A Global Korean Commonwealth in the context of  Confederation vs Reunification of Korea  

German Kim

Abstracts:  

The year 2020 marked the 30^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relation between Russia (Soviet Union) and Republic of Korea. Despite of a plenty of differences in the ideology and policy Moscow and Seoul are trying to realize a  similar project on the formation of global communities of compatriots known under the names “Russkiy Mir”^[1] and “Global Korean Commonwealth”. However, Russia is preoccupied with preserving the unity of the federation and numerous inhabiting ethnoses. Korea, in its turn, attempts to create a confederation of the two Korean states with the following reunification of the country.

This paper studies the notion of the “Global Korean Commonwealth” meaning the union of North and South Koreans plus all Koreans living abroad and compares it with such quasi-terms as “Korean super ethnos” and “Korean meta-nation” invented by the Russian-speaking philosophers. As the formation of the Global Korean Commonwealth is based on the hypothetical unified Korea, the paper is considering concepts of the reunification and the role of Korean Diasporas in inter-Korean relations.

Introduction

Currently over 7 million Koreans are living permanently abroad consisting of descendants of the early emigrants from the Korean Hermit Kingdom – Choson, as well as of new emigres mainly from South Korea. The Korean Diasporas of China, the United States, Japan, Canada, and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) make over 85 % of all overseas Koreans.  Numerous ethnic Koreans are scattered in many countries of the world.  The Korean communities abroad are very diverse in terms of origin, historical background and lifestyles.  However, in the last decades in the academic and socio-political discourse in South Korea and other countries one can come across such new notions as a Global Korean Commonwealth, World Korean Community ( 최진욱, 2007;  Park Jung-Sun,  Paul Y. Chang, 2005: 1-17), Korean super-ethnos (Югай, 2003) or meta-nation etc.  (Хан, 2007)

Speaking about the Global 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. British Prime Minister Rosebery first used the term in 1884 during his visit to Australia.^[2]

 The history of Western civilization has many 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. 

A great bulk of studies are devoted to the consideration of the various topics related to the political or military confederation of the states; unification of the counties vs reunification of the countries; unions, alliances, leagues or associations of overseas compatriots. Even a list of the most significant academic books on the topic would take a considerable part of this article. Of special interest and importance for this article was the research of the unique mission for all overseas Koreans – their contribution to the process of unification of the North and the South of Korea into a single state and formation of a single Korean nation.

The role of the overseas Korean Diasporas in the process of development and strengthening of the inter-Korean relations is studied within the frameworks of the modern concepts of the public diplomacy acting as an additional and auxiliary means in the official international relations. (Nye, 2004; Melissen, 2005). The author sticks to the axiom of purposefulness and effectiveness of the synergy of the hard and soft powers in the foreign policy and diplomacy.  ( McClellan, 2004)  He considers Korean Diasporas to be important actors in the modern public diplomacy, which is especially true of the ties of the post-Soviet Koreans with the two Korean states that appeared after the division of the single historical motherland, and their mediator’s function in the inter-Korean relations.     An attempt is made to justify the priority of the possibilities and efforts of the best representatives of the Soviet and post-Soviet Korean Diaspora elite that is essential in the public policy between the actual (real) and historical motherlands.

1.   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. (Szalontai , 2005: 48) 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 “grassroots nationalism”( Ли Сын Чул, 2006: 21-22). 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. (Посольство КНДР в РФ) 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). 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. (Park, 2014)

Projects of a step-by-step unification of Korea proposed by 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?

2.   The imaginary summand of the Global Korean Commonwealth

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” (재외국민), 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”[3] and those who are members of the pro-North Korean organization “Chongryon” or “Chōsen Sōren”.[4] 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 an  invaluable contribution made by the best representatives of the Soviet Korean elite to the process of improving the inter-Korean dialog.  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  change  of Kremlin foreign policy in the Korean Peninsula.  (Ли, 2007) He managed to convince some influential orientalist like Academician Yevgeny M. 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 Valentin 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.

Vladimir F. Lee offered many examples of the mediatory mission of famous Soviet (later Russian) Koreans. A special mention was made of Ho Jin (Ho Un-Bae - 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 . Ho JIn was known in Moscow as Ho Un-Bae but in the western studies of the origin of the North Korean regime, he is famous under his penname Lim Un (1982).   

Professor Vladimir F Lee 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 Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 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” (Ким, 1992)  

In the old past and in the contemporary world history has known 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.  

3.   The variety of notions for the mono-ethnic  commonwealths

Unification of Korea is a precondition for an imaginary Global Korean Community called by a Russian Korean philosopher Gerassim A. Yugai  “Korean super-ethnos” (Югай, 2003). 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. Gerassim  A. 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” (Югай, 2003).

Taking in consideration historical reality of the participation of different tribes in the ethnogenesis of all modern peoples of the world and “convergency cultures”, Gerassim A. Yugai states that all ethnoses of the world and modern Russia are super-ethnoses.  (Югай, 2003: 22).  He calls the Russian Koreans, who organically adopted the non-Korean culture, “super ethnic hybrids”.

If one reads the brochure by Yugai attentively, one can come to the conclusion that he made an attempt to adapt his ideas about super-ethoses to the theory of  Lev  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 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 Gumilev (Гумилев, 2019)

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”.  (Гумилев, 2019: 15)  In  this regard Yugai is stating about the probability of formation of the Korean super-ethnos under the condition of unified Korea and consolidation of all Koreans of the  world.

 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 Valery S. 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’  (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.” 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. (Хан, 2007)  

Actually, the idea of a supra-nation uniting people of different racial, ethnic, and social origin and having or trying to get common citizenship was realized through two models: American and Soviet. The American democracy was oriented at the unity in diversity (multiculturalism) and the Soviet autocracy tried to create homo soveticus and a new historical unity of people – the Soviet people. However, neither in the American nor in the Soviet academic discourse the notion of a metanation or meta-nation was used. 

Nevertheless, two Soviet ethnographers – as cultural anthropologists were called in the Soviet academic world, Solomon Brook and Nikolai Cheboksarov in 1984 published a joint article in English «Metaethnic Identities in Asia and Africa." (1984:49-73). The notion of мeta-ethnicity used by the Soviet academics describes a level of commonality that is wider ("meta-") than ethnicity, but does not necessarily correspond to nation or common citizenship. The neologism offered by them failed to become widely used in the academic discourse and did  ) not cause any active discussions neither in the Soviet Union, nor beyond its borders.  

 As mentioned above, thеre 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”.

Several years ago, Russian economist Ramil M. Yamilov published a paper describing a metanation (as in original text)  as the basis for the self-identification of the contemporary Russian society. The author rebels against the official concept of Putin’s administration on the national issue, which states that the Russian nation is a complex notion uniting the Russian nation as a political nation and the Russian nation as ethnic nation, actually being poly-ethnic, i.e. the Russian nation implies     civic and ethnic biuniqueness.  Yamilov states that the idea of the Russian nation is wrong as they should speak not about it but about the Russian metanation (supra-nation), i.e. the unity of multitude of nations formed during the course of history. (Ямилов: 264-271)

The so-called term “Third Korea” proposed by Russian historian Nikolay F. Bugay to name the hypothetical unity of all Koreans living beyond their historical motherland is just a nice figure of speech. In reality, all numerically big Korean communities in China, the 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 koryoin. 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?( Park, Chang.  2005:1 ) Many of those key questions have remained without any answer.

Conclusion  

The conclusions of the paper are manifold and multileveled. First,   there are two obvious tendencies on the Korean peninsula: on the one hand, there exist two national states with different social-political and economic systems; on the other hand, there are dreams and plans to unite the country and create a single Korea, cherished by both Seoul and Pyongyang. However, to the south and north of the 38th parallel, they have different visions of how it should look, and the consensus regarding the concept of unification is far from being reached.  

Secondly, the idea proposed by some post-Soviet scholars that the reunification of Korea can lead to the consolidation and integration of all Koreans living scattered all over the world, and finally to the formation of the Korean meta-nation lacks sufficient theoretical and empirical basis.   Therefore, the   notion of the Global Korean commonwealth should be revised, specified and verified.

Thirdly, all Koreans, including compatriots abroad are thinking and dreaming of the reunification of their motherland into a democratic, powerful and highly respected state and of a single Korean nation. However, only the Diaspora elite, consisting of the best representatives, can make a real, effective contribution to the strengthening and developing the inter-Korean relations.

Fourthly, among the elite of the Korean Diasporas in Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan there are outstanding personalities who are able to act as mediators in promoting better relations between North and South Koreas. Their mediation activities should be voluntary, neutral and systematic representing soft, stable and consistent public diplomacy as opposed to the official diplomacy characterized by its stiff and dependent on the political conjuncture nature.  Therefore, the focus in the mediation activities of the Diaspora elites should be on the humanitarian sphere: culture, education, art, sports. The content, forms and methods of public diplomacy can be very diverse, but they should not contradict the official foreign policy of the actual (real) and historical homelands, they should be complementary and auxiliary to the official diplomacy.

Finally, the Koreans overseas and especially in the CIS who are native Russian speakers, do not fully understand what is more advantageous for South Korea – to keep communities of ethnic Koreans abroad or repatriate the co-ethnics under the single national banner. Neither they see clearly the official position of the Korean government regarding the mission of the Korean compatriots and their institutions in the public policy between the kinstate (historical motherland) and host-state (actual motherland) and in improving the relationship between North and South Korea.

References

Бугай Н.Ф. 2005. «Третья Корея»: новая миссия и проблемы глобализации».  Москва,

Ким Дэ Чжун. 1992. «Южная Корея: драмы и надежды демократии». Дипломатическая  академия  МИД Российской  Федерации». М: Республика, 1992.

Ли Сын Чул. 2006. «Интеграция нации и общества разделенной Кореи в условиях мировых социальных изменений.» Автореферат диссертации на соискание ученой степени кандидата социологических наук. Санкт-Петербург

Гумилев Л.Н. 2019. «Этногенез и биосфера Земли». М.:  АСТ, 2019

Посольство КНДР в РФ.  «VII съезд Трудовой Партии Кореи».  https://prometej.info/vii-sezd-trudovoj-partii-korei/ (Accessed August 19, 2020)

Хан В. С.  2007. «К вопросу об этнической идентичности корейцев: на пути к мета-нации.» «Корейская диаспора в ретро и перспективе». Материалы международной конференции.  Алматы, 12-16.

Югай Г.А. 2003. «Общность народов Евразии - арьев и суперэтносов - как национальная идея. Россия и Корея». Москва, 2003.

Ямилов Р.М. 2017. «Метанация как основа самоидентификации российского социума». Гуманитарныенаучныеисследования.  2 (66): 264-271

Lim Un. 1982. “The founding of a dynasty in North Korea : an authentic biography of Kim Il-song” / translated from A secret history of the founding of a North Korean dynasty (in Japanese Kita Chosen ocho seiritsu hishi ) Tokyo : Jiyu-sha

McClellan, Michael. 2004. “Public Diplomacy in the Context of Traditional Diplomacy”,  Favorita Papers, Vol. 2004, No. 1, 23-32.

Melissen, Jan.2005. “The New Public Diplomacy: Between Theory and Practice”, in Jan Melissen (ed.), The New Public diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan), 3-27

Nye, Joseph S. 2004. «Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics». New York: Public Affairs

Park Jung-Sun and Paul Y. Chang. 2005.  “Contention in the Construction of a Global Korean Community: The Case of the Overseas Korean Act.”  The Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, 1-17.

Park, Young Ho. 2014. “South and North Korea’s Views on the Unification of the Korean Peninsula and Inter-Korean Relations.”  The 2nd KRIS-Brookings Joint Conference.  January 21-22, 2014, Seoul. www.brookings.edu › Park-Young-Ho-paper.  (Accessed July 18, 2020)

Szalontai, B., 2005. «Kim II Sung in the Khrushchev era: Soviet-DPRK relations and the roots of North Korean despotism, 1953–1964». Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

최진욱. 2007. 남북한재외동포정책과통일과정에서재외동포의역할.  통일연구원

민족공동체통일방안.https://www.unikorea.go.kr/unikorea/policy/ (Accessed August 19, 2020)

Contributing Without Trading: The Evolving Role of Europeans in Contributing to North Korea's Development and Stability
Post Covid 19 Seeks to Find the Way to Peace and Coexistence