Eighty years of national division between South and North Korea has brought a serious political, economic, social, ideological, and cultural gap. On multiple occasions, both countries have been looking for a compromising point but every time those efforts have gone down the drain. However, in recent months, a green light has been switched on between both nations. It seems like we are getting one step closer to what we all had always wished for; reunification.

Related to the hottest current issue of our society, ‘Unification Han ma dang’ was held at our university. This was an academic seminar supervised by the Gyeong-nam Regional Unification Education Center along with Dept. of International Relations of CWNU. In this seminar, nearly four hundred middle school, high school and college students, along with other citizens of Changwon, participated to solidify our consciousness towards unification. The seminar consisted of two major sections: an academic part and a non-academic part. In the academic division, participants prepared plays related to the unification. Whereas, in the non-academic section, participants sang by altering original lyrics to talk about the unification or danced along with the song related to unification. The two different teams that got first place in each sections received an award from the Minister of Unification.

After the seminar, team director of ‘Nul-poom’, Kim Hye-ri, from the Dept. of International Relations, briefly introduced her team. “Our team performed a play about separated families from North and South Korea. I really wanted to draw a strong sympathy from our audience.” Since the members of the team were not a professional actors or actresses, she had a tough time writing a scenario and selecting a main theme. “There were a lot of difficulties, but when our team name was called every single hardship had been flushed away.” She added, “This contest was much more precious for me because my views towards the unification of our nation was unwelcoming news before the seminar. However, as I’d taken a role and developed my idea about the unification matter, my perspective towards North Koreans, as well as our relationships, abruptly changed positively.” Then she wrapped up her comments as a winner of the contest by saying, “therefore, there should be many more occasions or opportunities for others to be exposed to this kind of matter in order to solidify our understanding of unification, which can very positively affect them just as it affected me.”

In fact, not many of Korean young generation today are careless on the matter of unification. Nevertheless, to bring our long-lasted wish to come true we ourselves must take action.

By Kim Young-min, cub reporter  dnl2874@naver.com

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