Courtesy of Roman Harak

By David Tizzard

Diplomacy with North Korea is both complex and challenging. For just when you think progress is being made or that there are signs of hope of reunification and reconciliation (or perhaps rehabilitation), Pyongyang blows up a symbolic liaison office and refers to your politicians and diplomats as "insane" and "stupid."

But then how does one respond? How does one communicate and interact with a country so far down its own rabbit-hole of historical interpretation that even the simplest of events can't be agreed on? Do you just block them on Facebook and Twitter like that crazed uncle who keeps talking about Pizzagate and Hilary Clinton's emails?

If this week has reminded us of anything, however, it's that even Harvard professors can generate the most appallingly falsified and immoral versions of history when the money is right. This is not something that the DPRK fails in alone.

But anti-imperialists, socialists, and pacifists shouldn't get too glossy-eyed about things North Korean. One can decry Western warmongering of the twentieth century and surrounding historical revisionism, but in the eyes of a totalitarian ethno-nationalist state like the DPRK you will never be truly welcome.

The South is of course no stranger to its own versions of history. And despite everything that has transpired between the two Koreas, there is still a tendency for those in Seoul's ruling party to see the North Korean regime as not only capable of the promised change that has yet to transpire, but also of achieving full denuclearization and acceptance into the international fold.

At a confirmation hearing earlier this month, the new South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong asserted that Kim Jong-un "still has the intention to denuclearize." Chung, who met Kim Jong-un back in March 2018, said he sees the North Korean chairman as a perceptive leader with a good grasp of both the inter-Korean and broader international situation.

Someone with arguably more insider knowledge, former North Korean acting ambassador to Kuwait Ryu Hyeon-woo, told CNN in January however that Kim Jong-un "cannot denuclearize" and that the sanctions imposed on the regime are necessary and must continue.

Who do we believe? Is there really such thing as a North Korean expert anymore? Even newly-elected South Korean lawmaker and former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho has had to apologize in the press for his incorrect remarks on Kim Jong-un's health.

Reports this week in Yonhap offer some encouragement to citizens here. Apparently over 60% of school students surveyed said reunification between the two Koreas was necessary. Elsewhere, parts of social media went all nostalgic as it remembered that 3 years ago this week the two Koreas marched together under the Unification Flag at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics.

I decided not to disrupt their memories by reminding them that the two Koreas did exactly the same at the 2000 Sydney Olympics opening ceremony. It often confuses me as to why PyeongChang is so revered yet Sydney, which was genuinely a first at an event of that stature, is largely forgotten. Yes, there was the unified Korean women's hockey team at PyeongChang but the attention normally rests largely on the entrance ceremony which was but a revisiting of the past.

Social media and history are not always the best of friends. We are accustomed to knowing what happened all over the world in the past twenty-four hours but not understanding how things were twenty years ago.

This cultural and political amnesia also seems to help ruling and opposition parties stake their claims as the only feasible answer in an increasingly entrenched partisan system that sees every election as one in which the fate of the world is balanced. So it ever was.

For North Korea, whose own recent YouTube and social media forays have gone the way of ex-President Trump's Twitter and China's Clubhouse and been banned and blocked by corporate giants, its economy remains a major problem.