Participants for the seminar of RUCP, JPI and GRI

20 years after German unification especially in Korea much has been said about potential costs of unification and social problems of integration, while the costs of non-unification almost never are discussed. To correct this wrong focus, the Research Council of Unification Policy (RCUP) of KINU, an association of more than 30 important Korean research institutes, organized on Jeju Island a seminar in commeration of 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Co-organizers were Jeju Peace Institute (JPI) and the Gyeonggi Development Institute. After two congratulatory messages by Dr. Jae-Jin Suh, president of the Korean Institute for National Unification (KINU) and Tae-Kyu Han, president of JPI, Hon. Park Jin, chairman of the committee for foreign affairs, trade and unification issues in the Korean National Assembly, talked about the relevance of German experiences for Korean unification. Besides presentation on foreign policy by Matthias Vollert of German Embassy Seoul, domestic policy by Walter Klitz of Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation and social developments by Prof. Dr. Young-Hie Kim of Wooseok University, Dr. Bernhard Seliger of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea spoke about economic aspects of German unification. He stressed that unification brought huge costs to Germany and that sustained large transfers from West to East were problematic, but that the costs of non-unification were rarely taken into account. These are not only economic costs, e.g. waste or high military spending, but also human costs for North Koreans.

The Research Council of Unification Policy is an association of more than 30 important Korean research institutes and since some years partner of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea. Jointly both partners organize annual seminars in Gangwon-Do and Busan.

Podium at the seminar

Discussion during the seminar