The attitudes of Seoul and Beijing would be particularly important in this respect; the health of a post-Kim North Korea would be greatly affected by China’s willingness to underwrite the regime, and by South Korea’s approach to manifesting claims on Korean national identity. In the German case, the Russians had no interest in continuing to prop up the Berlin regime, and West Germany was happy to advance the claim that it was the only legitimate German national regime.
What is interesting to me is the way that North Korea has gone about trying to claim that South Koreans are no longer even really Korean. Will the people of North Korea allow a southern takeover, if they think of South Koreans as non-Korean?
Funny, my South Korean wife's family doesn't consider northerners Korean, either. And, there's the question of return. What is to be done with those northerners who emigrated south, but might want their land back?
ReplyDelete