The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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This Is Going To Hurt
by James Dunnigan
September 2, 2010
The South Korean government revealed how concerned it is with the imminent collapse of North Korea, by proposing a special tax to pay for reunifying the north and south. The government has long had a plan for this, and every year or so it becomes a news item. But now the government wants to start putting aside cash for the reunification. It has long been believed that this would cost between one and two trillion dollars (it cost two trillion to rebuild East Germany, after the Germanys were reunited in 1990). But updated estimates put the cost of fixing North Korea (which is in much worse shape than East Germany ever was) at $5 trillion. That, plus the fact that Germany has a GDP four times that of South Korea, means that the average South Korean will have to pay ten times what the average West German paid to rebuild their lesser half. This could cost South Koreans up to ten percent of their GDP for a decade or more. Many South Koreans fear that rebuilding the north could wreck the South Korean economy. No one knows, and everyone is scared. But someone will have to pay, and the most likely candidate is the South Korean taxpayer.
For a long time, it was popular to believe that reunification with the north could be done gradually, by making peace with the communist dictatorship up there, and gradually merging the two economies. But the northern communists have proved unreliable, incompetent and seemingly out-of-touch with reality. So now, South Korea believes that unification will come in the wake of economic and political collapse in the north. In other words, the worst case. Many South Korean continue to believe that either outcome is possible, if only because the cost of cleaning up after a collapse would be huge.
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