David:
Here is a link to an interview with Prof. B.R. Myers, the man whose work prompted the XX Committee comment.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd...ht-colin-.html
Prof. Myers work and view are unlike anything I've read about North Korea. It seems perfectly sensible and extremely scary. The interview and Prof. Myers book are from 2010 and the interview contains this quote:I strongly urge people to read the interview. Those guys, all of them, ain't like us and the rules of behavior we (including me) are used to don't apply.I think a time may well come when North Korea really is so desperate, and has no other way in which to rally its people around it, that it will actually look for a military confrontation with South Korea.
As an aside, Prof Myers mentions more people having seen Korean movies lately. The first one I ever watched was 3 years ago called Tae Guk Gi. I never saw a war movie with such ferocious antipathy toward the enemy (the DPRK) as that movie. Maybe I just don't know much about Koreans but if the attitude of the producers of that movie at that time is anything to go by, if the North and the South go at it, it will be something.
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