‘분열된’ 통일 동학의 내적 요인

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze factors behind the low interest in unification and the stagnation of the increase in sympathies for unification that have emerged recently in our society with a focus on the internal factors behind the divisions of unification dynamics. Until recently, our society tended to explain the stagnation of unification discourses and sympathies for unification using external factors such as the worsening security environments of the Korean peninsula and the related vicious cycles of politics in both North and South Korea. However, it is not enough to mobilize external factors such as the military threats of North Korea to explain the low interests in unification in our society. The militancy and threats of provocation of the North Korean regime have been, to some extent, relatively constant since the founding moments of the regime in 1948 up to now. Our results show that the dissemination of negative perspectives regarding unification have come from the divisions of internal unification dynamics, rather than from having been imposed unilaterally by military threats from North Korea and conflicts between North and South Korea. If this is the case, the key to resolving problems surrounding this issue would be to create social environments in which beliefs in coexistence, based on a firm sense of national security, should be promoted regardless of political faction. Further, political use of the unification issue should be avoided in order to produce sustainable unification policies based on visions of unification of the Korean peninsula.