Sue Terry v. John Delury and Moon Chung-In, on reunification

Although Delury and Moon may not like the idea of North Korea’s collapse, that is a far more likely scenario than their fantasy of “the gradual merging of North and South.” South Korea has tried to make that dream come true before, through the so-called sunshine policy it pursued from 1998 to 2008, and the result was unambiguous failure. During those years, South Korea gave North Korea $8 billion in investment and assistance. In 2000, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung even handed Kim Jong Il $500 million in cash to stage a summit (an act that earned the former the Nobel Peace Prize). In return, Seoul got, well, nothing. Pyongyang advanced its development of nuclear weapons and missiles, conducting its first nuclear test in 2006, and remained as repressive and dysfunctional as ever. Delury and Moon make no case for why a new sunshine policy would work any better. [Sue Mi Terry, Foreign Affairs]

Granted, arguing with John Delury might sound a bit like Thai boxing Stephen Hawking, but it still shames me a little when a non-native speaker like Terry writes and argues better in her second language than I write in my first. Read the rest on your own. Background here.