That's the thing. The apology is that the Korean War was a strategic, rather than a moral, mistake. The only costs this would impose on the US would be what it has already had to put up with. However, as a practical matter, if the US did want the North Korean economy to start growing, it would have to provide the seed aid, which really wouldn't be that big of an economic obstacle, as much as a political obstacle.
Also, this isn't really an apology to anyone, but rather to ourselves. So maybe a better way to think of this would be a congressional panel convened to investigate how well containment schemes work or something - there are others going on in Somalia and Eastern Europe, for instance. A kind of strange topic, but its real purpose wouldn't have to be kept too secret (in fact, that would kind of defy the point.) This question might then lead wherever the commission takes it. Something mundane like that could then be engineered to 'serendipitously' spin out of control (perhaps through leaks,) culminating in an apology after North Korea (and maybe China) after they (obstinately on their own volition) ask for it.
That would take even more careful engineering on the domestic than the international end, and it admittedly contains a lot of unknowns. What would be the impetus for a congressional panel on the use of containment? I would think if Somalia collapsed or did something spectacular in the next couple of years, that could provide an opportunity. Whatever happened, it would require a lot of creativity on the part of a lot of people to dilute the political risk to acceptable levels.
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