Keep on dreaming. Let me sell you a bridge while you are at it.

NK men are soldiers. The society breeds fighting men. NK men have 20 to 40 years of military service. They learn nothing but how to kill, maim or destroy.

Suddenly, one day they will become a happy factory workers because they get Choco pies and condoms? Maybe having a cup of world-famous Starbuck coffee?

They will rather become a pack of wolves, I am afraid. They will come down and take over SK gangs. Lots of killings. Kidnappings and blackmails. They may even control SK government.

Just see Russia. The same things will happen in Korea after unification.

Which Hong Kong legislators support the Tiananmen massacre? China, inflation and the yuan. Asia Business Intelligence continues the series on should you enter the China market? Bill Murray is the last of his kind. The SCMP reports Seoul is looking at …

“… make this the best time since Mikhail Gorbachev visited Seoul in 1990 to think beyond nukes and food aid to the possibility of dramatic change and, perhaps, peaceful reunification.”

In reality nothing has substantially changed since 1994. All the changes NK has made are tied together with a common vein; they are easily reversible. The same sort of talk/predictions were made then, and here we are 11 years later at the same spot, except worse (how many died? and how many nukes?).

Yes, we may get some sort of deal, yes, something like progress may appear to be made. But my mantra remains; nothing will change ?€“ really - while KJI is in power.

A well educated work force — by NK’s standards.
Highly technical — by NK’s standards.
Highly discipled — by NK’s standards.

When the North’s goes away, there is no telling what those people will do, but simply shrug their shoulders and put those shoulders to hard work for South Korean chaebol?

Maybe in a parallel universe….

A guy who has worked with North Korea refugees in South Korea and China told me — to my utter amazment — taking these people into the US by the thousands would be a huge mistake. He said their decades under the warm leadership of the Kims have left them starkly barren - emotionally and in many other ways. He said things like demanding cash for just a 5 minute interview and other things usually end up making the people who work closely with them some of the most skeptical about them.

I also heard a former South Korean government official who worked on the KEDO project talk about how the work crews with South Koreans and North Koreans soon became segregated by choice soon after the newness of being able to eat together wore off, and he said it wore off fast.

Maybe if unificatoin comes from North Korea working out some kind of outlandish deal with the South, which I highly doubt, they will have a transition, but if unification comes from collapse or a totally dehabilitating break down in the North, I will be shocked to death if the North Koreans just blend into whatever framework SK and anybody else works out….