page_title: Korean reunification
section_title: Germany (1949–1990)
hierarchical_section_title: Korean reunification / Comparisons / Germany (1949–1990)
caption_attribution_description: English: English translation of age pyramid for south korea
context_page_description: Korean reunification refers to the potential reunification of North Korea and South Korea into a single Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification was started by the June 15th North–South Joint Declaration in June 2000, and was reaffirmed by the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula in April 2018, and the joint statement of the United States President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un at the Singapore Summit in June 2018. In the Panmunjom Declaration, the two countries agreed to work towards a peaceful reunification of Korea in the future.
  Prior to World War I and Japan's annexation of Korea, all of Korea was unified as a single state for centuries, known previously as the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, and the last unified state, the Korean Empire. After World War II and beginning in the Cold War, Korea was divided into two countries along the 38th parallel. North Korea was administered by the Soviet Union in the years immediately following the war, with South Korea being managed by the United States. In 1950, North Korea invaded the South, beginning the Korean War, which ended in stalemate in 1953.
context_section_description: While the situation of South and North Korea might seem comparable to East and West Germany, another country divided by Cold War politics, there are some notable differences. Germany did not have a civil war that resulted in millions of casualties, meaning "it is very hard to believe that People's Army commanders who fought the South in such a bloody fratricidal war would allow the ROK to overwhelm the DPRK, by whatever means". Both sides of Germany maintained a working relationship after the war, but the two Koreas' relationship has been more acrimonious.
  The East Germans also had 360,000 Soviet troops on their soil in 1989; however, North Korea has not had any foreign troops on its soil since 1958. "East Germany collapsed because [Soviet Premier Mikhail] Gorbachev chose to do what none of his predecessors would ever have done, namely, keep those troops in their barracks rather than mobilize them to save the Honecker regime". The East Germans looked favorably at the fact that West Germans had good retirement benefits, public order and strong civil society, whereas the North Korean citizens are not aware of any immediate benefits from uniting with South Korea, because all such knowledge is kept from them by the state.
  Under Roh Tae-woo, a former South Korean army general and politician, the Seoul government created a "Nordpolitik" policy, based on the West German "Ostpolitik" model, hoping to make trading agreements with Pyongyang.
caption: Population pyramid of South Korea
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