North Korea’s recent rocket tests highlight this brutal regime’s ongoing threat to peace. A mere change of leadership won’t eliminate the dangers posed by the rogue state; the only long-term solution requires disappearance of the totalitarian nightmare in Pyongyang and unification of the Korean Peninsula.
That may seem unthinkable at the moment, but 27 years ago a similarly impossible reunification dissolved Communist East Germany into the prosperous, stable Federal Republic of West Germany. Co-incidentally, the statesman who guided this heroic transition just died on June 16th. Helmut Kohl served 16 supremely eventful years as German Chancellor.
Kohl’s example makes clear that even well-established dictatorships can dissolve as artificially divided nations join together in the name of peace and progress. May that lesson inspire hope and encouragement for the oppressed, long-suffering people of today’s North Korea.
