Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The 54th parallel

Wall Street Journal --

Seoul to Study Irish Reunification Model

Ireland has a reunification model? The Irish Times had a more sober story linked to the same visit, which referred to the topic as a cross-border peace model.

The WSJ story discusses the peace-advancing role of the Republic removing Articles 2 and 3 of the 1937 Constitution. Another relevant lesson might be in seeing that the structure of an eventual agreement has perhaps already been agreed some time back, but it's up to the people who rejected it then to wait until they're sure they can be in charge after accepting it:

North Korea in 1985 halted change in several documents and its propaganda, helping to facilitate meetings in the late 1980s that ultimately produced an inter-Korean pact in 1992 known as the Basic Agreement. It placed inter-Korean dealings within a "special interim relationship stemming from the process toward unification" rather than as sovereign nations. Most elements from that deal have been abandoned, though officials from the two Koreas occasionally call for its revival.

It's the Korean Anglo-Irish Agreement.