Korean reunification is unlikely while Pyongyang's current leader Kim Jong-il is still in power, the more likely scenario being South and North Korea engaged in a prolonged period of conferderation-type arrangement, a U.S. historian said Tuesday.
Bruce Cumings also argued that it is unwise to seek agreements with North Kore based on trust, and that any accord with the communist regime should depend on verification.
"I don't think Korean unification will occur while Kim Jong-il is in power," Cumings said at a luncheon speech sponsored by the South Korean embassy, referring to North Korea's 66-year-old top leader.
Instead, a prolonged period of coexistence, culmination in provincial independence and a confederation-like relationship, may be possible 10 to 15 years from now, said Cumings.
South and North Korea are technically still at war, having signed only an armistice at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Tension lingers as Pyongyang flaunts nuclear capabilities, displayed most recently with its first atomic weapons test in October last year.
A six-nation forum, attended by South and North Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, struck a deal last month that commits Pyongyang to shut down and eventually disable its nuclear weapons and programs.
Cumings called the February agreement "no bettrer, and in some ways worse than" the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework between the U.S. and North Korea. The bilateral pact froze Pyongyang's nuclear activities but was later scrapped following accusations by Washington that the North was hiding a secret weapons program using enriched uranium.
Yet, it is a good agreement, he said, setting principles on ending the Korean War and talking about diplomatic normalizations.
The most unproductive, and "even stupid," U.S. policy has been to divide world affairs strictly in terms of good and evil, Cumings said.
"You may think that North Koreans are evil, but you have to have a policy for what to do about that," he said."
Yonhap - Washington (March 29, 2007)
P.S. Having a confederation-like state form has been considered as an alternative for South Korea to step toward the ultimate unification of two currently separated Koreas. Cumings is pointing out only what has been going around for quite a bit of time, and says not so fresh comments of obviously foreseeable prospects on difficulties of Korea's reunification under Kim. Found his view very disappointing considering he has been well-known as a Korea scholar for some time. ~~;
