Providence made me a citizen of the Republic of Korea. I lived under the rule of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for three months during the Korean War. But afterward I was blessed to be on the southern side of the line that divides the Korean Peninsula in two. Sometimes, I find myself drifting in the fantasy of living on the other side of the line by some vagary of God’s will.

My wife is a refugee from North Korea. Her family, whose ancestors lived for centuries in Hwanghae Province, snuck by boat to the South shortly before the DPRK was founded in Pyongyang by Kim Il-sung and his Soviet guardians. Millions moved to the South during the war and, after six decades, 23 million people are living in the North as the subjects of the Kim dynasty. 

As a member of the Korean race, I am naturally more concerned about the fate of my “dongpo” ― that may be translated “fellow countrymen” ― in the North than I am about what happens to the Japanese, Chinese or Americans. Pictures of malnourished children in a nursery in North Korea circulated by charity organizations here evoke more pain in my heart than similar images in UNICEF pamphlets on Darfur, Rwanda or Haiti. I, like most adults here, even feel guilty watching youngsters wasting their food at home, in restaurants or in school cafeterias.

Still many Koreans know how man can be extremely atrocious even to their own people through their experiences of the war which left 2 million dead on both sides, comparable in the scale of carnage to the 20 million Russian deaths during World War II. So it is naive to believe that an atomic bomb will never be used against the South by the North, and it is not correct to argue that such a belief makes the people of Seoul live so nonchalantly today despite the escalating threats of thermonuclear war from Pyongyang.

If we do not look too scared in the eyes of foreign observers, it is because we believe in the combined capabilities of the allied forces here with all their retaliatory and preemptive strike powers and because we know that the adversaries know it. Yet, the saber-rattling by Pyongyang following nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches is becoming quite apocalyptic.

As the tension chart on the Korean Peninsula hits the apex over the past few months, I am rather concerned about how the average North Koreans would feel watching the stentorian male and female TV announcers and senior military officers delivering the litany of intimidation. How much the pictures released these days by the (North) Korean Central News Agency showing soldiers, peasants and workers madly applauding and crying before their young leader convey the reality, I wonder.

The concept of average North Korean may exclude party cadres, People’s Army officers of higher ranks, People’s Committee staff of various local levels and the privileged members of trading units in military and civilian organizations who are called foreign exchange earners. But it should include the rank-and-file soldiers goose-stepping in the pompous military parades through Kim Il-sung Plaza and those well-clad men and women called to perform folk dances of unknown origin at city squares on some holidays.

About 20,000 North Koreans have left the country and settled down in South Korea, mostly via China, since Seoul and Beijing normalized relations in 1992. These refugees’ families back home must be considered dissidents in North Korea, along with the political prisoners detained in concentration camps and their families. They do not fit the concept of average North Korean for a different reason, but they will play an important role in future transformation of the country.

Thus, it may not be too preposterous to assume that, excluding non-adults, there are some 15 million grown-up people in North Korea who every day are anxiously pondering their fate as the people of the DPRK dynasty, which now has a third Kim on the throne. They must have varying amounts of information on life in the other half of the peninsula but are sure to be unanimously complaining that God was unfair in distributing “bok,” or blessings in this land.

Believing in the ethnic oneness between the two halves despite over six decades of confrontation in scant communication, I would attempt to imagine what mindset an average North Korean would carry in this time of extraordinary domestic and external developments. If I were a North Korean, I would first wonder what piece of comfort or happiness these rockets, nuclear bombs and an artificial satellite bearing the DPRK logo could add to my life.

“Unification” would be in my thoughts as becoming one with the more affluent South would certainly ease my life and my children’s with more food and necessities available, if only South Koreans would not just lord it over the Northerners. Could I ever dream of conquering the South with the military might of 1 million ground forces and the weapons of mass destruction without the North suffering the same destruction and deaths? No way.

Let’s take a short look back over history. In the South, the people, fed up with 12 years of dictatorial rule through the war, brought down the government of President Syngman Rhee who had enjoyed patriarchal charisma as a leader of independence struggles against the Japanese and founded the Republic of Korea. Tomorrow happens to be the 53rd anniversary of the 1960 uprising. The people then endured military rule until they achieved economic development with hard work. When they decided there should be no more delay, the people’s power restored democracy through a unique, gradual process of transition.

North Koreans, deep in their minds, must have the greatest hope in the developed South Korea. “If they have done it on their own, we can do it too, together or by ourselves.” We in the South also have hope in the average North Koreans, who share the ethnic trait of perseverance with us, who have suffered longer, and who can exert stronger people’s power in pursuit of freedom and affluence. The time will depend on the method they will choose, between a revolution and evolution, but they will arrive at the goal in no distant future.

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer of The Korea Herald who retired as managing editor of The Korea Times. ― Ed.