semantics of both sides.
"And it did not help that all the money for the project was provided by the South," he added.
Instead of serving as a confidence-building measure that would lead to bigger and more meaningful exchanges between the two sides, the dictionary project has gotten stuck, he said, while any move to revive it will lead to the same issues re-emerging.
"The Unification Ministry has so many ideas, plans and projects, but they cannot overcome the anger of the North," he said. "The people there don't want to hear how the South is helping them with medical aid, food or compiling a dictionary. The people of the North have been told that the South is their archenemy and to be suspicious of any joint projects.
"How did they ever think this could succeed?"
If there's no good will on the part of the North – which there clearly isn't – then to present this as a "firm step" towards reunification is absurd. It sounds like a worthwhile project anyway, with its own rationale. It really doesn't need this pathetic unification breast-beating.
Of course the South is in an impossible situation, but there's no use pretending that they're dealing with a rational counterpart that's basically interested in the same thing the South's interested in. That's clearly not the case. It's like constantly presenting sweeties and prettily wrapped gifts to a pack of hyenas, in the hope that eventually they'll come round and start to be nice and friendly. They won't, because they're hyenas, and what hyenas want is to eat you.
What Pyongyang is really frightened of, as we've seen, is the spread of South Korean culture. Why can't Seoul capitalise on this – renew the balloon drops, whatever – instead of these earnest but doomed attempts to hold out the hand of friendship?
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