The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [1]
The massively fortified strip bisecting the Korean peninsula was one of the world's most dangerous potential flashpoints throughout the cold war. Although the barriers have come down nearly everywhere else, at this writing Korea remains-as President Bill Clinton said in his 1997 State of the Union address-"the Cold War's last divide." The misnamed "demilitarized zone," a verdant but heavily mined sanctuary for wild birds and animals, continues to be the focal point of the most powerful concentrations of opposing military forces of the post-cold war world despite both secret and open attempts at reconciliation. Close to 2 million troops, including 37,000 from the United States who would be instantly involved in new hostilities, are on duty in North or South Korea, with many on hair-trigger alert wielding powerful weapons of war. Today, despite dramatic and hopeful recent developments, American overseas commitments and military forces are at greater risk at the Korean DMZ than anywhere else on earth.
While the confrontation across the DMZ continues, almost everything else has changed dramatically. South of the dividing line, the Republic of Korea has developed since the 1970s into an economic powerhouse. By 1997 it was the world's eleventh largest economy and one of the foremost producers of ships, automobiles, electronics, steel, and a host of other goods, with a per capita income of more than $10,000 per year. By that time its fiesty democracy had thrown off all vestiges of military rule and imprisoned the two generals who had led the country in the 1980s. Late in 1997, it was suddenly beset by a massive financial crisis that began in Southeast Asia. In this atmosphere it elected longtime opposition leader Kim Dae Jung as its president for the next five years. He immediately set about to stabilize and reform the economy, and undertake new and positive engagement toward the North. Although economic reform is still incomplete, his determined and persistent policy toward the North paid off in an unprecedented summit meeting in June 2000 and the promise of extensive NorthSouth interaction in economic, political, and even military fields.
North of the dividing line, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which developed its own unique brand of communist Confucianism, remains militarily powerful but has lost the race in every other way. Early in the 1990s North Korea was abandoned by its former sponsor and ally, the Soviet Union, which established close relations with South Korea and then collapsed, and was devalued by its other major sponsor and ally, China, which became more interested in markets than in Marxism. Following the death of its founding leader in 1994, North Korea suffered a sharp economic decline, which was a central factor in a famine in outlying areas that led to massive loss of life.
Under the successor leadership of the enigmatic Kim Jong 11, the eldest son of the founder, Pyongyang was forced to turn to the outside world for humanitarian assistance in the mid-1990s. Late in the decade North Korea undertook new policies of engagement with South Korea, the United States, and a variety of other Asian and European countries. At this writing, it is yet uncertain whether Kim Jong I1's limited opening and cautious domestic reforms will continue and, if so, whether these actions will bring about a revival of the North Korean economy and secure the survival of the regime. In the preface to earlier