Quotes of the Day

U.S. General Leon LaPorte called it a "celebration" but last weekend's commemoration of armistice that ended the Korean War was a somber affair. The crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions hung over the event, of course. But there was also the disheartening sense that time has stood still here. Nobody imagined 50 years ago that troops would still face off along the DMZ or still hold grim meetings in a little blue hut straddling the 38th parallel. When so little seems to have changed, it is hard to see what there is to celebrate.

But outside the DMZ, everything has changed. When the war ended, the Soviet Union was a superpower running an empire in eastern Europe. China was a fiercely ideological communist power just stepping onto the world stage. Communism was still a system that inspired many with hope for a better, more equitable world. Its economic failings were not yet apparent; Khrushchev could still tell Kennedy at their 1961 summit in Vienna that the Soviets would "bury" their American rivals. The Cold War was just unfolding and the 20th century's bloody contest between Communism and market democracy had barely started.

Today the contest is over and we know who lost. The Soviet Union is a fading memory. China's leaders have embraced capitalism and cling with increasing difficulty to political control. And on the peninusula, South Korea is now one of the most powerful economies in the world, while the North's economic pulse is so weak as to be barely perceptible. Seoul has won the political contest hands-down as well. Young South Koreans may resent the U.S. troop presence on their soil, but they aren't contesting the political system which is America's legacy. Nobody wants a Dear Leader-led government in the South—far from it. South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's victory was about dissatisfaction with the pace of democratic change in South Korea—the young elected Roh to speed it up. They want their country's new freedoms and openness enshrined in law.

The problem is that the world has changed, but North Korea has not. As Australian scholar Adrian Buzo points out, North Korea was set up and run by Kim Il Sung and his cronies, a band of guerilla fighters, with help from Stalinist Russia. North Korea's siege mentality, its paranoid distrust of the outside world, its pugilistic approach to international relations—all reflect these origins. Today that blueprint is still in place. Some optimists would like to cast Kim Jong Il as a reformer, struggling to overcome resistance from hardliners in the military. But there is little evidence for that view. Granted, Pyongyang has embarked on limited economic change that could be a harbinger of Chinese-stye reform. But much of what the North has done can also be read as tinkering at the edges, just enough "reform" to stave off economic collapse. Even these limited moves are doomed to failure unless the North exchanges its nuclear ambitions for economic aid from the international community.

So let's be frank. The unification of North and South Korea is not going to be about the "integration" of the two systems. The North Korean state has failed economically, impoverishing and even starving its people. Politically, it is just as bankrupt—around the world, Kim Jong Il is an object of ridicule as much as fear. At home, according to refugees and defectors, resentment is growing as North Koreans ask themselves why South Koreans and Chinese are prospering while they languish in poverty.

The allied veterans who gathered at the DMZ last Sunday for the armistice events may have been saddened that so little had changed since they left. But make no mistake: this is the endgame. If North Korea can scrap its nukes and embrace real reform, South Korea and the rest of the world will rush to help it. And that, as Kim Jong Il knows, will lead to the eventual unraveling of his regime. But so will the alternative: If North Korea stakes everything on nuclear weapons, as it is now doing, the world will isolate the regime and slowly strangle it. The result will be the same but maybe much messier. The ball is in Kim's court. One thing is certain: there will not be another armistice commemoration 50 years from now. The war will finally be over.

• Donald Macintyre
• After 50 years of hostilities on the Korean peninsula, the end may be at hand—one way or another