Editor’s note: This is the third in Andrei Lankov’s series on unification scenarios. To see previous installments click here and here.

When people publicly talk about Korean unification, they tend to be rather optimistic. This picture of a wonderful future might not be too widely off the mark but with all change, no matter how positive, there are winners and losers. Ironically, and rather depressingly, in the North Korean case, it would appear that the people most likely to lose out are those leading the revolutionary transition.

In the modern world, democratic revolutions and other dramatic pushes toward full