SPECIAL REPORT T H E KO R E A S October 26th 2013 ParallelParallel worldsworlds Korea.indd 1 08/10/2013 15:49 SPECIAL REPORT THE KOREAS Parallel worlds The 38th parallel, separating north and south, is Korea’s most important dividing line. But it is only one of many, says Simon Cox ON A RESTLESS night in April 1970, Lee Jae-geun, one of 27 South Korean CONTENTS shermen aboard a trawler in the Yellow Sea, awoke from a nightmare. He had dreamt that Korea was struck by three titanic waves, each stron- 3 Nuclear North Korea ger than the last. The nal wave swept aside mountains, deluged the Bad or mad? country and left the land divided. It was, he thought, a bad omen. 6 Demography And so it proved. A few The 54th parallel nights later a North Korean patrol 7 Women in South Korea intercepted his trawler about 50 A pram too far miles south of the Northern Limit Line, a disputed maritime border 8 Women in North Korea between the two Koreas. Armed A life of drudgery patrolmen boarded the trawler 9 Education and abducted its crew. Most of The other arms race them were repatriated later that year, but the North Koreans had 11 Business grander designs for Mr Lee, hop- Corporate armistice ing to train him as a spy. It was 12 K•pop three decades before he escaped. Sing me a new song The division between north and south remains Korea’s endur- 13 Better lives ing tragedy. It was imposed in 1945 Snakes’ heads and dragons’ by the Allied powers that liberat- tails ed the country from 35 years of cruel Japanese rule. In 1950 it was A CKNOWLEDGMENTS almost erased by a wave of North Korean troops that swept down the peninsula under the command of Kim Il Sung, a Soviet-backed ruler who This report beneted from the help, outlasted the Soviet Union itself. Another wave of troops, mostly Ameri- insights and scholarship of many people. Apart from those mentioned can but ghting under the United Nations banner, then reversed the in the text, the author would North Korean tide. Eventually the UN forces succumbed to a third wave particularly like to thank Daniel Cho, of Chinese troops which drove them back to the 38th parallel, a latitudi- Cho Dongchul, Choi Myungju, nal reference line that still divides the two Koreas. Everybody ended up Christopher Green, Heo Yu-myeong, Hwang Jae Sung, Kim Eun Young, roughly where they had started. Kim Insung, Kim Jintae, Kim Jungin, On land the dividing line is painstakingly demarcated and heavily Kwon Eunkyoung, Sharon Lam, fortied. But at sea the border is both physically and legally indistinct, Andrei Lankov, Lee Doeun, Jake Lee, dogged by disputes, incursions and abductions. The South Korean gov- Lilian Lee, Oh Se hyek, Bernhard Seliger and Peter Yoon. ernment knows of over 500 of its citizens abducted since 1955 who are still missing. Mr Lee is no longer one of them, but the country to which he es- caped is not the one he left behind decades ago. Its economy, politics and culture have all changed beyond recognition. As a teenager Mr Lee had served as an errand boy for Seoul’s police and knew every nook and cranny of the city. But in the vast metropolis he returned to 30 years later, he couldn’t tell left from right, he says. When he was abducted, South Korea’s income per person was about $2,000 a year (at purchasing-power parity), roughly equal to North Korea’s at the time. As a sherman, Mr Lee counted as comfortably mid- dle-class. By the time he returned in 2000, South Korea’s income per per- son had grown almost tenfold (see chart, next page). In 2010 the country became one of only 15 in the world with a GDP of over $1trillion. A list of sources is at Two years after Mr Lee’s capture, Hyundai began work on a ship- Economist.com/specialreports yard in Ulsan, Mr Lee’s southern home town. The yard is now the biggest An audio interview with in the world. Its red Goliath cranes hoist walls of steel measuring 20m by the author is at Economist.com/audiovideo/ 40m in nine dry docks, making vast container ships and sophisticated specialreports drilling vessels for customers from 48 countries. Internationally compet- 1 The Economist October 26th 2013 1 SPECIAL REPORT THE KOREAS 2 itive industries like these have helped make South Korea the Tumen A I world’s seventh-biggest exporter of goods. S GDP per person S And not only goods. Instead of the waves that haunted Mr Unggi U 1990 $ at PPP*, ’000 C H I N A R Najin 25 Lee’s dreams, a Korean wave of lms, music and soap operas has Puryong inundated Asia and begun to spread beyond. South Korea, so Chongjin 20 long subject to foreign inuence, is now inuencing others. One Chasong Hyesan Kanggye 15 of its diplomats heads the United Nations. Lady Gaga wears its Kapsan Kilchu fashions. The South Korean rapper Psy created the most- Chosan Songjin 10 watched YouTube clip ever. Even in Pyongyang, North Korea’s Huichon Changjin Pukchong 5 capital, South Korean music and drama circulates widely, if fur- Sinuiju Hamhung Sinpo Anju Kumho tively, on memory sticks and DVDs. Youngsters are wearing their Yongbyon Yonghung 0 hair styled like their Southern cousins. 1970 80 90 2000 10 Wonsan Back in 1970 South Korea was ruled by Park Chung-hee, Pyongyang Nampo North N O R T H South whose daughter, Park Geun-hye, now holds the presidency. But Kosong Population, m in the intervening years the polity she heads has travelled almost Sariwon K O R E A Haeju 50 as far as the economy. Her father came to power in a coup in 1961, Cheorwon Yanggu 38TH P ARA LLEL Kaesong then in 1972 dissolved the National Assembly and introduced a Chuncheon Kangyang 40 NORTHERN Seoul Seongnam newly authoritarian constitution. His daughter, by contrast, won LIMIT LINE Incheon Ullung do 30 Suwon the presidency last December in a free and fair election, South Yeonpyeong Yongin Chingju Korea’s sixth since 1987. She racked up the highest share of the Island Cheongju 20 Anmon-doy S O U T H Yondok vote since her father’s victory in 1971. Daejon 10 Kunsan K O R E A Puhang Poignant reminder Jeonju 0 Yellow Daegu 1970 80 90 2000 12 If South Koreans want to remind themselves of the pro- S e a Gwangju Changwon Ulsan *Purchasing-power parity gress they have enjoyed, they need only look north, where men Sources: The Maddison Project; Busan UN Population Division on average measure up to 8cm less and die 12 years sooner. North Mokpo Korea’s Kim dynasty is now in its third generation, with power Tsushima passing in 2011to Kim Jong Un, who may not yet be 30 (no one is (To Japan) quite sure) but models his gestures and embraces on those of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. The country’s output of cereals, which Jeju Jeju do collapsed in the mid-1990s, has only just regained the level it 100 km J A P A N reached in 1982. A visiting NGO hoping to improve yields on a collective farm had to dust o agricultural techniques that had not been used in the south for decades. To help its electrical tions are a ticket to the best jobs, and the best jobs are still concen- equipment cope with the north’s wild swings in current, it had to trated in the government, the banks and the chaebol (the big order a voltage stabiliser not seen in the south since the 1980s. family-owned conglomerates). In escaping to the south, Mr Lee achieved a personal reuni- South Korea’s working-age generation faces a triple burden. cation that still eludes his country as a whole. But he did not It must take care of older people, who are growing in number, nd it easy. In the north he had been a mechanic, making ships’ younger people, who are expensive to educate, and perhaps engines, but when he looked for similar work in the south he eventually North Koreans, who will have to be integrated into found that it was now done by machines. Still, his predicament is the economy if the two Koreas are ever reunied. Daunted by shared by many older South Koreans who have not managed to these burdens, many South Korean women are delaying child- keep up with a now much more sophisticated economy. birth and having fewer children. The country’s fertility rate has South Korea does not make best use of these older workers, fallen further and faster than in almost any other country. Its who constitute a growing proportion of the country’s popula- population, which surpassed 50m last year, is projected to fall tion. It forces many of them to retire prematurely instead of re- below that number again by 2045. training and re-educating them. By contrast, it overeducates its Many young South Koreans are trying to forget their ties to young, who toil away in expensive crammers and devote years the north. Their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were preoc- to preparing for the university entrance exam. Families compete cupied with the communist enemy, their fear and loathing kept with each other in an educational arms race that is almost as ru- alive by heavy propaganda during the years of dictatorship. The inous as the military competition with the north.