North Korea kept harassing the South, and one day they just clicked: Tell me that isn't a stalker's dream writ geopolitical. - Brian Reynolds Myers

[A]crobatics are very much an American thing. No one does wishful thinking like we do. I don’t see South Korean progressivists pretending that the regime’s every word and deed can be boiled down to the same reassuring message. In fact, part of the reason many of them feel a sneaking admiration for the North is because it follows through on its Yankee-defying rhetoric. But that’s another topic.

[W]e're entering the most dangerous phase in the region in decades. I'm really not all that hopeful.

[T]he once-marginal myth that the [South Korean] republic came into existence in Shanghai in 1919 as a nationalist state has become orthodox with remarkable speed.