North Korea's iconic statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, two of the most powerful symbols of the country's regime, will remain standing even if the country collapses and it is re-unifed with the South, according to a foremost expert in North Korean current affairs.

B.R. Myers, author of The Cleanest Race, recently conducted an interview where he touched upon what a unified Korea might look like, suggesting that the situation experienced in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein would be an unlikely outcome upon reunification.  While some suggest that it will be essential to mirror the de-Baathification process in order to move the Koreas forward along the same path, Myers makes the case that because South Korea still has statues of its own former dictators, the same should be expected in the North: