Barbed and concertina wire top fencing close to the Imjin River near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea in this photo from May 2017. (Aaron Kidd/Stars and Stripes)
Seoul is proposing peaceful coexistence with North Korea under a “two-state” framework, an approach that some lawmakers argue violates South Korea’s constitution and conflicts with long-standing unification goals.
The South Korean government aims to reshape inter-Korean relations into one of separate but peaceful coexistence while still pursuing eventual reunification without force, the ministry said in its latest white paper released Monday.
Specifically, the paper calls for transforming Pyongyang’s current “hostile two-state policy” into a “peaceful two-state” approach, emphasizing the two Koreas already function as separate de facto states.
It also outlined three core principles guiding President Lee Jae Myung’s North Korea policy: respecting North Korea’s system, rejecting unification through absorption and refraining from any hostile acts toward Pyongyang.
Critics, however, argue the approach risks legitimizing North Korea as a separate sovereign state in violation of the Constitution, which defines the territory of the Republic of Korea — the formal name for South Korea — as the entire Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.
In a Facebook post Tuesday, former Unification Minister Kwon Young-se said the “most painful part” of the white paper is the formalization of the two-state policy, which is “realistically and normatively wrong.”
People Power Party lawmaker Jang Dong-hyuk also criticized the policy on his Facebook page Tuesday, warning that a white paper that denies unification “is a clear violation of the Constitution.”
Unification Ministry spokeswoman Becky Kim via text message Wednesday said the ministry’s two-state approach does not mean Seoul is legally recognizing North Korea as a separate nation.
When the two Koreas simultaneously joined the United Nations in 1991, they effectively recognized each other as separate political entities and acknowledged a special relationship based on mutual respect in the Inter-Korean Basic Agreement, Kim said.
The white paper’s two-state approach is a practical framework for implementing Lee’s policy of peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula, she said.
Previous governments have pursued the same approach, Kim added.
The government still supports eventual reunification within the framework, she said, describing the policy as Seoul’s effort to establish a stage of inter-Korean union under separate systems.
Since taking office last year, Lee has maintained that peace without fighting is the surest guarantee of security, Unification Minister Chung Dongyoung said in the white paper.
Respecting the North Korean regime and not pursuing absorption unification “do not appear to differ significantly from the positions of previous administrations,” Yonsei University professor Hur Jae-young, who specializes in inter-Korean relations, wrote in an email Wednesday to Stars and Stripes.
While declaring Seoul will refrain from hostile actions toward North Korea “is positive, it would have been preferable to include a clear statement that North Korea’s military provocations will never be tolerated,” he said.
