[Koo Bon-young Column] There Is No Reason to Echo North Korea's 'Two-State Theory'

North Korea has removed references to reunification from its new constitution. The revision was made at the end of March during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA). It was also recently confirmed that the constitution now includes a territorial clause describing the area as land bordering the Republic of Korea to the south. In effect, this formalizes the 'hostile two-state' relationship that Kim Jong Un declared in late 2023. As a result, 'reunification' is now virtually a taboo word in North Korea. Given the nature of a one-man hereditary dictatorship, that is a plausible conclusion.
North Korea is one thing. The problem is that voices inside South Korea are also showing open disdain for reunification. Recently, Jung Dong-young, the Minister of Unification, said that 'talking about reunification is, in some ways, extremely violent.' The Lee Jae-myung administration's first Unification White Paper, released on the 18th, described the two Koreas as 'de facto two states.' By changing only the modifier from 'hostile' to 'peaceful,' it effectively echoed Kim Jong Un's two-state theory.
Under its previous constitution, North Korea said it would 'struggle to realize national reunification based on the principles of independence, peaceful reunification, and great national unity.' In this revision, it removed those 'three principles of reunification.' Since the regime was established, it has overturned its reunification line and unilaterally discarded the one-nation, one-state framework assumed in the inter-Korean Basic Agreement. It was a declaration that it would 'live separately' from the Republic of Korea, which it calls an enemy state.
Since the Kim Il Sung era, North Korea has never given up on reunification. Its ultimate goal was communist reunification. When it had military superiority and favorable external conditions, as during the Korean War, it tried to achieve reunification by force. When that was not possible, it pursued a united-front strategy for peaceful reunification, using the slogan 'By Our Nation Itself' to stir division within South Korean society. The Koryo Confederation was a lure for that latter approach.
Kim Jong Un's line of severing ties between the two Koreas is outwardly more defensive than the rhetoric of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, who once spoke of a 'South Korean revolution.' The reason the third hereditary ruler is abandoning his predecessors' legacy and trying to wall off the South is obvious. The very existence of the Republic of Korea poses an existential threat to the North. The gap in overall national power, including economic strength, is enormous. Every time the two Koreas engage, the shabby reality of the 'Kim dynasty,' which has long brainwashed its people into believing it is a strong and prosperous state, is inevitably exposed.
This also means that North Korea's leadership believes the effectiveness of united-front tactics linked to pro-North forces in the South is limited at this stage. In other words, it wants to erase South Korea entirely from the minds of North Korean residents as a target of exchange, cooperation, and reunification. That is the background behind Kim Jong Un's regime aggressively blocking the inflow of K-pop and other Korean Wave content through the Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture.
Even so, it is worrying that some in the government appear to be lending support to North Korea's two-state theory while inviting constitutional controversy. That concern is especially strong because the minister in charge of reunification seems to avoid even using the word 'reunification.' The irony is greater because Jung, when he served as Minister of Unification under the Roh Moo-hyun administration, used the words reunification and the national community constantly. Now, after Kim Jong Un has called South Korea by the name 'South Korea' as an enemy state, they want to dress it up as a matter of peace and call North Korea 'North Korea' instead.
But would recasting Kim Jong Un's 'hostile two-state theory' as a 'peaceful two-state theory' really resolve the discord between the two Koreas? North Korea has even inserted a clause into its new constitution that formally grants Kim Jong Un the authority to use nuclear weapons. It is hard to expect North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile development, which are tools for destroying peace, or to engage in inter-Korean exchanges simply because we keep trying to please it. Unrequited love ends in failure nine times out of ten, whether in fiction or in reality.
In that context, West Germany's role in ending the division between East and West Germany and achieving German reunification is worth revisiting. After the two German states joined the UN in 1973, East Germany revised its constitution in 1974 to remove references to reunification. Around that time, the socialist regime in East Germany, which was falling far behind West Germany in systemic competition, began advocating a 'two states, two nations' theory. It was strikingly similar to the path taken by the Kim Jong Un regime today.
But regardless of whether the CDU or the SPD was in power, the West German government drew a firm line against East Germany's attempts to entrench division. It reached out to East German residents through a range of exchange programs, while applying strict reciprocity in economic assistance to keep the East German regime's anti-human-rights and anti-reunification policies in check.
For that reason, we should not be clapping along to the two-state theory. North Korea is not even at the level of East Germany's socialist regime. It is a theocratic system armed with the most regressive Juche religion, one that would make Iran weep. The idea that division could continue even after the young Kim Ju Ae rises as North Korea's fourth 'Ayatollah' is horrifying to imagine. Separate from efforts to ease the deadlocked inter-Korean relationship, we must not forget that reunification remains the highest constitutional goal of state affairs.
kby777@fnnews.com Reporter