Korean Reunification:

The Korea’s want unification: The Korea’s have long wanted to allow for total self determination of the Korean peninsula, currently that is being articulated through claims to unification.

• Demilitarizing the DMZ: As of October 26th South Korea and the DPRK have removed all weapons from the Joint Security Area. This has included not only the removal of surveillance technology that were pointed at both sides of the peninsula, but also joint efforts at de-mining. This is a massive signal towards unification because the DMZ has long been what symbolically demarcates the border between the North and South. - Denuclearization: As of late April both Korea’s have committed to a long term goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. This indicates a commitment to future unification both because it indicates a consideration of the Peninsula as a whole, but also because the difference in nuclear power has long been the arifical line drawn by imperial powers to demarcate the South and North as distinct nations. - Peace Talks: Kim Jong Un visited South Korea in September and signed a military ceasefire with President Moon. This is significant because this has not happened since the start of the Korean war, and shows a future looking mindset in which Un plans to return to Seoul in the next year to strengthen the link between the two nations. - Family reunification: Ever since the Korean war, tens of thousands of people fled the DPRK for the South and have been unable to reunite with their families ever since. This has been a significant problem for both Korea’s because it has proved a very material example of stratification between the two nations. In response to this President Moon declared that bilateral actions would be taken so that remaining families would be reunited by August 15th of next year. This, according to Hyun Namhoon, a CEO of a newspaper that helps displaced families, indicates that “unification should happen no matter what.” Unification is being stopped by Western imperialism: Despite the want of both the DPRK and South Korea for unification, because of the threat this poses to Western global dominance, imperial powers are blocking it from happening in the squo.

• Ideology: Trump has repeatedly claimed that the unification of the Korean peninsula would be ‘dangerous’ because it would destroy the US’s ability to have a strategic outpost in the region. Resurrecting Cold War era fears about the spread of communism, Trump articulates the DPRK as an inherent threat to the West that will ‘consume’ South Korea. - Korean War: Although the DPRK and South Korea signed a peace treaty that officially ended the Korean war between the two of them, the US has still maintained that they are at war with the DPRK. This has been used as the justification to continue to station troops within South Korea to be on ‘high alert’ in case they need to respond to the DPRK. This halts the process of unification not only because the troops are used as a threat against the DPRK, i.e. that if they made moves to unify the US would respond, but also because the DPRK has articulated that unification will only happen on the condition of US pull out. - China: Due to orientalist fear mongering the US sees China as a unique threat that needs to be perpetually checked. The US uses this logic as the justification for the usage of South Korea as a staging area to check back on Chinese aggression through the stationing of the THAAD missile defense system, as well as a multitude of other strategic military positions. This specific geopolitical positioning is why the US has articulated it can never ‘let go’ of South Korea. Korean reunification key to check imperialism

• Base Building: One of the foundational ways in which imperialism is able to continually forwards its violence through the extraction of capital is fracturing the possibility of its targets to collectivize and thus create a force against its power. This has been its strategy with the DPRK, continuously lobbying sanctions to keep its material conditions marginalized. Unification is able to solve this by melding the organized base of the DPRK with the economic and military power of the South. - Relations: One of the foundational ways in which Western imperialism keeps the DPRK marginalized is through its forced isolation from engaging in the international sphere, forcing its only allyship to be with a souring China. Reunification is able to resolve this because the Korean peninsula would be able to use the diplomatic pathways and clout that South Korea has established, while also the ideological allies that the DPRK has generated but as of yet has been unable to create alliances with. - Economic Support: Not only would reunification be able to resolve the economic pressure that US imperialism seeks to forward through the DPRK’s integration into South Korea’s economy, but also because it would open pathways for more independent negotiation with regional actors like China. In the status quo, relations with China and the DPRK are restrained by global initiatives, if the Koreas were to unify than they would be able to have the geopolitical power to independently negotiate with China and other regional actors. - Class Consciousness: The reunification of Korea would destroy the imposed artificial difference of South and North Koreans, but rather reveal that Koreans as a class of people are universally oppressed under the hands of Western Imperialism. This type of consciousness is uniquely key to resolve imperialism because instead of perpetually investing within the imperial project, revolutionary organizations will arise to challenge it. That means reunification is key to long term solvency. - Spotlighting: One of the foundational ways in which US imperialism is able to constantly justify itself is through claims to naturalism; i.e. imperialism is something that just naturally falls along the lines of how the ‘world works.’ Look to how the US couched the justification of the continued imperialism of the African continent in the naturalistic logic of Africans as being ‘naturally’ predisposed to wanting conquer. Reunification ruptures this by highlighting the failure of US imperialism to keep down the Korean peninsula and thus reveals it as not a naturalistic force but rather a specific concentration of power.