Maybe He Needed Instructions.

President Roh Moo-hyun said Thursday that South Korea had sounded Pyongyang out on the joint comprehensive approach to the stalled six-party talks prior to his recent summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington.

Really, I don’t quibble with him floating his trial balloon to the North Koreans.  It’s the sequence of it that speaks volumes.  While we’re dumping on the South Korean government, don’t miss another fairly shocking example that Jeffery turned up:

In the early stage of the Korean War, the Korean Peninsula was nearly unified by the North Korea-China-Russia alliance. But the U.N. forces, led by the United States, which knew that the security of Japan could not be secured within U.S. domain, took part in the war and hindered the unification.

One thing I don’t do is to make an epithet of the word “liberal,” which I like to define as a philosphy that seeks a more open and tolerant society.  There’s nothing liberal about pining for unification under tyranny, and if  Kang Man-Kil  envies that, he can always just defect without bringing 50 million other South Koreans along.  It’s astonishing — even to me — how quickly the Kang Jeong-Koo world view is gaining currency with some South Koreans, even those  charged with setting up  South Korea’s own songbun system.