Word: communisme
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...communism in North Korea worries the South...
...defining issue among the factions is almost certain to be whether to accept the verdict of humanity on communism and negotiate a gradual, peaceful accommodation with the South. Members of the North Korean ruling elite have seen what happened in Germany, another country divided in 1945. The more realistic among them can easily imagine ending up like Erich Honecker and his comrades: on the dustheap of history or in the dock. Visitors to Pyongyang have noted a new defensiveness, bordering on desperation, among officials there...
...these reasons, the South Koreans with whom I talked are crossing their fingers that the death of communism in the North and unification with the South will be spread out over 10 or even 20 years. They are counting on their new partners in Beijing to wean Kim's successors away from Stalinism. As Professor Ahn Byung Joon of Yonsei University in Seoul put it, "The only course is to persuade North Korea to adopt the Chinese model of economic reform and an open-door policy toward the rest of the world...
While a step-by-step, managed transition is to be encouraged, it is not necessarily to be expected. As Gorbachev himself inadvertently demonstrated, reform communism is an oxymoron. The Chinese Communists may ultimately learn the same truth, even though they bought the system some time with blood on Tiananmen Square. The late Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, a great friend of the Great Leader, provided a corollary: the more retrograde and repressive the regime, the more violent its fall. Its strength is brittle; it will not bend, but it will break. Open the door to a country like North Korea...
Such divisions may be a harbinger for the G.O.P. Without communism to kick around, without the prosperity that has helped Republicans hold the White House for 20 of the past 24 years, the party is groping for a new philosophical glue to hold its various constituencies together. Even if Bush can unite the factions this year, their increasingly irreconcilable differences guarantee that the G.O.P. is itself in for some "change" before it gathers again in 1996. (See related stories beginning on page...