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Voices Nov. 3, 2025 / 11:52 PM
The 12 myths of Korean unification
By David Maxwell
https://www.upi.com/Voices/2025/11/03/korea-Korean-unification-myths/9411762228673/
A visitor looks at North Korea through binoculars at Aegibong Peace Ecopark observatory in Gimpo, South Korea, on Saturday, February 24, 2024. File Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 3 (UPI) --
Breaking the Mental Cage
For 70 years, the world has repeated the same tired excuses for why the Korean Peninsula must remain divided. These excuses have hardened into myths that have become mental cages that limit imagination, weaken will and excuse inaction. Division has been normalized; unification dismissed as fantasy. Yet division is the abnormal condition. Unification is the natural future. The Korean Peninsula will never know peace, stability or dignity until it is one Korea again.
Unification is not an idealistic dream. It is the only strategy that ends the nuclear threat, ends the Korean War, liberates 26 million Koreans and establishes lasting peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia. The only obstacle is the persistence of false narratives that discourage preparation and political courage. It is time to shatter these myths.
Myth 1: North and South are different peoples now.
Indoctrination is not identity.
Seventy years of dictatorship can distort worldview, but it cannot erase millennia of shared culture, language and destiny. The Japanese occupation failed to extinguish Korean identity, and so too will the Kim family regime. Koreans in the north and South are still one people. There are the "two miracles;" one on the Han River in Seoul that the whole world knows. The other is on the Taedong River in Pyongyang and the real miracle there is that after seven decades of dictatorial and oppressive rule 26 million Koreans in the North still endure. When Koreans are given opportunity, they thrive; when they face hardship, they survive. Unification will reveal that shared resilience and shared resourcefulness, not erase them.
Myth 2: Unification is too expensive.
Division is far costlier.
The economic, military and human toll of maintaining an armistice state with constant mobilization, nuclear blackmail, sanctions enforcement and crisis management drains both nations. Unification, by contrast, will unleash the peninsula's combined economic power and create a larger, more resilient market.
As economist Nicholas Eberstadt and others have argued, a free and unified Korea would be one of the world's great growth engines, anchoring prosperity from Vladivostok to Tokyo.
Myth 3: The Kim regime will never collapse.
No dictatorship in modern history has endured forever.
Each appeared stable until the moment it fell. The Kim regime is brittle, sustained only by fear, repression and isolation. Its survival depends on sealing the information space and deceiving its own citizens. History suggests such regimes collapse suddenly, not gradually. As analyst Robert Collins has documented, totalitarian systems die from internal contradictions long before outsiders see the cracks. Korea and the world must be prepared.
Myth 4: North Koreans won't accept freedom.
The Korean people in the North hunger for food, dignity, opportunity and truth, not servitude.
Escapees prove that once exposed to reality, Koreans from the North adapt quickly and productively. They are not broken; they are blocked. The only people who believe Koreans from the North cannot handle freedom are those who have never lived under tyranny themselves.
Myth 5: China and great powers won't allow unification.
Great powers fear chaos, not unification.
If Korea leads with clarity, preparation and confidence, the region will adjust. No free nation ever waited for permission to end an artificial division. Beijing's long-term ambition is to remove U.S. forces from the Asian mainland; ironically, a stable, non-nuclear, unified Korea may achieve that peace far better than a fragile, divided one. The goal is a United Republic of Korea; a secure, non-nuclear, economically vibrant nation, and governed by liberal democratic principles under the rule of law and respect for human rights as determined by the Korean people.
Myth 6: The status quo is safer.
The status quo is the danger.
North Korea's survival depends on perpetual provocation, blackmail diplomacy and the maintenance of crisis. Division is not peace; it is a permanent pre-war condition. The Kim regime does not seek peaceful coexistence; it seeks domination of the peninsula under the rule of the "guerrilla dynasty and gulag state." Every missile test, cyberattack and assassination attempt is proof that coexistence is an illusion.
Myth 7: South Koreans no longer care about unification.
Apathy is born of silence, not conviction.
For decades, the South's success created complacency. Deterrence worked so well that unity became abstract. Yet when the truth of life in the North is taught -- especially to youth -- support rises. The challenge is not disinterest but disengagement. When given a voice, the Korean people will rediscover their shared purpose.
Myth 8: Democracies cannot integrate former totalitarian subjects.
History proves otherwise.
Germany, Eastern Europe, the Baltics, South Africa all integrated citizens who had lived under tyranny. Integration is difficult but achievable, and democracies are uniquely capable of it because they do not fear freedom. The same universal human rights that liberated those societies belong to all Koreans.
Myth 9: Unification will trigger war.
Division is what can trigger war.
The Kim regime manufactures crises to survive. Peace does not come from freezing history in place; it comes from ending the war -- politically, legally and strategically. The 1953 Armistice was never peace; it was a pause. Only a new political settlement, a free, unified Korea, can close the chapter of the Korean War.
Myth 10: Unification is unrealistic.
"Realism" often hides fear behind the mask of prudence.
History rewards nations that choose courage. Germany unified. Vietnam unified. Dozens of divided and colonized peoples have unified. Korea is no exception -- unless Koreans choose to accept division as destiny.
Myth 11: Unification would tilt Korea toward China or Russia.
A free Korea will align with freedom.
A unified Korea born through liberty will not drift toward authoritarian powers. Beijing's coercive behavior with its economic bullying, information warfare and interference in Korean affairs has revealed its intentions. A free and unified Korea will stand for democratic values and the rules-based international order, not against them.
Myth 12: Unification means losing U.S. bases in Korea.
A sovereign U-ROK will decide its security partnerships.
Some will argue that unification should mean the withdrawal of U.S. forces. But the future of the alliance must rest on mutual interest, not ideology. A strong U.S.-Korea partnership that adapts to new realities will remain the cornerstone of regional stability.
The Real Battle: Myths as Psychological Weapons
Myths persist because they serve someone.
They serve Pyongyang's propaganda.
They serve foreign powers who benefit from division.
They serve politicians who fear responsibility.
They serve the global tendency toward apathy and distraction.
Myths are psychological weapons designed to paralyze. The antidote is truth and will. The Korean people are not prisoners of history; they are its authors. The time has come to reject the mythology of division and prepare strategically, morally, and institutionally for the only path to enduring peace without nuclear weapons and the suffering of 26 million Korean people: a free and unified Korea or a new nation as a United Republic of Korea.
Unification first. Then denuclearization. The path to unification is through information and human rights.
David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional and political warfare. He is vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. After he retired, he became associate director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.
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