US, North Korea talks just first step on long road to peace

KOREA has been the plaything of the Great Powers for the past 130 years. First it was China, Russia and Japan that competed to dominate the fading Joseon dynasty in the 1880-1895 period, then it was Japan and Russia for the next 15 years, then Japan alone until 1945. Since then, the USSR/China (by the 1970s) and the US have each helped prop up an ally on the divided peninsula.

South Korea's economic transformation since 1961 has made it the world's 11th largest economy. What North Korea lacked in economic power, it compensated with nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them - honed in 2017, with the successful test of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting almost every part of the US.

When the conservative successor party of General Park Chung Hee (the dictator responsible for South Korea's economic "Miracle on the Han River") rules in Seoul, inter-Korean relations usually remain hostile.