Our first article examined President Moon Jae-in’s startling claim, made in early August, that “Korea can catch up with Japan economically through inter-Korean cooperation.”

Probably not endearing ourselves to the Blue House, this author noted that the thrust of this was not so different from his predecessor Park Geun-hye’s view that Korean unification would be some kind of jackpot or bonanza.

Neither Moon nor Park set out their reasoning in any detail. But both drew, consciously or otherwise, on the work of an economist who had made a similar case several years ago.

Kwon Goohoon, whose CV includes a Harvard PhD and 14