Cold War frontier gone in Germany, remains in Korea

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - As a united Germany marks the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall on Monday, about 1 million soldiers face off across the Cold War's last great divide -- the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas.

The 4-km (2.5-mile) wide no man's land, established under the cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, runs 245 km (150 miles). It divides the peninsula with razor-wire fences, minefields and one of the heaviest collection of armaments on earth.

The Berlin Wall anniversary has sparked a longing in South Korea for unity but also worries about the enormous costs involved if the DMZ was dismantled and North and South Korea were united.

"The economic gap between the two Koreas is far wider than that of the two Germanys before reunification," the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial.

North Korea is an economic backwater, with annual GDP of $17 billion (10 billion pound) in 2008 -- two percent the size of the South's economy.

By some estimates it would cost more than $1 trillion for South Korea to absorb the North, the only real scenario in the event of reunification.

That would wreak havoc on South Korea's economy, with a state-funded research agency saying it would raise the tax bill for South Koreans by the equivalent of two percentage points annually for 60 years.

Aside from the huge costs, there has been virtually no contact between the two Koreas for decades, which have cut off almost all phone links and mail and did not have a formal meeting for about 20 years after the war.