A Delegation of the committee of the five North Korean provinces visited Germany for 7 days from November 29th to December 5th, 2009. Attending were among others Min Bong-ki, the chairman of the committee, Gwon Yeong-jun, the project manager, Im Geun-muk, the chief of leadership department, Han Yong-deok, the chief of accounting department, Kim Heung-jin, the official of the office of planning and cooperation of the Ministry of Unification.
The topic of the study trip which was organized by Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea and guided by Mr. Kim Young-Soo (project manager) was ’20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall –the process of German unification and lessons for Korea’.

The delegation visited Munich, Mödlereuth, Leipzig and Berlin. In Munich, they visited the political education centre of Bavaria, the headquarters of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation, the office of prime minister of Bavaria and Bavarian branch of the exile association. In Mödlereuth the museum of former inner-German border was visited and in Leipzg the “Runde Ecke” Stasi museum, the modern history museum and St. Nikolaikirche (church) which was an origin of the famous Monday demonstrations of Leipzig were visited. Before members of the delegation had discussions with overseas Koreans from five provinces of North Korea residing in Northern Germany. The last destination was Berlin, where they visited government-funded organization devoted to the examination and reappraisal of the Communist dictatorship in East Germany and learned from Dr. Anna Kaminsky, the general secretary about activities of the organisation as well as activities related to the examination and reappraisal of the Communist dictatorship.

Among the schedules the delegation focused on the exile association based on the history that massive residents in Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany migrated to Western Germany compulsively or voluntarily after the Second World War. The examples of social integration after the immigration gave the committee an idea for the support role on possible immigrants from North Korea in the unification process.
There might be a difficulty to imply the German case into the Korean case one to one, but it is meaningful to get some ideas and lessons from German case which can be useful for future Korean unification process.
The delegation had a chance to summarize the process of the German unification clearly through the visit of the former German inner-border museum in Mödlereuth and the organisation devoted to the examination and reappraisal of the Communist dictatorship. Moreover this was a good motivation for the committee to get new ideas to set up the aim of its activities.