By Paul Liem | March 3, 2025 | Originally published here by the Lee Yueng-hui Foundation*
In the years since Professor Lee Yueng-hui taught his course on contemporary Korean history at UC Berkeley, 1987, prospects for the peaceful reunification of Korea have gone through many ups and downs. Regretfully under the administrations of Presidents Joe Biden and Yoon Suk-yeol the foreign policies of the U.S. and the Republic of Korea (ROK) lurched to the far right, upending the hope of Professor Lee’s students that Korea with two differing social systems, socialist and capitalist, could thrive in a confederated republic in a state of peace. How did this come about and what is now the path towards the peaceful reunification of Korea?
Under President Biden the Democratic Party became the party of war. Billions of US dollars and sophisticated U.S. weapons were poured onto the battlefields of Ukraine; his administration provided military and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocidal destruction of the Gaza Strip; and it engineered multilateral military alliances in Asia to contain the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Ever ready to please, President Yoon ingratiated himself to the Biden administration by rushing to embrace the Japan-Korea-U.S. trilateral alliance by increasing the scale and frequency of war games; opening up ROK ports and skies to Japanese war ships, U.S. nuclear submarines and B-1b bombers; and providing weapons to Ukraine, by indirectly selling them to the U.S. In doing so he hitched his fate to a U.S. administration and Democratic Party widely identified by U.S. voters with neo-liberal policies that led to the deindustrialization of America, the decay of its infrastructure, extreme inequality of wealth, and to costly “forever wars.” Donald J Trump, pledging to “Make America Great Again,” and to end “forever wars” by making U.S. allies pay and fight their own wars, trounced the Democratic Party, winning both the electorate and the popular vote in the November 2024 elections.
The ROK today is without an elected president at a time when President Trump, in his second term, and with the backing of Republican majorities in the House and Senate, is upending the very liberal order that Biden sought to uphold and that Yoon apparently believed was immutable. Having bought into the Biden administration’s zeal for targeting unfriendly states as “authoritarian,” notably Russia, China, Iran and the DPRK, Yoon, a zealot himself, attacked his adversaries in the National Assembly as if they were authoritarian enemies of the state. He is now impeached and under prosecution for his ill-fated bid to declare martial law, while in the world outside his detention cell, U.S. patronage of allies is being replaced, everywhere, by “the art of the deal.”
Professor Lee taught his UC Berkeley students that peaceful reunification was contingent upon the end of rule by U.S. backed military dictatorships and the democratization of South Korean society. His teaching has withstood the test of time. In the tradition of Korea’s historic democracy movement, the majority of the population resoundingly support their constitution, democratic processes, and the impeachment of Yoon; and the majority has always favored peace over war with their brethren in the north. There is, nevertheless, a rising far right movement of Yoon supporters calling for a holy crusade against “communist” conspiracies in civil society, and for regime change in the north.
Democracy in society polarized by rising inequality of wealth, where working people cannot begin to see their way out of debt, has proven to be fragile. This is so in Korea, as in the U.S. and elsewhere. If martial law in Korean society is to be averted going forward, the pro-democracy movement must present a way forward for working people. Forty years ago, when the south Korean people toppled the Chun Du Hwan dictatorship, advocating for an equitable distribution of wealth was considered subversive. But today politicians, bankers as well as labor unions acknowledge that the prospect of incurring unsustainable household debt is a major factor contributing to Korea’s declining birth rate, and must be reversed.
Sovereignty in international affairs is also a matter to be addressed by a pro-democracy movement. The ROK economy, dominated by a handful of chaebols, is export driven. While the greater portion of the profit of trade accrues to the chaebol, loss of market share hits working people the hardest in terms of labor repression, extended working hours, job loss and increasing debt peonage. Therefore, as a matter of achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth in society, it is incumbent upon a pro-democracy movement to also advocate for a foreign policy that aims to diversify Korea’s trading partners, even if that may require developing economic relations with countries deemed undesirable by the U.S., principally the PRC.
Last but not least a pro-democracy movement must have a policy for peaceful reunification. Of a national budget of $510 billion proposed for 2025, $45.5 billion are set aside for military spending. Alternatively, if the ROK were to take responsibility for its own security by negotiating peace with the DPRK, it would not be burdened with the cost of its military alliance with the U.S., and neither would the U.S. be burdened with the costs it incurs. The ROK can maintain good relations with the U.S., based on mutually beneficial trade and other common interests, without having to house U.S. forces on its territory, and it would have a sizeable peace dividend to invest in the well-being of its citizenry. The U.S. can likewise be encouraged to make peace with the DPRK, just as it seems to be doing with Russia, a recently recommitted ally of the DPRK. The Korean War, in a state of cease fire for 72 years, is America’s longest forever war.
To take the first step towards peaceful reunification, a pro-democracy movement must lead the society in letting go of the long-held belief, put forward by Syngman Rhee, that the territorial boundary of the ROK encompasses the entire Korean peninsula. Peaceful reunification is not possible as long as one side claims the territory of the other. Aside from this stumbling block, and once the ROK assumes control of its security, there is nothing to stop the ROK and DPRK from normalizing relations and finding a way to thrive on the Korean peninsula in a state of peace.
I may be completely wrong, but I believe that if Professor Lee were teaching at UC Berkeley today, he would consider the normalization of relations between the ROK and DPRK, as separate states, not as a repudiation of previous reunification proposals, but simply as reunification in the most practical manner given the changed circumstances of the times.
Paul Liem is the Chair of the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors.
* The Lee Yueng-hui Foundation was founded to memorialize the life of journalist Lee Yueng-hui (1929-2010), Professor of Hanyang University, and widely regarded as a doyen of Korea's democracy movement.
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