The prospect of a Korean reunification in the short rather than the long term has recently been raised again, this time in a paper prepared by Bruce Bennett for the RAND Corporation. As usual, and despite dressing arguments up in scholarly fashion, what we are given is a hope that perhaps one day what people see as the problem of North Korea will just go away. Alas! I suspect it is all more complicated than that.

On the surface, the idea of a reunified Korea becoming a reality seems to be almost a no-brainer. Here is a peninsula that was