A Korean comedy of errors
By Sung-Yoon Lee, opinion contributor — 04/27/18 12:30 PM EDT Were Friday’s inter-Korean summit meeting between the South’s Moon Jae-In and the North’s Kim Jong Un a fictional play, it would be a commendable aesthetic fulfillment of the Aristotelian unities: The unity of “action†(single action — the meeting itself), “time†(occurring over no more than 24 hours — April 27), and “place†(unfolding in a single existing place — the border village Peace House).
But because the compressed daylong date, capped by an elaborate Korean-themed dinner, carries very much real-life nuclear and gulag consequences, the rendezvous that proved long on bonhomie and woefully short on dismantlement discussions on weapons-and-camps of mass destruction merely reaffirms a cliché: Karl Marx’s dictum that history repeats itself in tragi-farcical cycles.
Worse still, the event may come to be remembered not just as another farcical sequel to the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 — which entailed a bribe transfer of $500 million from Seoul to Pyongyang — but also as a prequel to a yet-to-be born, ill-fated meeting to be forgotten. President Donald Trump must realize that he is walking right into an elaborate trap set by the wily North Korean leader. By lining up world leaders for meetings while making no concessions beyond verbal palliative, Kim has willed himself into Global Everyman who thinks no ill.
<..snip..>
http://thehill.com/opinion/international/385110-a-korean-comedy-of-errors
