By Trefor Moss
Burma has lately become a favourite destination for world leaders and policymakers, with the likes of Hillary Clinton, David Cameron and Ban Ki-moon all making appearances in order to get a feel for what Burmese political reform looks like up close.
But no visit has encapsulated the great political distance that Burma has travelled over the past year quite like that of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who met with both President Thein Sein and National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi earlier this week.
It was, after all, only five years ago that the Burmese regime was restoring diplomatic ties with the other Korea. At the time, that decision appeared to symbolize the deepening of Burma’s isolation from international society, and the hopelessness of the country’s political trajectory. There was no common ground between Naypyidaw and Pyongyang, or at least nothing ideological: there was only their mutual status as Asia’s outcasts. Burma’s paranoid leaders wanted North Korean weapons systems and, it’s rumoured, engineers to help fortify their newly built capital city. North Korea just wanted Burma’s money.
Read the full story at The Diplomat