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Reciprocity Between South and North Korea and Desirable Unification Culture Based on Lao-tzu’s Unification Concept

Dohak Hur 1

1

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to approach today’s unification problem through Lao-tzu’s wisdom. The most delicate thing to deal with among various unification problems is reciprocity between South and North Korea. The principle of reciprocity looks easy to practice but is actually hard to do, so depending on the point of view for dealing with this, the content will vary in many ways. In today’s context, what is the desirable form of reciprocity, and what kind of character should the inter-Korean unification culture - the community of the unification culture - have so that such a desirable reciprocity will be produced? Those are the matters that this article brings up, and the answers can be as follows. First, the viewpoint of Lao-tzu’s unification conception is not confined within things. Balance, harmony, arrangement, and peace for the society of mankind are all understood as the status of unification, which means that the current South-North division is the status of unbalance and anti-arrangement. Second, the notion of relativism, which is the core of Lao-tzu’s unification conception, is vague and complicated concerning truth. One example is the antagonistic unification, that is, confronting but orienting toward unification with each other. The reciprocity between South and North Korea can be dealt with vaguely through such relativism. Third, reinstatement and hsiao-kuo-kua-min (小國寡民, small state and sparse population), which constitute other core terms in Lao-tzu’s unification concept, show that a humanistic approach is very important in the discussion for unification. In particular, in the case of South Korea, where the social atmosphere is turbulent due to globalization, the South will be awakened if it does not lose the past and the purity toward one nation, in which case, the discussion over the unification culture and the community of the unification culture can be continued. Finally, Lao-tzu’s unification concept is, in fact, that of integration. The reason for using the expression Unification Concept in the title of this article is because the word unification can easily convey the meaning. Some insist, however, that the interchange between the South and the North should be normalized by developing the concept of integration rather than that of unification, as shown in a sociocultural community. The uniqueness of Lao-tzu’s unification conception is its flexibility to receive any idea, whether about unification or integration.

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