To Europe by train?

To Europe by train?

by Lidia Okorokova at 19/01/2012 20:14

It’s been a month since North Korea’s  “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, passed away from a heart attack in his armored train. We were told that he died inspecting the country’s readiness for the 100th anniversary of the birthday of his father, Kim Il-sung.

Here in Seoul, the capital of neighboring South Korea, which has long had an extremely tense relationship with its totalitarian northern neighbor, the fact that Kim Jong-il is dead has not made a visible impact on day-to-day life.

Appearances can be deceiving, however.

As the media broadcast news of Kim Jong-il’s death on December 19, 2010, people went about their lives: adults rushed off to work, schoolchildren and college students went to class.

As Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of the late Kim Jong-il, was declared North Korea’s new leader, ordinary South Koreans did not at first glance appear to care a whole lot about the major changes happening not far away in Pyongyang.

© RIA Novosti. / Vadim Vodyanickiy

Animal-drawn transport in North Korea, where the economy continues to suffer

Yet while North Koreans were busy uniformly grieving for television cameras, South Koreans have nevertheless had a variety of private reactions to the death of Kim Jong-il.

As recently as March 2010, a shoot-out occurred between North and South Korea, resulting in the deaths of four people. The flare-up of violence put on hold on ongoing nuclear weapons negotiations between Russia, the U.S., Japan, China and the two Koreas.

Following the death of Kim Jong-il, the younger generation of South Koreans dared to hope that the conflict threatening their peninsula will cease, even as the South Korean government put the country on military alert, fearing possible attacks from the North.

I learned about Kim Jong-il’s via a text message from a local friend. In the days that followed, I could see that the younger generation of South Koreans is now enthusiastic about possible changes on the Korean peninsula.

Young Koreans even anticipate that the border between their country and South Korea will open, and they will be able to travel as far as Europe by train (ironically enough, Kim Jong-il always preferred to travel by railway).

Yet the older generation, one which has long witnessed conflict between the two nations, has shown signs of being concerned about the death of Kim Jong-il and what the future may hold.

© RIA Novosti. / Alexandr Kryazhev

A street in the South Korean capital of Seoul

Two weeks after his passing, I was sitting in one of the few Western-style cafes in Seoul and chatting to its owner owner, a man in his late 50’s. He explained that the possibility of reunification for the two Koreas is a long way off.

“Koreans are very close-minded, because we have been influenced for centuries by China and Japan,” he said, explaining how such a rigid local mentality greatly impacts the chances of peaceful coexistence today.

This is all besides the fact that North Korea’s militaristic regime exists in stark contrast to its more open, economically developed neighbor. In 2008, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak dropped the Sunshine Policy developed by his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for cooperation efforts with North Korea. The Sunshine Policy was supposed to help North Korea grow its economy in order to match South Korea’s economic boom and give more chances for reunification, but was eventually declared a failure.

The fact is that for many older South Koreans, talking about the North is altogether impossible. As the saying goes – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.

“In primary school, I was told that North Koreans look like pigs,” a local lawyer in his late 20’s pointed out. “What would you expect from the older generation to tell you?”