This study examined the prospects of Korean reunification. The study explores how the factors of integration affect North and South Korea after the country was divided into the two sides despite its millennium of unity. A sample of both North and South Korean newspapers covering a 47-year period of Korean reunificational efforts were analyzed as a major source of data to discover if there is any evidence of Korean national will to integrate among Koreans in the two countries. Content analysis is a major method of this research. The most obvious findings of this study are that the newspapers in …
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This study examined the prospects of Korean reunification. The study explores how the factors of integration affect North and South Korea after the country was divided into the two sides despite its millennium of unity. A sample of both North and South Korean newspapers covering a 47-year period of Korean reunificational efforts were analyzed as a major source of data to discover if there is any evidence of Korean national will to integrate among Koreans in the two countries. Content analysis is a major method of this research. The most obvious findings of this study are that the newspapers in North Korea did not show any significant change in their tones or attitudes throughout 47-year period studied. The North Korean regime which controls what is published in the papers is still fiercely ideological and hostile toward South Korea. The South Korean papers, on the other hand, showed marked changes in their tones and attitudes toward reunification during this period. Korean reunification remains a matter of time because the political development of South Korea, combined with remarkable economic progress, can surely heal the broken unity and national will among Koreans. The enormous financial burden to rebuild the North Korean economy which will fall upon South Koreans is a major challenge. The road to Korean reunification and the future of reunified Korea depend upon the willingness, wisdom, patience, freedom and courage of the South Koreans to assume the tremendous burden to rebuild North Korea and to strengthen diplomatic relations with the United States as well as neighboring countries to develop more positive inter-Korean relations based upon their cultural, social and economic contacts, cooperations and transactions between the two sides. If Koreans have such willingness, wisdom, patience and courage to accomplish their freedom and hope of unity, the divided Korean peninsula will be reunified and will become one nation again.
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