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The chairman of Zeitgeist, formerly the New Right Foundation, on Tuesday called for joint international control of North Korea in the event the regime collapses. "A joint international control by the countries now participating in the six-party North Korean nuclear talks must be sought lest the North become a region of international conflict," Ahn Byong-jik told a seminar at Paichai Hakdang in Jeong-dong, Seoul.
Ahn, an economics professor emeritus at Seoul National University, predicted the North Korean regime is bound to collapse due to internal contradictions. Since immediate unification would mean "maximum cost and confusion," he said, unification must be achieved gradually.
An abrupt integration of the wildly divergent North and South Korean markets could cause massive unemployment, weak productivity and a long recession, Ahn said. "North Korea can achieve high economic growth only if it pursues reform and market opening while remaining an independent market,ˇ± he added.
In an abrupt unification, he said, chances are that, as in Germany, North Koreans will lose their homes and become ˇ°servantsˇ± of South Koreans. To prevent this, North Koreans should be given property rights to land and homes. "North Koreans are not so foolish as to transfer their sovereignty to another country," he said. "We should leave it to them to decide whether they will unite with South Korea."
Lee Dong-bok, a standing representative of the North Korea Democratization Forum, in a keynote paper called for the government's unification policy to be separated from inter-Korean dialogue. "The Unification Ministry should take its hands off inter-Korean dialogue and concentrate on mapping out unification policies like preparing for an emergency in North Korea," Lee said. "Inter-Korean dialogue can be handled by a minister of political affairs who could recruit relevant officials from administrative agencies by issues on hand."
Meanwhile, Kim Tae-woo, vice president of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses speculated that the most likely development, if something serious happens to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, is a collective leadership centered around the order of ranks as specified in the North Korean Constitution. "It's an excessive expectation bordering on illusion to anticipate an immediate peaceful unification on an emergency in the North," Kim cautioned. "We must prepare against an emergency in the North based primarily on our cooperation with the U.S. and secondarily on our relations with China and international agencies like the UN."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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