2018/19 Reports

This is a declassified National Intelligence Estimate of 1961 looking at the prospects for North and South Korea. Its amazing how wrong it turned out to be. North Korea was prospering and strong and South Korea was failing  in every way,  ready to be absorbed into the communist orbit.  Time was on the side of Pyongyang. I don't fault the authors; the facts pointed them in that direction albeit it with a poor understanding of the North's command economy system. And perhaps their warnings helped put in place new economic  policies that dramatically improved the lot of South Korea. One could redraft this estimate today, and switch North and South, and it could look pretty accurate, the South dominant and the North failing. Of course now, as then, we might be completely wrong.