Five Years Later

Has it really been five years? Ask anyone who’s gotten married, had two kids, changed jobs, changed continents, cars (twice), and homes (four times) during the same period and that person may agree that it can seem like both an instant and an eternity. But it’s a very long time for such a bold and dramatic diplomatic initiative to have accomplished so little. I’ll let those neocons at the BBC summarize:

But the BBC’s Charles Scanlon in Seoul says much of the promise of the meeting has not been fulfilled. The North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, has not made a return visit; political contacts remain precarious; and there is still little opportunity for contact between ordinary people.

The latter point being the key one: it is North Korea’s pathological aversion to people-to-people contact–as opposed to self-serving, yet tightly controlled business ventures–that most vividly illustrates North Korea’s insincerity on peace and reform.

Five years ago today, I was watching Korean TV coverage of DJ’s arrival, with these words written along the bottom of the screen in bold characters: On the road to reunification. At the time, I could see the irrationality of it all vividly. Back then, of course, few of us knew how much money South Korea was sending the North without any expectation of transparency in return. Must a full decade pass before it occurs to South Koreans that the negligible progress achieved is not worth its cost in North Korean lives?