The Costs of Korean Unification: Realistic Lessons from the German Case

Author(s)

Rüdiger Frank

Abstract

German unification is often used as a preview on what is going to happen in Korea. Such a position is rejected in this article.
Not only have the costs of German unification been grossly overestimated or misinterpreted, the costs in the Korean case will in many areas be lower than in Germany, and the benefits of unification will be much bigger, which further decreases the net costs. South Korea will, however, experience problems of a structural nature that have not occurred in Germany. The potential role of external partners for shouldering the costs of unification should also not be underestimated in the Korean case, although it will come at a political price. Finally, a highly speculative but not completely unrealistic scenario of unification is briefly presented that would incur almost no unification costs at all.

Organisation(s)

Department of East Asian Studies

Journal

Korea's Economy

Pages

93-100

ISSN

0894-6302

Publication date

03-2016

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

506007 International relations

Keywords

Portal url

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/the-costs-of-korean-unification-realistic-lessons-from-the-german-case(c0d11c2c-9996-4958-addb-22c73000921c).html