Abstracts:  

There are plenty of differences in the state-administrative structure and concepts of its transformations in the recent Russian Federation and South Korea. The most significant is the fact that Russia is preoccupied by preserving the unity of the federation and tolerance among the numerous ethnoses inhabiting it. Korea, in its turn, is making attempts to create a confederation of the two Korean states, with reunification of the country to follow. Moscow and Seoul are trying to realize the project on the formation of global communities of compatriots known under the names “Russkiy Mir”^[1] and “Global Korean Commonwealth” (GKC).  This presentation studies the notion of the “Global Korean Commonwealth” under which its advocates understand the unification of the North and South Koreas forming one  single country plus “the third Korea”^[2], consisting of all overseas Koreans. An attempt is made to compare the key notion of the GKC with such quasi-terms as “Korean super ethnos” and “Korean meta-nation” invented by the Russian-speaking philosophers – ethnic Koreans from Russia and Uzbekistan.  As the formation of the GKC is based on the hypothetical unified Korea, this paper studies the concepts of the unification and the role of overseas Koreans in inter-Korean relations.

Introduction 

In speaking about the global (world) Korean commonwealth we should first define the main notion - commonwealth which in Korean is kongdongch'e  (공동체 / 共同體) and semantically does not coincide with the notion of  ‘commonwealth’ in English. The roots of the notion of a commonwealth go back to the early 19th c. when the British Empire allowed its colonies to be self-governed. It was British Prime Minister Rosebery who first used the term in 1884 during his visit to Australia.^[3]

 The history of Western civilization has a lot of similar examples of Commonwealth also known as confederations. In the late middle ages in Europe there was a Swiss Confederation - Confoederatio Helvetica. As a result of the Dutch bourgeois revolution of the 16th c. there appeared a confederative Republic of Unified Provinces (the official name-Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden). The German Union was formed in 1815 on the ruins of the Holy Roman Empire and united about 30 countries before it was dissolved in 1866. On the other side of the Atlantic in the southern part of the USA from 1861 to 1865 there was the Confederation of 13 southern states that were pro-slavery. The history of the American confederates was a short one and ended in their defeat in the American Civil War against the northern states. 

From Confederation of mono-ethnic States to national Unification

The imaginary confederation of the North and South Koreas has little in common with previous world experience. It goes without saying that the specific nature of the conditional concept “Korean Confederation” is defined by the geo-political and geo-economic realities of the modern time. However, in my opinion, confederations of the Western world were formed as military-political unions of provinces, states, and countries with various ethnic compositions. In the case with the Korean confederation we are speaking about a mono-ethnic people.   

For a long time, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung has been considered the initiator of the idea of a confederative Korean state. He first used the term in his speech devoted to the 15th anniversary of the liberation of Korea in August, 1960.  However,  Prof. Balazh Shalontai on the basis of the archival documents writes that even earlier in June of that year during a private meeting Nikita Khruschev asked Kim Il Sung whether he wanted to put forward an idea of a confederation of the North and South and immediately got consent.^[4] Thus, the initiative of the Kremlin turned into the concept by Kim Il Sung and 20 years later at the VI Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) he again verbalized it and offered to form the Democratic Confederative Republic Koryo - 고려민주련방공화국, 高麗民主聯邦共和國  ( Koryŏ minju ryŏnbang gonghwaguk) .   

According to Juche and the Constitution of the country, North Korea supports peaceful reunification without interference of third parties.  Kim Il Sung’s initiative of a single Confederative Korean State while preserving the existing public-political systems of the PDRK and the Republic of Korea has been canonized in the North Korean concept of unification. Originally the North Korean variant of confederation was not welcomed in Seoul because they saw only unilateral benefits for Pyongyang and thought that the creation of a state based on the principle of “one country - two systems” was not realistic.

However, little by little the visions of the North and South started to get closer. The platform for the search of the “golden mean” became the Korean nationalism, typical for both Koreas and incorporating the ideas of post-colonialism, communism, Juche and Confucianism. Korean nationalism was manifested in two forms: state and ethnic nationalism. They are also called “nationalism developing from the top-down nationalism” and “grassrootsnationalism”^[5]. The North Korean propaganda praising Kim Il Sung’s Jucheism, states that the “Korean nation” will become the “greatest in the world” making it superior and exclusive. Similar phrases and self-esteems can be heard in the South too, which is why many Western scholars think that works by South Korean professors are quite nationalistic.       

The idea of a confederation of the Korean states as an intermediate step in the process of the nation unification has become close to both Pyongyang and Seoul when a President from the Democratic Party entered the Blue Palace. In 2016 at the VII Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) Kim Jong-un – the grandson of Kim Il Sung confirmed his commitment to the policy of independent reunification of the country and formation of the Democratic Confederative Republic of Koryo. He also encouraged the people to be ready for a forced unification with the South Korea in case of its aggression against the PDRK.^[6] He also insisted on the withdrawal of the American troops from the South, signing a Peace treaty with the USA, and resolving all the issues of cooperation and unification of the country without any interference from outside or, as they put it in Pyongyang Literary Korean, “uri minzok kiri”, i.e. “between us – Koreans”. The third Kim announced that only realization of those preliminary conditions may serve as a basis for Pyongyang to refuse from its nuclear program. In South Korea they considered different scenarios of unification but the aim remained the same - unification of Korea meant formation on the Korean peninsula of a unitary state based on liberal democracy and market economy. In September 1989 President Roh Tae-woo announced “The Korean National Community Unification Formula” (한민족 공동 채 통일 방안).^[7] The South Korean unification concept through the formation of a 'national community was given different names by ensuing presidents of the country, but it was a part and parcel of the three stages in the process of unification: national reconciliation and cooperation, formation of a Korean Commonwealth, and realization of a unitary state.^[8]

Projects of a step-by-step unification of Korea proposed Pyongyang and Seoul are similar in their essence. During periods of thawing relations North and South Koreas went through points of convergence and short-term periods of closer contacts but they never approached the second stage – formation of a Korean Commonwealth – and eventually got back to the first stage.  The second stage includes reaching the “point of no return” when it is possible to move only forward as the progress achieved in the inter-Korean relations and financial and material expenses and, most of all, the gained unity of the Korean people will start pushing the processes of unification only in the progressive direction. Formation of a confederation will be a very important transition stage before a unitary state is created. However, the loud rhetoric of Seoul and Pyongyang is full of fears that the opposite side is preparing a German-style scenario of unification-absorption.  That is the fundamental difference between Pyongyang and Seoul in the vision of the ultimate goal of the confederation of the two states. The question is who will absorb whom, preserving its own state-political and economic system?

The imaginary summand of the GKC

The third Korea, i.e. all overseas Koreans, is an important component in the formation of the North Korean Confederation and South Korean Commonwealth.  North Korea calls the Koreans living outside of the Korean Peninsula “hae-oe kungmin” (해외 국민) or “overseas citizens”, while South Korea uses the term “chaeoe kungmin” (재외 국민), i.e. “foreign citizens”. Regarding localization, the South Korean variant is more precise as the Koreans in China, Russia, and Central Asia are not separated by sea or ocean from their historical motherland, and therefore they are not overseas Koreans. As for the name “kukmin” (국민) , i.e. “citizen”, both sides are wrong because not all foreign Koreans possess the DPRK or Republic of Korea passports.

In the South there are many other words to call their foreign kinfolk.  Until recently the word “kyop'o” (교포) has been widely used, however, it carried some negative connotation: the people who are not just living outside their motherland but who also have lost ties with it. That is why another word started to be used in its place - “tongp'o” (동포), meaning “brothers, people of the same descent”, “foreign compatriots”. The notion “tongp'o” is more precise in defining the population of the Koreans abroad and bears the connotation of trans-nationality, emphasizing the community of foreign Koreans. The notion of “kyop'o”, to the contrary, is focused on the ties with the national state. There are even more differences in the names.

All Chinese abroad are called huáqiáo (華僑) irrespective of in what country they live and how long. It is different with Koreans and it is more complicated as the Chinese Koreans are called cháoxiǎnzú (중국 조선족;  中国朝鲜族), Japanese Koreans - zainichi chōsen-jin ( 在日朝鮮人), American Koreans – hangukgye-migukin (한국계 미국인) or in popular parlance - jaemi kyop'o (재미 교포), the CIS Koreans - koryoin (고려인 or koryo-saram                      (고려사람) etc. 

The modern Korean immigrants represent two big groups: those who resettled at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th cc. and their descendants who have turned into a diaspora, and new immigrants who started to move to others countries in the second half of 1960s. They are significantly different from each other as regards their geography of origin, initial age, gender and social status, citizenship, mentality, language competence, religion, and ties with the historical motherland. The countries that accepted modern Korean immigrants are different in their level of economic development, existing political systems, ethnic culture, religion, and languages.  

However, irrespective of the peculiarities of the recipient countries and the period of residence there all foreign Korean diasporas have a lot in common.  Local authorities and population consider the Korean communities in the countries of residence to be model, law-abiding (loyal) and labor-active ethnic minority, well-educated and materially well-off. Representatives of Korean diasporas often become prominent figures in political and business circles, in the spheres of science, education, and culture. Besides, foreign Koreans, in contrast to other Asian immigrant diasporas, demonstrate a high level of adaptation and acculturation in the new environment.

In the modern world there are at least 7 million ethnic Koreans united by their common ethnic origin. The unique feature of Korean immigrant and diasporic communities is that they have to correlate not only to their geographic place of origin of their ancestors but also to the two existing Korean states. By force of circumstances the attitude of Chinese and American Koreans to the North and South Koreas is considerably different. Moreover, sympathy and antipathy to Seoul and Pyongyang can divide those living in the same country, for instance,     “zainichi chōsen-jin” are divided its two camps: those who are members of the pro-South Korean organization “Mindan”[9] and those who are members of the pro-North Korean organization “Chongryon” or “Chōsen Sōren”.[10] Such division can be seen in other foreign Korean communities.  Even inside one family there exists a distance between the generations of parents and children as regards to language competence, system of values, life stilts, and mentality. Thus, it is clear why foreign Koreans can have different opinions and positions regarding the issue of unification of Korea.

The destiny of the CIS Koreans is unique as they are closely connected by their Soviet and even more distant past. They used to have the common language - Russian, which became native for them, good education, high level of inter-ethnic marriages, urbanized life style, similar mentality incorporating values and principles of the Western and Eastern civilizations. However, during the last twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union there appeared considerable differences among the Korean diasporas of the CIS that have divided the once united community of the “Soviet Koreans”.

Thus, there are no grounds to speak about even imaginary or virtual Third Korea, as there is no unity of foreign Koreans with one single idea or purpose. However, the absence of a single, organized community of foreign Koreans does not mean that American, Chinese, Russian, or Kazakhstani Koreans or to be precise, smart and prominent figures among them cannot contribute to the process of unification of the two Korean states.  

Professor Vladimir F. Lee in his presentation at the International conference devoted to the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Koreans from the Far East to Central Asia and Kazakhstan spoke about a very important contribution  made by the best representatives of the Soviet Korean elite to the process of improving  the inter-Korean dialog.^[11]  He mentioned some little-known facts, for instance, the contribution of the Deputy Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR  Georgiy F. Kim  to the development of Moscow foreign policy in the Korean Peninsula. He managed to convince some influential orientalist like Academician Primakov E.M., Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences and others that Moscow could play a much more important role in the process of peaceful unification of Korea, if it established balanced relations with Seoul and Pyongyang.  In October, 1988 the Central Committee of the Communist Party held a closed meeting with the leading political analysts including V. M. Falin - Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party.  As a result of that meeting “Analytical Note” was compiled and signed by Valentin M. Falin, Yevgeny M. Primakov - Director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations and Georgiy F. Kim. It stated the necessity of a radical turn for the USSR in its relations with South Korea and issues of the Korean Peninsula.

Lee V. F. offered many examples of the mediatory mission of famous Soviet (later Russian) Koreans. A special mention was made of  Kho Din  - Academician of the RANS[12], one of the founders of the Korean national movement in the USSR and Russia, who maintained close ties with a lot of friends and colleagues  in the Republic of Korea, China, USA, Japan and other countries, and was a member of many committees and commissions on peaceful unification of Korea .

Professor Lee V. F. himself made a great contribution to the theory of the issue of the divided Korea, mission of Russia in improving inter-Korean relations and ways of resolving the Korean problem.  It was not by chance that when he was the head of the Asian Pacific Center of the Russian Diplomatic Academy of the MFA, the future President of Korea and future Nobel Peace Prize winner - Kim Dae Jung  defended there his Ph.D. thesis “Tragedy and Hopes of the Korean Democracy”.^[13]   

We know many cases when peoples or countries were divided. Even peoples that do not or did not have their own states; Jews, Gypsies or Kurds can be called divided people. Situations with India, China, Germany, Korea, Vietnam and other countries do not provide answers to the question: what are the typical, similar and common features of such a phenomenon. In the Korean case, we speak about the division of one country into two states and one single people into two nations.   

The Terms Paraphrase of the Utopic Perspective 

Unification of Korea is a precondition for an imaginary Global Korean Community called by a Russian Korean philosopher Gerassim A. Yugai  “Korean super-ethnos”. He meant not their racial or ethno-genetic superiority but super-ethnic composition. A super-ethnos (Lat. super – above + Greek ἔθνος – people) in the passionary theory of ethnogenesis by the Russian scholar and thinker Lev N.  Gumilev is an ethnic system, the superior link in the ethnic  hierarchy composed of several ethnoses that simultaneously appeared in the same landscape region,   being interrelated by economic, ideological, and political communication and    manifesting itself in the history as a mosaic integrity. G. Yugai states that “Korean super-ethos originally, from the very beginning of its history was a supra-national formation, incorporating Tungus-Manchurian-Chinese-Korean tribes. Historically they gave rise to the two sources of Korean super-ethnos: Central Asian: including proto-Altaic tribes and proto-Chinese. Then the third source was added to those two: Austronesian tribes”.^[14]

Taking in consideration historical reality of the participation of different tribes in the ethnogenesis of all modern peoples of the world and “convergency cultures”, G. Yugai states that all ethnoses of the world and modern Russia are super-ethnoses.^[15] He calls the Russian Koreans, who organically adopted the non-Korean culture, “super ethnic hybrids”.

If one reads the brochure by G. Yugai attentively, one can came to the conclusion that he made an attempt to adapt his ideas about super-ethoses to the theory of L. Gumilev.    He thinks that Korean super-ethnoses exist as super-ethnic groups in the USA, China, Japan and other countries where the number of ethnic Koreans is at least several hundred thousand. The world Korean super-ethnos should unite the Korean nation, i.e. all Koreans on the Korean Peninsula and beyond. The ideas of super-ethnos of G. Yugai are rather vague and it is quite difficult to make it out behind countless excursuses into secondary aspects that have little to do with the original theory of super-ethos by L.  Gumilev.

A  great Eurasian, prominent historian and ethnologist Gumilev  summed up his concept shortly and clearly: A super-ethnos is a result of the distribution of passionarity in the space and time from the source of the ethnogenesis , appearing as a result of external, natural impact on the population living there. “Super-ethnos is defined not by its size but exclusively by the degree of its inter-ethnic closeness”.^[16]  In  this regard we can talk about the probability of formation of the Korean super-ethnos under the condition of unified Korea and consolidation of all foreign Koreans.

 Ten years later, after the publication of the work by the Russian philosopher on Korean super-ethnos, the idea of the “International Korean community” was voiced in Tashkent. Uzbekistani philosopher V. Khan initiated usage of the notion of a meta-nation instead of the earlier proposed term by his Russian colleague. He stated that “within the frameworks of the discussion of the concept of ‘super-ethnos’  (G.Yugai writes it as one word) the notion ‘super-ethnos’ itself has been criticized many times as the prefix -‘super’ was thought to express superiority of Koreans of other ethnoses. Such criticism seems fair, in my opinion.”^[17]   Instead, Khan proposed to use the familiar term “meta-nation” in the case with Koreans, claiming to be the pioneer of introducing the term into the academic discourse on the Korean ethnos.

There are two diametrically opposite points of view on “meta-nation” as a supra-ethnic community. The first one denies it, giving an example of the failed attempt to create a new formation - Soviet people, which was declared a supra-ethnic formation and new single population of all the peoples of the Soviet Union.  The declared single American nation uniting immigrants from different countries of the world according to one common criterion - United States citizenship, has many names-comparisons: “patchwork”, “salad bowl”. which clearly point to the fact that the “American melting pot” failed to produce a single “meta-nation”.   

According to the second point of view, the world is going through the process of formation and development of meta-nations: American, Chinese, Russian, Korean etc. The first three are the case of a supra-ethnic community and the last one - Korean is the case of a mono-ethnic community uniting the Koreans from North and South of the Korean Peninsula and all Koreans living abroad.

The modern world is facing a struggle between two tendencies: on the one hand, the nations are moving towards independence, creation or maintaining of the national states and, on the other hand, hey are striving to form bigger polyethnic communities, powerful super-nations. That is why, on the world map instead of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc there appeared about twenty new states, while on the other side of the world there is a concentration of power of the super-states and such supra-national alliances as the European Union,  ASEAN, or BRICS.  

There appeared another tendency with the aim of creating super-nations on the religious basis, for instance, in the Muslim world there is a movement for establishing of an Islamic state or  “Worldwide Caliphate”.

As for the consolidation of the foreign Koreans into the so-called “Third Korea”, actually it does not exit. All numerically big Korean communities in China, USSR, USA, and Japan are living in parallel worlds without any significant contacts among them. After the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc there were no noticeable changes in the process of establishing long-lasting and stable ties among the foreign Korean diasporas and immigrant communities. More than that, to the existing division of the Japanese Koreans into the pro-South and pro-North Koreans was added the fragmentation of the once single community of the Soviet Koreans who became “Uzbek”, “Kazakhstani”, “Russian”, and other Koryo-in. In many western countries there are no interrelations between the so-called “old and new-comers” in the immigrant Korean community, i.e. early resettles who have already gone through the process of acculturation in recipient countries and the new-comer’s compatriots.     

Until the end of the 20th c. the ethnic motherland - North and South Koreas have not had any developed strategy regarding their foreign compatriots. The reasons for it go back to the Cold War era and bipolar division of the world and were explained by weak economy and lack of financial means for millions of foreign compatriots and the unsolved question: who should be considered as such? North Korea directed all of its motherly love at those loyal to it members of Chongryon. In South Korea there was a prolonged discussion involving politicians, scholars, mass media, non-governmental organizations and leaders of foreign Korean communities that covered a wide range of issues. Firstly, who can be considered compatriots? Secondly, what kind of identity should be considered determining for foreign Koreans: national or ethnic? Thirdly, how to define periods in the history of emigration and repatriation; fourthly, it is necessary to understand what is more preferable for South Korea: to support and preserve numerically important and influential foreign Korean diasporas or to open the doors for repatriation of compatriots. Fifth, how to get feedback from foreign diasporas and consolidate them around their historical motherland. And finally, what should be done for establishing a “deterritorialized national state” incorporating all foreign compatriots?^[18] Many of those key questions have remained without any answer.

Conclusion   

There are two obvious tendencies on the Korean peninsula: on one hand, it is preservation of the two national states with different social-political and economic systems, on the other, dreams and plans to unite the country and create a single Korea being cherished by both Seoul and Pyongyang. However, the way it will look is seen differently to the south or north of the 38th parallel and the concept of unification is far from the consensus. It is proposed that in the case of unification there can be preconditions for the unification of all the Koreans in the world and formation of the Korean meta-nation. However, it is highly possible that such preconditions will not even appear. Nobody talks about meta-nations or super-nations in unified Germany or Vietnam, not to mention Yemen. All the attempts of wishful thinking or illusory World Korean community called by different quasi-terms bring to the memory a good Russian proverb about not putting the cart before the horse.

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