Every year, on August 15, there is a public holiday in South Korea to commemorate the day the Korean peninsula was liberated from Japanese colonial rule. On this day, there is a longstanding tradition whereby South Korean presidents outline their vision for Korean unification – Korea has been divided between the North and South since 1945.
But the country’s current president, Yoon Suk-yeol, proposed a new approach this year. Rather than emphasising “peaceful unification” with North Korea, as has been the focus of many previous presidents, Yoon’s vision places “freedom” at the heart of South Korea’s unification pursuit.
In his speech, Yoon spelled out the tasks he sees as crucial for moving towards a unified Korea. Among them was the “need to change the minds of the North Korean people, to make them ardently desire a freedom-based unification”. Simply put, this will involve promoting the freedom of North Koreans to access information from the outside world.
