Comment by kyllo

Right. It's kind of seen as a "given" now that South Korea and Taiwan are the democratic, American-friendly, "good guys" and the DPRK and PRC are the authoritarian, oppressive "bad guys," but back in the '60s through the '80s before the ROK and ROC democratized, the situation was much murkier. Because of the Cold War, those regimes were considered allies solely by virtue of not being Communists, but they were also very unfree. Perhaps the winding down of the Cold War had something to do with their falling out of power and being replaced by democracies.