From wharms@soback.kornet.nm.kr
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 04:34:01 -0900
From: Bill Harms 
To: "moogoonghwa@UCSD.EDU" 
Subject: RE: Another Set back to N-S relations

At 09:19 AM 9/23/96 -0400, Jamie McDonald wrote:

>>        4. Some politicians will likely seriously review the entire
>>unification issue.
>
>This is something that intrigues me.  Never having lived in Korea (yet),
>I'm not surrounded by the information you have -- although I have been
>following the Korea Herald and Reuters coverage.  But it seems to me
>that while reunification is favored by a significant percentage of the
>electorate in the ROK, President Kim Young Sam seems to be giving it
>only lip service (justly so, in my opinion).  Is this an accurate
>perception?

I think you have hit on something here. I offer an analogy that somewhat
fits this situation. For a Korean politician to say he is in favor of
reunification is like a US politician saying he is in favor of tax cuts. In
both instances, they are something everyone wants and at the same time are
difficult to realize. I think it would be political suicide for a Korean
politician to publicly state he is against reunification, even if he
believed it was difficult to achieve, because reunification is a desire
shared by most Koreans.





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