Volta
Politics15 August 1994

National Community Unification Formula

The Kim Young-sam government proposed a three-stage path to unification: reconciliation and cooperation, a South–North commonwealth, and a unified state.

On 15 August 1994, in his Liberation Day address, President Kim Young-sam set out the National Community Unification Formula. Building on the Roh Tae-woo government’s Korean National Community Unification Formula (1989), it envisaged moving through a stage of reconciliation and cooperation and a stage of South–North commonwealth to a unified state of one nation. It has remained the government’s official unification formula.

That year, amid tension over the North Korean nuclear issue, an inter-Korean summit was agreed, but it never took place because Kim Il-sung died in July.

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States and rulers at the time
South Korea — President Kim Young-sam

People

  • Kim Young-sam1927 – 2015

    leader · 14th President (1993–1998). Introduced the real-name financial system and full local autonomy; the 1997 currency crisis came at the end of his term

Before and after

Earlier
1993 Real-Name Financial System
Later
1995 Full Implementation of Local Autonomy

Themes that include this event

  • Changing Unification Policies1948 – 2018

    From “march north” to the Panmunjom Declaration — inter-Korean relations from confrontation to dialogue, through joint statements and agreements to summits (up to 2018)