STOCKHOLM, Nov 9: North and South Korea will be reunified one day but not the same way Germany was 15 years ago, former South Korean president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae-Jung said during a visit to Sweden on Tuesday.

Speaking on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kim said the two Koreas would have to undertake a slow reunification process, preceded by an economic collaboration so that the North Korean economy could grow to the same level as its more prosperous southern neighbour.

"The South Korean economy is not strong enough to bear the burden of the North Korean economy," Kim said following talks with Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson in comments reported in Swedish by local news agency TT.

Fifteen years after the reunification of East and West Germany, the east is plagued by 18 percent unemployment, substandard infrastructure in many areas and the flight of young jobseekers to the west.

But Kim said that an economic collaboration between Seoul and Pyongyang was not forthcoming because there is no mutual trust at present.

"The current regime thinks that it, like China and Vietnam, can stay in power and at the same time help the economy grow," he said.

"But with an improved economy, a middle-class will sprout up and those people will not be satisfied with increased wealth. They will also want to participate in politics. That is also happening in China, where the clout of the middle class cannot be ignored," he said.

The two Koreas are still technically at war nearly 50 years after an armistice halted a bloody conflict.-AFP