The Marmot’s Hole

Bruce Klingner over at Heritage has offered his two cents on the Kim-Roh summit.  In short, it is not so good.

Being the ‘politics guy’ here at the Hole, I am naturally interested in his view on how this could play out in the election:

President Roh’s typically high-risk political maneuver appears designed to alter South Korea’s political landscape, which currently favors the conservative opposition’s presidential candidate….

But Roh’s tactics risk backfiring with a South Korean electorate that has become more skeptical of North Korea since Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests last year. Public opinion polls show that while support for engaging North Korea remains high, South Koreans want greater reciprocity from Pyongyang. A lack of tangible concessions would play into the prevalent perception that Roh is engaged in a self-serving political gambit.

I think that is spot-on, and not just because I wrote something similar a few weeks ago.

In any case, be sure to check out all of Klinger’s piece.

BTW, there were a couple of times when he let his inner snark some out.  Here is one:

President Roh has talked of a “Marshall Plan” for North Korea, overlooking the fact that the U.S. program to rebuild post-World War II Europe was initiated after the demise of the totalitarian Third Reich.

Somebody get that man a blog.