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—tf£W YORK, FRIDAY, JANUARY 1,1971 —
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Korean Unification Through Peaceful Means
To the Editor:
A full quarter of a century ago the
people of Korea, north and south alike,
burst into tears of joy and extreme emotion over the country's liberation from more than thirty years of
foreign occupation. Today, the "Land
of the Morning Calm" remains divided,
the people—who share the same ancestry, language and heritage — are still
separated by an arbitrary demarcation
line.
The hatred between these two
brothers has reached a height un-
equaled in history. Truly, the Korean
people are appalled at the extent of
the damage inflicted upon their mentality by the ideologically divided
world. The Korean people remember
that the 1950's were markedly war,
destruction and human suffering of
untold magnitude; the 1960's call to
mind the student uprisings toppling
the dictator Syngman Rhee, the military coup ushering in Gen. Chung
Hee Park's rule and the escalation of
North Korean provocation culminating
in the Pueblo incident.
The 1970's will probably see more
of the same — turbulence, cataclysmic
events and crises. The cardinal challenge facing the Korean people will
continue to be the unfinished task of
their national unification.
North and South Korea unanimously
agree on the basic objective of ending
the painfully long partition of the
country. However they are poles apart
as to the means of accomplishing the
common goal, more particularly, to
the composition of a unified Korean
regime.  __
An industrial North Korea and an
agricultural South Korea were artificially divided by the superpowers,
and the Korean problems were created
by the major powers. If the responsible
powers are truly concerned with the
fate of the Korean people, surely settlement for Korean reunification can
be made.
Instead of intensifying military provocations along the armistice line,
North and South Korean authorities,
under great-power sponsorship, must
put forward a proposal to meet at
Panmunjom for a transitional step to
conduct correspondence, travel, commerce and cultural intercourse between the north and the south. Accordingly the two superpowers should
propose a political conference at
Panmunjom comprising the delegations from the two Koreas, the two
superpowers, Communist China and
Great  Britain, representing   the
other fourteen free nations that participated in the Korean War.
Without a generous plan for Korean-
ization   with   military   hardware,   the
two superpowers can best serve their
countries by fulfilling their pledges to
seek a world peace by unifying North
and   South   Korea   through   peaceful
means. Kyung-cho Chung
Executive Director
Korean Research Council
Carmel, Calif., Dec. 20, 1970
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