Regime change in Korea? This conjures up the Bush administration's imperial fantasies of what it once dubbed the "axis of evil" - before George W. Bush turned turtle and started talking to Pyongyang in a bid to score a foreign policy success somewhere.

With Kim Jong-il still in situ, it is the other Korea where regime change is imminent. Lee Myung-bak, a conservative former chief executive of Hyundai and mayor of Seoul, elected by a landslide in December, will be inaugurated as South Korea's president on February 25. His appointment ends a decade of centre-left rule in Seoul under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun.