Forgiveness or revenge is issue for North’s elite

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Forgiveness or revenge is issue for North’s elite

Soon after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an arrest warrant was issued for Erich Honecker, the East German leader. Mr. Honecker fled to Russia, but in July 1992 he was arrested and brought before a court in Germany on charges that included ordering the murders of East Germans trying to escape to West Germany. The trial was suspended before its conclusion, though, because of Mr. Honecker’s advanced liver cancer. He was given political asylum in Chile and died there in May 1994. His body was cremated and is still not buried formally; the ashes reportedly are stored in a small apartment in Germany. The end of Mr. Honecker, who led the communist country for 18 years, was a miserable one, and many other leaders of East Germany were jailed after reunification for human rights abuses. Koreans will be faced with choices about how to handle similar problems. If South Korea absorbs the North within a decade or two, as many researchers consider the most probable scenario, North Korean leaders could face similar legal problems. Political power in North Korea is concentrated in the Workers' Party, the Supreme People's Assembly and the military, and Kim Jong-il reigns over them all. If unification comes with domination by South Korea, those leaders would probably be banned from any continuing political role, said Ryu Gil-jae, a professor at the Graduate School of North Korean Studies at Kyungnam University. “I think Kim Jong-il will be held in a kind of protection facility after unification,” he said. “The other leaders, technocrats of the communist government, will all lose their jobs because they lack the knowledge to govern a unified Korea that would adopt a market economy and democracy.” Just losing a job would not be all that bad; worse is the likelihood of prosecution for human rights abuses against the North Korean people. Indeed, questions of accountability and retribution are one of the core questions of reunification. Domestic, multinational or United Nations-led tribunals may be set up to deal with not only North Korean human rights abuses but also the regime's past terror attacks against South Korea. “Dissenters and victims in North Korea and those who were abused by the regime will not remain silent,” Mr. Ryu said. “Even if the South Korean government did not want to pursue the matter, those people will raise questions of justice.” A unification ministry official who asked for anonymity added, “That is what we call 'transitional justice,' a clean-up process of past injustices for a new democracy. A unified Korea will have to deal with the issue somehow.” But Choi Jin-wook, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, was more cautious: “A mass execution of former North Korean leaders after unification would be bad. It would be acceptable to punish core leaders for human rights abuse, but I think some of the leaders could be re-educated and able to work in some administrative posts in northern Korea,” he said. If unification occurs after the collapse of the North Korean regime, not only would North Korean political leaders disappear from political life, but the north would take on democratic trappings. There could be Korea-wide elections for a new president and legislature, and some researchers see the emergence of a southern-led center-right political party to compete with left-wing South Korean parties, which would be bolstered by the acquisition of unreconstructed socialists. Researchers in general picture a unified Korea as having a presidential system and political parties with a wider ideological spectrum: a presidential system with a centralized government is preferred for strong leadership to clean up the messy reunification process. “The southern politicians are likely to dominate representation in the central government not only because South Korea has a larger population, but also because it has superior economic and human resources,” said Lee Nae-young, a political scientist at Korea University. “If power is concentrated in the central government, however, northern Korea's exclusion from the government would reignite regional tensions.” The thought of wealthy southerners who despise their backwoods northern brothers and northerners with grudges against their greedy capitalist partners is enough to give pause to reunification thinkers. They say steps will have to be taken to protect northern interests. “It is likely that the current South Korean elite will retain their vested interests after unification,” Mr. Choi at the unification institute said. “Northern Koreans’ political participation should be encouraged. Also, some of the current northern elite, except those who reject a liberal democratic order, should be given some official positions in local governments to represent the interests of North Korean residents.” Mr. Lee of Korea University predicted that the North Korean Workers' Party will retain some power in the longer term with support from communists and dissatisfied, poverty-stricken northerners. So post-unification, South Korea’s left-wing Democratic Labor Party would embrace its socialist-leaning colleagues in the north and the conservative Grand National Party would shrink somewhat but become even more conservative, antagonizing the still-active and even further-left Workers’ Party. Uri Party’s role appears murky to most political pundits. “Ultimately, a new political force that encompasses the entire Korean Peninsula has to emerge,” Mr. Lee said. by Min Seong-jae
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