WHAT LOOKS TO SOME LIKE CRAVEN HYPOCRISY CAN BE SMART DIPLOMACY.

Here’s an anecdote to explain why what looks to some like craven hypocrisy can be smart diplomacy.

In 1967, a Korean intelligence service snatched composer Isang Yun from West Berlin, where he was living at the time. In his home country, he was tortured, forced to confess to espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment. Only the intervention of colleagues such as Igor Stravinsky, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti, all admirers of Yun’s work, led to his release in 1969. So which Korea did this?

The answer will surprise many. It wasn’t so long ago that South Korea, run by a regime that could sometimes match the Kims’ brutality, did things like the Yun kidnapping. Through it all, it was a staunch U.S. ally. Was hypocrisy required to keep the alliance going? Definitely. Did the alliance help South Korea to democratize eventually? The answer is also yes.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s “normalization” steps mean he’s not ignoring that lesson. He and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un agreed that the two Koreas’ teams would walk as one at the opening ceremony and that a joint women’s hockey team would be fielded.