Last week, the world witnessed a first tangible step toward a peaceful, prosperous Korean peninsula.<\/p>\n
On\u00a0April 27, 2018<\/a>, Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to step foot in South Korea \u2013 where he was welcomed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in.<\/p>\n A few days later, the South Korean government reported that Kim had promised to\u00a0give up his nuclear arsenal under certain conditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n While some viewed the summit with skepticism and issued reminders about Kim\u2019s villainous past, others began talking of a unified Korea \u2013 a reasonable reaction considering that the leaders signed a document called the\u00a0Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity, and Unification of the Korean Peninsula<\/a>.<\/p>\n The intentions of these two leaders is key. For while Donald Trump and Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin may tweet and hold meetings, it is the nearly 80 million Koreans who will determine the future of how they will share their peninsula.<\/p>\n As scholars who study\u00a0Japan<\/a>,\u00a0Korea,<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0East Asia <\/a>\u00a0\u2013 we know that the \u201cCold War\u201d has always been \u201chot\u201d in Asia. That\u2019s why we suggest the focus now should be on forging new ties with North Korea. The question of how South Korea and North Korea will merge can be left for the future.<\/p>\n To understand why, it\u2019s helpful to remember why Korea was split into two countries in the first place.<\/p>\n Creating two Koreas<\/strong><\/p>\n In August 1945, in the basement of the State Department in Washington, D.C.,\u00a0two American army officers traced a line<\/a>\u00a0across a National Geographic map and divided the Korean peninsula \u2013 at the time colonized by Japan \u2013 at the 38th parallel.<\/p>\n This division was part of an Allied vision of Japan\u2019s impending defeat.<\/p>\n Many \u2013 especially the Russians \u2013 had anticipated that Japan would be divided like Germany.<\/p>\n After all, it was Japan, not occupied Korea, that was the enemy combatant.\u00a0Yet the Soviets acquiesced<\/a>\u00a0to the American idea.<\/p>\n Ideological camps among Koreans that had taken root under Japanese oppression challenged one another for expression in the following months. Eventually, the communists gained leadership in the north and their challengers in the south.<\/p>\n Five years later, the\u00a0Korean War erupted<\/a>\u00a0to claim the lives of one in eight Koreans. Tens of thousands of international participants would also die in what history\u00a0books<\/a>\u00a0flatly name the first major conflict of the Cold War.<\/p>\n The 1953 armistice ending the fighting in Korea more or less followed the 1945 line. Under this agreement, Koreans who had collaborated, resisted, or simply endured Japanese rule prior to the Korean War (1950-1953) now found themselves assigned entirely new identities: \u201cNorth Korean\u201d and \u201cSouth Korean.\u201d The meaning of these names has diverged and morphed into new realities on both sides since then.<\/p>\n The view from South Korea<\/strong><\/p>\n In South Korea, people often refer to the Korean War as yugio \u2014 literally 6.25 \u2013 referring to June 25, 1950, when the grandfather of today\u2019s North Korean leader ordered his troops to cross the border and attack the South. This\u00a0state-sanctioned narrative<\/a>\u00a0reinforces an antagonistic relationship. The North is framed as the aggressor, the South as an innocent victim, and the U.S. and the West as the savior of South Korea. Not unimportantly, North Koreans call the same history, \u201cThe Fatherland Liberation War.\u201d<\/p>\n While the\u00a02015 Asan Report<\/a>\u00a0finds that more than 80 percent of South Koreans \u201cdutifully\u201d answer that Korea should be reunified, fewer than 20 percent support immediate reunification. Their sense of an ethnic bond is decreasing and reunification is mostly seen as an economic burden.<\/p>\n In 2010, former president Lee Myung-bak proposed a \u201creunification tax\u201d to support the costs of reunification, whenever it came. The tax proposal received little support from the public or among politicians, especially after the\u00a0North\u2019s attack on a South Korean warship Cheonan<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0shelling of South\u2019s Yeonpyeong Island<\/a>\u00a0later that year. Speaking in 2014, former president Park Geun-hye also tried to promote a positive image of reunification, calling it a\u00a0\u201cjackpot\u201d (daebak)<\/a>.<\/p>\n She claimed that reunification \u2013 a combination of North Korean labor and South Korean technological advancements \u2013 would create jobs and strengthen the Korean economy.<\/p>\n Despite the government\u2019s effort to reposition the reunification issue,\u00a0public opinion data<\/a>\u00a0show that South Korean youth are only increasing their detachment from North Korea.<\/p>\n An easier path<\/strong><\/p>\n So if an older generation\u2019s understanding of reunification is a hard sell, what is the path forward?<\/p>\n South Korea could instead seek a\u00a0peaceful coexistence<\/a>\u00a0of two Koreas with free trade, free exchange of people, and no military threats. Perhaps public support for reunification may re-emerge and strengthen, as ties are strengthened through increased exchanges at the civil level and greater economic independence in the North, thereby lowering the \u201ccosts of reunification.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the main reasons there has not yet been a resolution to the \u201cNorth Korea problem\u201d has been persistent, divergent dreams of reunification. For the U.S. and South Korea,\u00a0a reunified Korea would be a liberal, capitalist democracy<\/a>. For North Korea, China, and Russia, a reunified Korea would not be a close ally with the United States, and certainly would not host U.S. troops.<\/p>\n Over the last 30 years, the benefits of a divided Korea have only increased for those outside the peninsula. Initially, North Korea served as an important \u201cbuffer state<\/a>\u201d between communist China and Russia to the north and the democratic and capitalist countries of South Korea, Japan \u2013 and their ally the United States. Even after the Cold War ended, ideological differences among these important geopolitical players has continued, reinforcing the benefits of North Korea\u2019s liminal status.<\/p>\n