Facilitating Inter-Korean Reconciliation and Korean Reunification through Constitutional Law: An Irish model for the two Koreas (original) (raw)
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The two sides of Korea, the last remaining divided country in the world, have each put forward a series of unification formula but there has been no significant progress made in devising mutually acceptable plans for reunification until the June 15 Joint Declaration which acknowledged a common ground in both sides' proposals. To facilitate the process of unification, South Korea has to overhaul its legal norms that have seriously blocked legitimate efforts to build a democratic platform for dialogues and exchanges between the South and the North, all the while easing military confrontations. The most pertinent approach for a unity would be to strive for a negotiated unification in which the two parties with equal rights and duties tolerate each other, and promote co-existence and co-prosperity, without marginalizing either side. The power structure of a unified Korea should be framed in accordance with such a negotiation approach: a federal government mainly in charge of military affairs and foreign policy to overarch two autonomous regional governments in the south and north of Korea, whose governance system shall be of an assembly government coupled with a directorial system and a unicameral federal assembly of equal number of representatives from both sides. A pan-Korean organization for national unification can prepare for parliamentary elections for constitutional assembly and the final draft of the reunification constitution passed by the constitutional assembly shall be approved in two separate referendums in the north and south.
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