South Korea Plans $50 Billion Fund to Pay for Unification With the North

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-31/s-korea-plans-50b-fund-for-reunification.html

South Korea will set up a fund as early as this year to begin raising up to 55 trillion won ($50 billion) to pay for its eventual reunification with North Korea.

Individual Koreans at home and abroad will be able to make donations to the fund and the government in Seoul may earmark money including budget surpluses, Unification Minister Yu Woo Ik said in his first interview since being sworn in on Sept. 19. While foreigners will also be allowed to donate, there is no plan to ask overseas governments to contribute, he said.

Yu, 61, is asking South Koreans to put aside more than 60 years of animosity on the divided peninsula and prepare for the fiscal shock of incorporating their impoverished northern neighbors. Fifty South Koreans died last year in attacks blamed on Kim Jong Il’s regime and negotiations to resume six-nation talks aimed at shutting down North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program have made little progress.

“Government agencies are near an agreement over the unification account and I hope lawmakers will pass legislation within this year,” Yu said in his office in Seoul yesterday. “This will unite people and foster their desire for unification.”

[NNN0LHI]

1. This is really good if it happens

Thanks for posting and recommended.

Don

[GreenStormCloud]

2. Smart of them to begin planning.

The North is having another, more severe famine. Even the Army is hungry. Sooner or later the Kims will fall, just like Eastern Europe did.

[jwirr]

3. This may be the best answer that we can hope for. But I do not see

NK's present leader stepping down any time soon.