steady – decades long – process of integration, and the prison-like situation that Britain now finds themselves in, desperate to leave (Brexit) and yet frozen by the thought of how painful it all might be.
Before the European Union there was the idea of a united Europe – integrated, jointly prosperous, and no longer at war. Slowly things became formal: there was the Council of Europe in 1949, the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and the European Economic Community (EEC), the Single European Act in 1987, the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, and Lisbon in 2007.
It started with six countries and the single policy hope of rebuilding the continent through economic integration. As it now sits there are 28 member states, 24 official languages, a population over 500,000,000, a combined GDP of $22 trillion, a joint customs union, common citizenship, freedom of movement, its own legislative bodies and a vast array of European law, its own court system, its own currency, and now future talk is of a European army, and a completely unified single country –a United States of Europe.
The European Union has always had its detractors, but it wasn’t until Britain voted to leave that people began to see the trap they had so happily walked into. After three years of difficult negotiation, and constant forecasts of pain and catastrophe, the divorce still hasn’t happened, and very likely might never.
If this is what can happen when the risks are purely economic, imagine how much worse things can get when those risks involve warfare, conflict and loss of life.
From inside a confederated peninsula, South Korea would find it incredibly difficult to untangle themselves. Just as all the talk now is of Scotland and Northern Ireland when it comes to Brexit, there would be the immediate – and likely – prospect of certain provinces either disagreeing with the decision to withdraw, or being so ensnared that they might be left partially behind.
But this doesn’t come close to what Kim Il-sung was trying to explain to Todor Zhivkov all those decades ago by “South Korea will be done with”. After years of not treating the North as an enemy, of ever-deeper fraternal bonding and ethno-nation building, and with American troops long since farewelled, a retaliatory invasion from the North would look less like a threat, and more like a choice.
They could draw arms and fight their brothers and sisters in a second Korean War – likely to be more bloody and devastating than the first – or allow for the confederation to continue, with each day a little more sovereignty and control chipped away. South Koreans – comfortable, wealthy, and now unaccustomed to hardship – might plausibly see the gentle slide into authoritarianism and foreign domination as the lesser evil here. In fact, Kim Il-sung was betting on it!
None of this matters of course without those first foolhardy steps into confederation – something that current South Korean President Moon Jae-in has promised to achieve before the end of his term in office.