SEOUL – South Korean television and radio stations don't often simultaneously air live broadcast news from North Korea's official media. But as the nation sat down for lunch on Monday, they saw an unfamiliar face appear on their Samsung flat panel TVs. It was that of Ri Chun-hee, North Korea's star newsreader, dressed in a traditional, black funeral gown, seated and weeping in her trademark wavering voice. That's when most people here knew it was serious.
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Despite being ill for some years now, Kim Jong Il's death came as a surprise. The South Korean government seemed to be caught off guard as well. President Lee Myung-bak called an emergency Cabinet meeting and the Unification Ministry set up a new commission to monitor all developments up North. The message to the public: Stay calm, the situation is under control, go about your normal lives. And on the streets of the capital, most Koreans seemed to be doing just that, for now.
Despite the fear that a hostile nuclear-armed state without a clear leader in charge could instill in its neighbors, most South Koreans here really just don't seem to care about what happens in the North.
Choi Young Joo, a 29-year old piano instructor, was driving home when she heard on the radio the news of Kim's death.
"I thought 'oh wow, he's dead,' not a big difference than before," she said. "I sent my friends a group chat message about it. They just asked me 'what are we going to do for dinner?'"
Other Seoulites shrugged their shoulders or plainly said "I don't care" when asked how they feel now that Kim, one of the world's most brutal dictators, is history. Short of a missile barrage, many cosmopolitan citizens of this city of 10 million don't seem to think their lives are affected at all by what occurs above the 38th parallel.
"I was at the office when I read the news today. I didn't think it was a big deal at first," said Yu Mi Hyun, 25. "But after I talked to my friends in the military, I realized this was an important event and that we need to watch it closely."
The apathy toward North Korea among the country's youth is a big concern for the government, which is reaching out to teens and 20-somethings with ventures into social media and greater online visibility. In October, the Unification Ministry launched Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as an Internet television channel that features news, press briefings, and even a television drama all related to reunification issues.
"Pretty much nobody among the younger generation of Koreans is seriously interested in unification and North Korea," says Andrei Lankov, a North Korea analyst at Kookmin University in Seoul. "North Korea is increasingly seen as a distant country, an irrelevant place, a poor dictatorship whose population happens to speak the same language."
The death of Kim is just the type of event the South Korean government is trying to prepare the public for. But trying to convince young Koreans that the six decades-old division of the peninsula is still relevant today is a challenge for the Unification Ministry.
"South Korean life is very competitive and young Koreans are busy with school or searching for jobs. They don't have time to think about unification," says Lee Sung Shin of the Unification Ministry's public relations team.
But that's a problem, says Shin, adding that when unification does happen, it will be sudden and unexpected. Andrei Lankov agrees: "Unification will come and not as a result of negotiations between the two governments, but as a result of a revolution in North Korea. The current generation will deal with the consequences of this change."
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