Gamal Nkrumah looks at the fallout from the North's denuclearisation South Korean President Roh Mu-Hyun in a formal address to the National Assembly read by South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo on 8 October reiterated that the standoff between the United States and North Korea over the latter's nuclear weapons programme will soon be a thing of the past, following his trip to Pyongyang October 2-4 and the signing of an accord to that effect. But what will this radical break with the past lead to? Korea is the only country that has remained politically divided along ideological lines since the end of the Cold War. Germany, Vietnam and Yemen were all divided into capitalist and communist states, and so was Korea. Germany, Vietnam and Yemen were reunified. Korea, alone, remains a divided nation -- an anachronistic relic of the Cold War era. The Korean people yearn to be reunited. Notions of reunification abound, but they are so vague and lacking in detail as to be rendered meaningless. Ideas are already piling up on the doormats of Seoul's and Pyongyang's corridors of power. North Korea is no utopia. Nobody doubts things are bad there. Its economy is in shambles. Rather than rushing to bail out North Korea, there are many South Korean politicians who would rather see Pyongyang succumb to the temptations of capitalism and be absorbed by the South Korean economy in much the same fashion as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was gobbled up by the Federal Republic of Germany. Note, the official West German name of the country metamorphosed into the official name of the reunited Germany, reflecting economic and political realities. The problem with North Korea is that it is not yet prepared to suffer the fate of East Germany. Indeed, it was North Vietnam that overran the South and came within a whisker of uniting the peninsula on its own, Stalinist terms. Subsequently, North Korea became a byword for mendacity, secrecy and profligacy. There are no silver bullets politically or economically for Korean reunification. There are good reasons for public concern in South Korea. The West Germans to this day are prone to complaints about the painful process of integrating East Germany. It quickly found there are no quick fixes. Korean leaders on both sides of the bamboo current are no doubt sifting through their German colleagues' experiences at this very moment. But painful absorption need not be a necessary part of this correction, unless of course the US desists from meddling in North Korean affairs, including its decades of boycotting and direct subversion. Two problems have to be solved first before normalisation of relations between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the West. The first is removing North Korea off the list of sponsors of international terrorism. The North Koreans say Washington agreed to this in six-nations talks held concurrently with the meeting of the Korean presidents. Washington so far is silent. The second, is acknowledging that the key issue is Korean reunification and rescuing the North Korean economy from its current malaise. Again, Washington is indifferent to this, being focussed totally on the North Korean nuclear programme. The Chinese are trying to persuade North Korea that the social market economy is the way forward. The more doctrinaire North Koreans believe that there is no such thing. That what is going on in China is capitalism pure and simple. Indeed, there are advantages to being "backward" -- lower expectations, a highly egalitarian social structure, less urban sprawl, far fewer cars, the huge pristine demilitarised zone preserving local bird, animal and insect life. Environmentalists are ecstatic about the possibilities of preserving this huge swathe separating the two states. North Korea's basic infrastructure of roads and railways, public health facilities and schools are all in place. An end to the international isolation and willingness to open up could obviate the scenario of mass out-migration that US political pundits throw around. There is the question of what China has in mind for its little brother. But China can provide assistance and investment, and unlike Washington, Beijing doesn't dabble in local politics. Politically though, the Koreas have grown poles apart, and not in name only. Koreans north and south of the border have nothing in common except a shared cultural, ethnic and linguistic heritage. The two societies have developed in diametrically-opposed directions. South Korea has bought wholesale into the democratic claptrap. It is considered on paper a successful emerging market that has one of the highest standard of per capita incomes in Asia, comparable with many European countries. The North, in sharp contrast, is derided as an economic basketcase, periodically threatened by famine and hunger. Unlike, the unabashedly capitalist South, the North is a state-run economy. The heady atmosphere of Western-style liberty that swirls in the cities of South Korea is completely alien to the austere rigidity of the North. But is living in Seoul, a metropolis of 23 million people, really more environmentally appealing than sleepy backwater such as Pyongyang? Is the Western-style rat-race something the North should embrace blindly? Kim Jong Il and Roh Mu-Hyun indeed held their three-day love-in in Pyongyang, though the upshot was neither an unmitigated success or abysmal failure. The meeting was only the second North-South summit since the end of the Korean War in the early 1950s. Kim Jong Il met Roh's predecessor, Kim Dae-Jung, in 2000. Kim, much to the shock and horror of his compatriots, had secretly paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of an audience with his namesake, the North Korean leader, who awarded him with three tons of the highly prized North Korean pine mushrooms. There is little to show today from this historic meeting except a virtually unused rail link across the demilitarised zone and the Kaesong Industrial Zone in the north, which is far from a wild success. To this day no permanent peace treaty has been drafted to replace the Korean War's 1953 armistice. Oh yes, Kim trucked four tons of pine mushrooms to the border for Roh's underlings to dispose of. Indeed, South Korea's Roh pointed out that the fundamental challenge to increased inter-Korean economic cooperation was the North Korean leader's "mistrust of and resistance to" radical economic reform. The North Korean leader is very suspicious of economic deregulation, privatisation and economic liberalisation. Be that as it may, Roh was accompanied by many of South Korea's top business executives as well as leading cultural personalities. According to some estimates, the deals in the agreement could cost South Korea $500 million. That is in addition to the nearly $2 billion Roh's government has already furnished North Korea. Maybe more business opportunities will open up this time. Kim, though, is expecting much more if he is to give up the North Korean nuclear programme. Washington is still suspicious even though it acknowledged this week that North Korea moved closer to the US goal of complete North Korean denuclearisation. There is also a consensus that talks on an official peace treaty could prove to be lengthy and controversial. To begin with, the North Koreans are insisting that they will not abide by any promises unless the DPRK is taken off Washington's list of states sponsoring terrorism. Washington's priorities are not necessarily identical with Seoul's. Washington has as its goal North Korean demilitarisation. The lame-duck president clearly wants to salvage something internationally as his swan song. US President George W Bush is keen on resolving the North Korean nuclear conundrum before the curtains come down, given that Iraq and Afghanistan are such disasters. Is the Korean denuclearisation deal a template for negotiations with Iran? The North Koreans agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities. Will Iran follow suit? Maybe, but other factors are at work -- economic and political. Seoul, on the other hand, is focussed, rightly, on reunification. For Washington, that is neither here nor there -- a moot point. It looks like Washington got what it craved. So back to the question of Korean reunification. It doesn't take a genius IQ -- just a little political courage -- to draw the correct conclusion. However, Washington might have to concede that Korea's political future is not for it to shape.
