[EDITORIAL] Wall and fences

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On the news that they were given the right to go out of the country anytime, crowds of East Germans thronged at crossing points to the West in no time. Border guards, overwhelmed by the rushing waves of East Germans, opened them up, even though they had received no such orders.

The opening of the border did not go the way the East German leadership had intended. It had planned to break the news on travel the next day. Instead, it was mistakenly announced on Nov. 9 that the right to travel was effective immediately. It proved to be a death knell for East Germany as a state.

As a result of the fumbling, the task of guarding the border became impossible, inadvertently getting the process of German reunification rolling straight away. It was not just the East Germans but the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and other West German leaders that were taken off guard.



This is not to say that West Germany had not been preparing for reunification. On the contrary, its preparations date back to the late 1960s when Chancellor Willy Brandt began to implement the Ostpolitik policy - efforts to improve relations with East Germany and other East European communist states.

West Germany signed the Basic Treaty with the East, establishing official relations between the two German states in 1972. It had since been giving a helping hand to East Germany, including 3 billion marks in loans in 1983. All these efforts were undoubtedly preparations for an eventual reunification.

But reunification was not something that West Germany could plan for. If it did, reunification did not go accordingly. Instead, it was forcibly placed in the hands of West Germany without warning.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent German reunification should serve as a sobering reminder to South Koreans, who mistakenly believe that any fundamental change in inter-Korean relations will be under their control. Among them is President Lee Myung-bak, who was quoted as saying in September: "Ours will not be like the unplanned East-West German reunification. We are constantly planning on our reunification."

Should North Korea be embroiled in a commotion bordering on implosion, for instance, would the barbed-wire fences north of the Demilitarized Zone be strong enough to fend off onrushing North Koreans? If not, could South Korea manage to send them back at the border for the sake of an orderly reunification?

Such an event cannot be ruled out, given that Kim Jong-il, who has North Korea under his tight control, is in ill health. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall took the West Germans off guard, so may the collapse of the border fences come as a surprise to the South Koreans.

A key question here is whether or not South Korea is as well prepared for reunification as West Germany was. The answer is a resounding "no."

True, just as West Germany had the Ostpolitik, so did South Korea have its own version, the Nordpolitik, which former President Roh Tae-woo adopted in 1988 to improve relations with North Korea, the Soviet Union and other communist states. The policy evolved into the late President Kim Dae-jung`s "sunshine policy." But the South Korean preparations ended there.

President Lee`s policy is to help North Korea increase its per capita gross domestic product to $3,000 during the next 10 years if it abandons its ambitions to arm itself with nuclear weapons. He apparently believes reunification is unimaginable until then.

But what if the Kim Jong-il regime should collapse now? How should South Korea fund the reunification cost, which researchers say would be astronomical? One estimate puts it at $1 trillion