Germany celebrates fall of Berlin Wall

 

BERLIN, November 9 (AP): With prayers, music and pomp, Germany on Monday remembered the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall fell, sending East Germans flooding west and setting in motion events that soon led to the country's reunification. Chancellor Angela Merkel - reunited Germany's first leader to grow up in the communist east - started the day with President Horst Koehler and other leaders at a prayer service at a former East Berlin church that was a rallying point for opposition activists in 1989.
"We remember the tears of joy, the faces of delight, the liberation," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber told the congregation at the Gethsemane Church. East Germany's fortified border crumbled on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989 after 28 years holding in the country's citizens - a pivotal moment in the collapse of communism in Europe that followed a confused announcement by a senior official. At the end of a plodding news conference, Politburo spokesman Guenter Schabowski offhandedly said East Germany was lifting restrictions on travel across its border with West Germany.
Pressed on when the regulation would take effect, he looked down at his notes and stammered: "As far as I know, this enters into force ... this is immediately, without delay." Schabowski has said he didn't know that the change wasn't supposed to be announced until the following morning. East Berliners streamed toward border crossings. Facing huge crowds and lacking instructions, border guards opened the gates - and the wall was on its way into history. Merkel said she was among the East Germans who, hearing Schabowski's words, thought "something might happen on the evening of Nov. 9." Like many others, she made her way across.
"We were speechless and happy," the 55-year-old recalled in an interview with ARD television. Music from Bon Jovi and Beethoven was to recall the joy of the border's opening, which led to German reunification less than a year later and the swift demolition of most of the wall - which snaked around West Berlin, a capitalist enclave deep inside East Germany, for 96 miles (155 kilometers). Memorials also were planned to the 136 people killed trying to cross the border. Candles were to be lit and 1,000 towering plastic foam dominoes placed along the wall's route to be tipped over.
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said Sunday that "the ideals that drove Berliners to tear down that wall are no less relevant today. The freedoms championed then are no less precious." Monday "should be a call to action, not just a commemoration of past actions," she said. Also expected in Berlin for the ceremonies were the leaders of all 27 European Union countries and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Thousands were expected to gather Monday night in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Germany's division and then of its reunification, which for nearly three decades stood just behind the wall in no man's land.
Music and fireworks will hark back to the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when people danced atop the Berlin Wall in front of the gate. On that cold night, years of separation and anxiety melted into the unbelievable reality of freedom.

 

SEOUL, November 9 (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 ceasefire 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 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. East Germans by comparison were able to see the outside world through West German TV and the two countries had far more exchanges of people.
Recent polls show more than 60 percent of South Koreans want unification, but they would prefer it happen later rather than sooner because of the cost. About 70 percent of respondents see the North as a threat and few think it will give up its nuclear weapons any time soon. What little cooperation there has been in recent years between the Koreas has been confined to a mountain resort and a joint factory park located just north of the DMZ.
The DMZ is one of the most popular tourist sites in South Korea, attracting more than 600,000 visitors a year who see tank traps as they head toward the border and tunnels the North built under the zone decades ago to support an invasion. The highlight of most tours is the Panmunjom truce village that hosted the armistice talks and which sits within the DMZ. It is now home to uneasy staring matches between soldiers from the two Koreas as well as U.S. forces in the South.