Seoul:
President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea proposed on Sunday a special tax to fund the enormous cost of reuniting with North Korea, broaching a sensitive topic even as uneasiness deepened here about the future of the North because of its ailing leader, Kim Jong-il.
Although all previous South Korean leaders have advocated rejoining the North, Mr. Lee was the first to propose that the South start saving for the event with a "unification tax."
A unification that was unprepared for would wreak havoc on the South Korean economy, analysts say. Reuniting the South's economic powerhouse with the North's impoverished socialist system could cost from a few hundred billion dollars to $1 trillion, various South Korean and U.S. research institutes have estimated in recent years, based on different speeds of integration.
"Reunification will definitely come," Mr. Lee said in a speech marking the 65th anniversary of the Koreans' liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. "I believe that the time has come to start discussing realistic policies to prepare for that day such as a reunification tax."
When Korea was liberated at the end of World War II, it was divided into the pro-U.S. South and the Communist North. The divide hardened during the 1950-53 Korean War. The two Koreas remain technically at war after having signed only a cease-fire at the end of their war.
Mr. Lee gave no direct indication that his proposal was compelled by the uncertainty over a leadership transition in Pyongyang. But his proposal came as officials and analysts in Seoul weighed a troubling question: What if Kim Jong-il dies suddenly and before a successor fails to gain firm control, despite what appears to be a fast-track grooming of one of his sons to take over from him?
Mr. Kim reportedly began preparing his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be in his late 20s, to be his heir after he suffered a stroke in 2008.
Unlike Mr. Kim, who had held key party and military posts for years before his own father, President Kim Il-sung, died in 1994, Kim Jong-un holds no known official title.
The regime has recently begun indoctrinating its people with songs and lectures eulogizing the son, according to South Korean intelligence officials. Still, the younger man's apparent lack of leadership experience has prompted analysts to speculate about what might happen if Mr. Kim died suddenly, prompting instability in the North, and what would be appropriate for South Korea and its ally the United States to do if Chinese troops crossed the border to take control in Pyongyang.
At their first summit meeting in 2002, the two Koreas agreed to work for a gradual and peaceful integration. But the follow-through to that agreement has been bumpy, partly because of the North's refusal to give up its nuclear weapons program.
Like his predecessors, Mr. Lee envisioned a gradual unification, with the North's abandonment of its nuclear arms capability to be followed by extensive economic cooperation that would enable it to narrow the gap between its economy and the South's, which is 37 times larger.
Analysts expected an angry North Korean response.
"North Korea will take a unification tax as the expression of a South Korean attempt to prepare for a sudden collapse of the North Korean government," said Kim Yong-hyun, an analyst at Dongguk University in Seoul.
Yang Moo-jin, a researcher at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said: "President Lee should have first reinstalled South-North exchanges and laid the groundwork for the mood for unification before proposing a unification tax."
Inter-Korean relations have chilled to their lowest point in years under Mr. Lee, a conservative who detested providing aid to the North while it was developing nuclear weapons.
Tensions rose after a South Korean warship was sunk in March and the South, accusing the North of torpedoing the ship, cut off most cross-border trade. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the incident.
According to a survey conducted by the presidential National Unification Advisory Commission shortly before the sinking, 8 of 10 South Koreans age 19 or older believed it important to unify with North Korea. But 65.6 percent said they would prefer a gradual unification, and only 52.4 percent said they would be willing to shoulder the economic cost of unification.
"Most South Koreans say they want unification, but they don't necessarily want to pay for it," said Mr. Kim, the Dongguk professor.
In the past couple of decades, the two Koreas have taken fitful steps toward reconciliation, like opening a joint industrial park and sponsoring temporary reunions of families separated by the war. But after the divide that lasted more than 60 years, the societies have also drifted apart. North Koreans and South Koreans alike cannot understand much of each other's vocabularies.