Daydream believers

摘要

This seems an odd time for South Korea's leaders to be talking up the prospects of reunification with their country's evil twin. The economic gap between the rich south and dirt-poor north of the peninsula grows ever wider, implying mounting re-absorption costs for South Korea. And under its latest Kim-despot, the 30-ish, callow but ruthless Kim Jong Un, the North seems as hostile as ever, threatening new nuclear and missile tests and this week conducting live-fire exercises near the disputed maritime border. In response to Barack Obama's visit to Seoul in late April an official "Peaceful Reunification" committee thundered that the North "must settle its final scores with the us through an all-out nuclear showdown". And misogynistic bile was spat at the South's president, Park Geun-hye: a "dirty comfort woman for the us and despicable prostitute selling off the nation".