Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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Last week, many stories and pictures emerged of North and South Korean bonhomie. One picture showed South Korean President Moon Jae-in filling a plastic bottle with water from the Heaven Lake of Mount Paektu in North Korea, which he had climbed with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the end of a three-day summit. As the somewhat showy images of North-South reconciliation played out, Andrei Lankov, who teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul and is an old North Korea watcher, tweeted: “N. Korea still won’t surrender its nuclear weapons completely. But the return of U.S. hardliners is a real threat, so if a bit of inter-Korean showmanship can reduce the chance of a crisis emerging, let it be.” Lankov’s The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (2013) cuts through the “cliches” about the country being “mad” and “a nation of nuclear blackmailers” by pointing out that “North Korea’s leadership is quite rational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against the odds.” However, for Hyeonseo Lee ( The Girl with Seven Names , 2015), who still loves and misses North Korea, there’s no returning back as it “remains as closed and cruel as ever.” In her book, Hyeonseo describes her happy-sad life — the beautiful winters and loving parents, witnessing a public execution when she was seven, and the night she fled across a frozen river.
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/a-walk-through-the-koreas/article25023773.ece
