It’s time we all acknowledged the genius of the North’s propaganda apparatus, however much distaste we feel about it. It works with the grain of huma… - Brian Reynolds Myers

Western observers focus more on the regime's economic failures than the North Koreans themselves do. Remember that it was only in recent modern times that Western societies began expecting the state to secure constant economic growth and rising prosperity. Well into the 20th century people expected little more from the state than that it protect them from foreign powers, and expand the influence or territory of the nation. Prussia was remarkably like North Korea in many ways, yet we remember it as a very successful state. If we judge North Korea by its own standards — instead of by the communist standards we hope its people judge it by — we must admit it has performed very well.

To count as a conspiracy, a plan involving two or more parties must be covert. Not even Alex Jones would talk of a Democratic Party conspiracy to field a candidate who can beat Trump. The term “conspiracy theory” is to be used and understood accordingly. Had Lee Harvey Oswald spoken just before his death of a second gunman on the grassy knoll, one would not be a conspiracy theorist for taking him seriously. The information could still be wrong, but someone disagreeing with it would have to engage in actual refutation. The same goes for all who seek to dismiss talk of the ROK government’s confederation drive as a conspiracy theory.

Here’s what I find odd. While South Koreans’ anti-Japanese sentiment gets taken at face value as the inevitable result of what happened well before most of them were born, conservatives’ fears for the security of the South, which was last subjected to a deadly military attack in 2010, tend to be treated as laughable delusions.