Liam Neeson recently donated $1,515 toward Korean reunification. The actor, who will be playing General Douglas MacArthur in an upcoming movie about the Korean War, wanted to do something to signal his support for improved inter-Korean relations. Along with his donation, Neeson predicted that the two Koreas will reunify within the next five years.
Everyone has his or her own prediction for Korean reunification. Futurologist George Friedman thinks it will happen before 2030 while Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group believesthat reunification may be just around the corner. The CIA predicted that reunification will take place in 10-15 years—but that was in its global survey published in 2000. Oops! Indeed, the CIA’s crystal ball rarely reveals the future very accurately. It failed to anticipate the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, or the Arab Spring uprisings.
So, when it comes to guessing the date of Korean reunification, Liam Neeson probably can’t do any worse than America’s top spooks. But how useful is it to play the reunification guessing game?
Back in the 1970s, it made some sense to speculate about when the two Koreas might reunify. The two countries had roughly the same economic status, similarly undemocratic systems, and rather conservative and insular societies. There were even high-level discussions at that time between the respective leaderships about what a confederation of the two systems might look like.
