Here’s an article by a guy who asks a pretty good question. . . Is South Korea’s policy towards the NORKs a “sunshine policy” or the “Stockholm syndrome”?

Any type of engagement policy with a hostile enemy can yield two possible, and contradictory, results. For optimists, a sunshine approach can effectively buy off the adverse party, convincing them that the economic benefits of behaving nicely are far preferable to the costs of persisting in hostile actions. In an ideal world, an accommodating policy persuades the erstwhile enemy to lay down its arms.

But for pessimists, engagement (or appeasement) only emboldens the enemy, reinforces its misbehavior, and reflects weakness

Unfortunately, accommodation can be most destructive when it both succeeds and fails, in that order. In other words, a Sunshine approach might initially appear to be working while, in fact, the hostile party’s cooperative actions mask its ongoing efforts to continue its aggressive conduct. When this happens, the pessimists’ worst nightmare comes true.

This is exactly what seems to be transpiring in North Korea. Kim’s regime has hungrily swallowed every assurance and assuagement that the U.S., Japan, and South Korea have showered upon it, yet has persisted in exactly those actions - developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weaponry - that engagement was designed to forestall.

Kind of like the story about the animals living next to an alligator pit — each one hoping that he would be the last one to be eaten. . .