In the run-up to the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, some South Koreans have been grumbling that this may as well be the “Pyongyang Games.”
Since the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, announced on Jan. 1 that he was interested in sending a delegation to the Games, there has been a flurry of inter-Korean agreements.
Twenty-two North Korean athletes will participate in the Olympics, and they will arrive with some 230 cheerleaders in tow. The two Koreas are fielding a joint women’s ice hockey team. And at the opening ceremony on Friday, they will march under a single flag, the Korean Unification Flag.
The international news media has been buzzing about the new prospects for a secure peace on the Korean Peninsula, but not everyone in the South is happy about the welcome the North is receiving. And this time it’s not just the usual South Korean conservatives who are moaning.
The idea that people in the South belong with their Northern brethren isn’t universal, especially among the young. The exigencies of daily life — jobs, housing, income inequality — are far more pressing than uniting with what may as well be an alien country. Unification increasingly sounds like an abstract ideal, taught only in school and repeated ad nauseam by the political class.
President Moon Jae-in appears to be paying a heavy political price for the rapprochement. Engagement to foster peace is worth exploring. But pulling out all the stops to accommodate Pyongyang on the basis that the two Koreas are one “minjok” (nation) — as Mr. Moon seems to be suggesting — comes across as outdated and out of touch.
After all, we have seen this before.
The two Koreas sent a joint team to the 1991 World Table Tennis Championship, and the women won a gold medal against China. That same year, they signed an agreement on reconciliation and nonaggression, seen as a significant step toward unification. Most South Koreans over 40 remember the national euphoria over these events.
More hopeful years followed under the so-called Sunshine Policy of President Kim Dae-jung, the first progressive politician to take power since the adoption of a democratic Constitution in 1987, who held office from 1998 to 2003. The two Koreas marched together at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, flying the Korean Unification Flag. Cooperative economic ventures, limited to some border areas, were next.
Everything came to naught in late 2006 when Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test. And now North Korea seems closer than ever to becoming a real nuclear power (some say it already is).
No matter who shoulders the blame for the North’s nuclear status and the tensions that have arisen as a result, the fact remains that Pyongyang is a difficult regime to deal with, one that is quick to take offense and doesn’t hesitate to rain artillery fire on the South. Young South Koreans, who have little sense of connection to the North, tend to see only these current realities.
Enthusiasm for unification is waning. A report last year by the Korea Institute of National Unification, a state-funded think tank, revealed a big gap in how the young and the old approach unification (and North Korea by extension): Nearly 50 percent of respondents under 30 didn’t think being a single people required a single state, while only 20 percent thought unification was necessary. Among those 60 and older, the answers were the other way around, with almost 50 percent saying there should be one state for one nation.
And a study published by the institute on Jan. 30 showed that more than 60 percent of respondents in their 20s said “unification is not an immediate goal.” Across all age brackets, respondents greatly prioritized the economy over unification.
Mr. Moon’s government has appeared to be blind to this critical shift in popular sentiment, instead promoting the idea, to take a line from a presidential office Facebook post, that “We are one” with the North.
As Mr. Moon pushed the one-nation rhetoric, his approval ratings took a dive, falling 10 percentage points in January, which coincided with inter-Korean dialogue on the Olympics (some say his attempt to regulate the cryptocurrency trade, a hot topic in South Korea, is another reason for his decline in favorability).
His popularity has eroded even more among voters in their 20s — usually the more progressive segment of the population — dropping 14 percentage points between the second week of January and the beginning of this month.
Even as a clear majority of South Koreans seem supportive of North Korean participation in the Games, different polls indicate that people are divided about flying the Korean Unification Flag, with one survey putting the public opposition at nearly 50 percent.
To be clear, the Moon administration is playing nice with Kim Jong-un for strategic reasons. Yet the president’s government is doing a poor job persuading those who say it’s unfair to give North Koreans spots on the women’s ice hockey team at the expense of South Korean players who trained hard. Nor does the government appear to have a credible strategy for when Pyongyang acts out.
Moon Jae-in is in a tight spot. Reaching out to a thankless regime under the pretext of shared nationhood may contribute to an immediate reduction in tensions, but he is alienating a large segment of the South Korean electorate. The alternative — pursuing a hard line — may seem like common sense, but not when President Trump overtly threatens war against North Korea, thus putting the South in Pyongyang’s cross hairs.
Mr. Moon needs to do a better job explaining why it matters to court Pyongyang at this time. It’s for the safety and well-being of all Koreans, not because of the shared blood between the two countries.
Se-Woong Koo is the publisher of Korea Exposé.