I was in Korea briefly in the 1960s.
In addition to my military duties I made friends with Koreans. Korean soldiers serving with the U.S., Koreans working at U.S. military HQ in Seoul, Koreans working at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Christian Korean civilians, and I taught conversational English two nights a week at a pharmaceutical factory in the town of Anyang, about 16 miles south of Seoul. I spent two weeks leave with my English class hiking cross country, from village to village in the interior where often there were no paved roads. I learned to speak a small amount of Korean. I traveled across a lot of South Korea.
Since that time I have never stopped intently watching, reading, analyzing and listening about the Korean situtaiion, as it relates to South Korean domestic politics, the never ended confrontation with North Korea, the doings of the regime in the North and every bit of U.S.-North Korean diplomacy.
You cannot insert a razor blade between the bricks of the North Korean positions past and present.
While in South Korea I felt I really got to know the people and all my instincts from my observations of the society then, in the 1960s, told me they would be where they are today economically. I am not now mystified by their success.
The base cultural roots in the South Koreans was present in the people of North Korea, yet anyone can look at it today and see 100% of what is wrong is the dictatorship. Nothing is so blind as those who cannot see.
I am glad FreeRepublic has another member who gets the true Korean situation from the East Asian perspective. If I were the U.S. dictator (LOL / Sarc) you’d be on the East Asian Affairs desk at my State Department.
Let’s not forget “TigerLikesRooster”, another great Freeper of 20 years, actually in Korea—wow what a resource for this forum— who was horribly mistreated and insulted by brainless idiots who left FR over the ascendancy of Trumpism and the evaporation of truth about the Korean situation and this mistaken policy that is making things worse not better. He, like everyone else, supported DJT in the 2016 election.