Lee proposes 'unification tax'

President Lee Myun-bak on Sunday proposed detailed measures to prepare for the financial burden and changes that would take place should the two Koreas be reunited, the first time for the conservative leader to officially mention the longstanding national goal since the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March. 

In his speech marking the day Korea freed itself from Japan’s 1910-45 brutal colonial rule, Lee proposed a “three-stage plan” to reunify with North Korea, and a “unification tax system” to fund the expenses for and after the unification. 

“We long for the common prosperity and peace of both the South and the North, which will lead to reunification, and that this is the right way to achieve the genuine liberation of the nation,” Lee said in a nationally televised speech to commemorate the 65th national Liberation Day. “Today inter-Korean relations demand a new paradigm. The two of us need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification.”

Lee’s comments came less than five months after the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan, which took the lives of 46 young South Korean sailors. 

Despite strong denials by Pyongyang, South Korea concluded, with a team of international experts, that the communist country is responsible for the deadly incident. North Korea also fired more than 100 artillery shells into the waters near its sea border with the South earlier this week, expressing anger toward Seoul’s naval drills and upping tensions across the divided peninsula.