However hard we try to minimize the risks of unification, Lee is quite sure it will be a disaster. He still remembers the ruin of East Germany when he visited right after the Berlin Wall collapsed and the shock he felt became the source of his bleak vision of a unified Korea…
…Does this mean that the author is skeptical of or against unification? Quite the opposite. Lee believes that the tragedy will give an opportunity for the divided nation to at last break off the shackles of the 20th century and the by-product of the cold war…
…The cold war may have ended in the West with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall but it lives on in the Korean peninsula in the form of barbed wire and landmines and in mutual hatred that divides a nation. The author’s hope is for that nation to finally overcome the wake of the cold war and to find its own path into the 21st century.
This novel says Korean unification will be a disaster and that’s exactly why it’s necessary
(featured image: Flickr/yeowatzup)