South Korean president says open to summit with North's Kim, no pre-condition

reuters.com ^ | Sun Jan 11, 2015 11:58pm EST | Ju-min Park

[BenLurkin]

The two sides are still technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended only in a truce and not a peace treaty. More than 1.8 million troops are deployed on both sides of their border, one of the most heavily fortified in the world.

Park also told the news conference that an anti-North law, the National Security Law, continued to remain necessary in the South.

"We need the very minimum of law to ensure security in this country as we remain in a standoff with the North, and the law is enforced according to that," she said.

[GeronL]

North Korea will demand food probably

[SWAMPSNIPER]

You can’t negotiate with psychopaths.

[Greysard]

You can’t negotiate with psychopaths.

There is hope. We have no reason yet to declare Kim Jong-un a psychopath. He is young, and he is smart enough to understand that policies of his father will not work for more than a few years. At the same time Kim wants to live well. So what could he do if he is a rationally thinking man?

Here is one simple solution: he could sell North Korea to South Korea for some money that would last him a lifetime. He is not invested in Communist ideas, and probably he can't care less about them. He has no desire to continue living among people who are hoping to kill him one day. He has no need to threaten others with nukes, and he has no particular need to be threatened. All this can disappear in an instant if he transitions NK from a dictatorship into some sort of a developing region of Korea.

None of that was open to the previous dictator of North Korea. He could not turn on a dime, and he had no particular need to do so, and he felt comfortable enough doing the political thing and exploding nukes and provoking the South. The new guy in charge has already formed his own team. If they are willing to sell, it would be an excellent way to unify Korea. There are just a few hundred people on top, and money is not a concern - South Korea has enough.