Nobody knows how things will change in Korea in the next decade. Because of the uncertainty about tomorrow, let alone what will happen in a decade, people seek and pay famous fortunetellers a large amount of money and try to peek into the future.

Just like Korea, there are many fortunetellers in the U.S., but almost none of them make correct predictions. For example, they failed to predict the sudden death of Kim Jong-il.

The Millennium Project has released a report called “State of the Future,” which is also a kind of fortune-telling. Even though it is supposedly the result of a study that involved 2,500 futurists, scholars and businessmen from 50 countries, using computers to make a stochastic, scientific model of trends, there is no guarantee of its accuracy. However, many still consider the report to be credible.

First, about the unification of two Koreas, it predicts that Kim Jong-un’s inheritance of power will fail in North Korea and thousands of North Korean refugees will come to South Korea daily over the border, which will collapse in three years and create a crisis in the South, which is unprepared for such a flood of refugees.

South Korea will have to raise taxes to cover the cost to take care of millions of North Korean refugees, but there will be riots in the refugee camps due to the lack of welfare and facilities. These may foster hatred between the brethren of the South and the North.

The report predicts that unification will occur in 2020. It will require a co-election in the South and the North, but there will be frictions that arise from issues on the rights of refugees from the North and the left of the South that sympathizes with them, which may cause another crisis.

Second, the report predicts that a full-scale, continuous reduction of population will occur in the next decade, causing a serious social problem. As the days when both members of a married couple have to work to make a living are approaching, the cost of raising a child will be almost the same as the amount of one member’s income.

So, in many cases, people will give up having a child simply because they cannot afford it, as a change of people’s thinking, preferring not having a child to living under financial pressure, will also contribute to a low birthrate.

The decrease in population will shrink economic growth as real estate prices will go down, and the production of daily necessities and the construction of education facilities and infrastructures will decrease, which will lead to the reduction of the domestic consumer population.

So, the manufacturing industry will leave South Korea for overseas locations, looking for a new market. For this reason, the cheap labor of North Korea should be used. Fortunately, a free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and China may bring some life into the manufacturing industry by building several additional industrial complexes in the North.

The current birthrate of South Korea, 1.2, is among the lowest in the world, along with Japan’s and Germany’s. Furthermore, the population of South Korea will be reduced by six million, or 15 percent, after 10 years, while the number of immigrants will increase from the current 1 million to 4 million.

Thirdly, the report predicts that males will rapidly become more feminine and females will become more masculine in the next 10 years. Males will gradually look feminine and females will like such males. As traditional jobs for males will go to females, males will come to enjoy cooking and child-raising.

I will never regard the unification as a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. I am confident that we South Koreans will make a successful unified country by helping North Korean refugees no matter what, even if every South Korean has to skip a meal a day. In this regard, those who made the report do not know the tenacious character of the Korean people yet.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com). The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.

The two-party system, the contest between the conservative and the liberal, is necessary for maintaining sound democracy. In the United States, the system has been maintained successfully for 250 years as competing ideologies keep each other in check.

However, the process has not always been easy. Even in the U.S., a communist party thrived for a while, and these days there is the right-wing Tea Party group. Racial discrimination has been a problem for a long time, and recently, young people’s discontent with Wall Street has become a major issue.

How about Korea? In Korea, there is the so-called left. These people in the left do not seem to be into socialist ideology. I have heard that these people take an anti-American and pro-North Korean position ― they are displeased with the U.S., oppose the current Lee Myung-bak administration and follow North Korea.

I can fully understand why they oppose the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA), since they oppose and criticize the policies of the U.S. and Korea. Though their way of opposition may sometimes be violent, their protests are not a serious problem.

The actual problem is the people who heap insults on the president of their country, who were elected by the nation, using unspeakable profanities. This kind of behavior is just spitting into one’s own face, and furthermore spitting at the whole nation.

Another problem is the followers of North Korea, who showed support for Kim Jong-il. It is pathetic that they praise the only hereditary autocracy in the world, a country where the poor people who are caught escaping the country to avoid famine are either killed or forced to work under inhumane conditions until they die from exhaustion.

These followers of North Korea are the people whose judgment has been clouded by so much freedom in South Korea. These people are also trouble.

In the U.S., there is the Tea Party, a conservative political group; it is not a registered political party, and there is no clear leadership. Over 85 percent of Tea Partiers are white, and blacks and Asians make up 1 percent each.

However, these are not white supremacists. Over 80 percent of them oppose Obama, but their opposition is against his progressive policy and not a reflection of racial prejudice. They are often affluent upper middle class citizens, three out of four are around 45 years old, and 59 percent are male. And 92 percent of them believe that the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction.

They are concerned that Obama is too focused on the eradication of poverty by raising taxes to foster welfare, and that the U.S. is changing into a socialist country. They are worried that the tradition of hard work is disappearing and the U.S. is becoming a lazy country where the people just want welfare benefits from the government.

They are concerned that additional budget measures for so many welfare programs will only increase the number of unproductive government employees and the size of the government, as half of the welfare budget will be spent on the wages of government employees to operate these programs.

They believe that leaving everything except for the essential tasks of the government (national defense and public security) to private corporations will be more efficient and greatly save costs. All these thoughts are too extreme.

Tea Partiers oppose the Buffett tax. They believe that since the rich people are already paying a tremendous amount of taxes, it is not right to make them pay additional taxes as if they were fined. One of their mottoes is “Is being rich as a result of hard work a crime?”

They claim that eradicating poverty by bringing down the rich is a failed socialist economic policy. They opposed raising the debt ceiling last year. Without raising the debt ceiling, the government cannot pay its debts, and thus would have to close. However, the Tea Party also believes that the Obama administration should be closed.

By insisting that the government should be closed, they told the government to default on national debts, which is a declaration of national bankruptcy. If that happens, the total demise of everyone and the world economy follows. The extremism of these people puts the whole world in fear of such a catastrophe.

Whether in Korea or in the U.S., it is really a big problem that extremists recklessly run amok without considering the horrible consequences of their actions.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com). The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.

Jay Kim gave a lecture on current affairs on December 22. It was sponsored by the Washington Council of Security Organizations and Korean Veterans Association in theUS.

During his lecture, he said, “North Korea had agreed with the US to halt its uranium enrichment program, which is the core of its nuclear program, before Kim Jong-il died,” and “because of this, the US and North Korea will meet in Beijing in the near future to discuss the issue again under the new circumstances after Kim Jong-il’s death.”

Next, he said, “Though North Korea launched missiles right after Kim’s death, it does not seems to have any significance,” and “it seems that Kim Jong-un allowed a scheduled experiment to be carried out without thinking too much about it”.

Then, he said, “The US has focused on theMiddle Eastuntil recently so thatChinahas become a new dominant force inAsia,” and “now, theUSseems to change its focus from theMiddle EasttoAsianext year”

In addition, he forecasted, “North Koreawill finish the solidification of Kim Jong-un’s leadership in two months” and wondered “what will be the position thatNorth Koreawill take after that”.

In his interview withKRB, Jay Kim emphasized that the Korea-US FTA was advantageous to both countries.  He claimed that theUSmade a free trade agreement withKoreato use it as an outpost for the Chinese and Japanese markets and that during that process, the advancement of Korean-Americans would be great.

AboutNorth Koreaafter the death of Kim Jong-il, he expected that the transition of power to Kim Jong-un would be established in two months, since the military has no alternative. He forecasted there would be a change in the foreign policy ofNorth Koreamade by young Kim Jong-un, which will lead to a better relationship betweenNorth Koreaand the US.

Kim predicted that the Korean politics would be stabilized by the recovery of the Grand National Party and the unification of oppositions.

He also made a rosy prediction that the economies of Korea and the US would do well despite the financial crisis in Europe and that next year would be the year that Korea would take its first step toward a path to become an advanced nation.

Jay Kim claimed, “The voice against the Korea-US FTA is coming from the so-called ‘left’, which is incited byNorth Korea. Contrary to the opposition’s claim, FTA will revive the economies of the two countries.”

He said, “Some people raise their voices as if most Koreans or Koreans in theUSopposed the Korea-US FTA, but they are only in the minority,” and emphasized, “In the areas of automobile, beef and currently controversial ISD, there are many aspects that are advantageous toKorea”.

According to him, since the total amount of investment that theUShas made inKoreais $44.9 billion and the total amount of investment thatKoreahas made in theUSis $53.4 billion,Koreamay benefit more from ISD which allows companies to get mediation on unfair treatment from the government of the country in which they invest. He added, “The FTA is expected to be into effect around next March”.

After hearing the news of the ratification of the Korea-US FTA in the National Assembly, Jay Kim emphasized, “The politicians who try to use the FTA issue for next year’s election by instigating the innocent poor will be judged by the people”.

On December 3, Jay Kim attended a publication ceremony for Choi Min-ho, the former chairman of the Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency.

Jay Kim gave a keynote presentation at the ‘GTX Forum’ on December 1. The forum was sponsored by Gyeonggido and organized by Gyeonggi Research Institute. It was attended by fifty people including the governor of Gyeonggido, Kim Moon-soo, and experts from related fields.

During his presentation, Kim claimed, “Public transportation similar to the GTX that Gyeonggido is pursuing is already in place in major cities of the world” and emphasized that the capital region should develop a more convenient environment for living through the GTX project.