North Korea's future depends on a large extent on South Korea's future. - Brian Reynolds Myers

[T]here has long been in the North a very real contempt for the South Korean left, the kind that radicals always feel for moderates no matter how obsequious the latter might be. Believe it or not, there were always more South Koreans willing to work with the North than it was willing to work with; the history of the underground in the 1960s and 1970s is replete with tales of how this or that Kim disciple got cold-shouldered by the DPRK embassy in East Berlin and had to go begging for funds in Japan instead.

South Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak.

[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal.