Korean Unification

A country on the precipice of war with its neighbors would not be selling arms and sending troops off to fight in a distant conflict.

With road demolitions and direct threats, North Korea has further cemented its belligerent stance toward the South.

In North Korea, unification has been erased from monuments and textbooks, but not from hearts and minds.

The rejection of unification marked a massive paradigm shift for the North Korean state and its sympathizers – including Japan’s pro-North Korean community.

The former special adviser to the South Korean president believes recent moves by Kim Jong Un represent a “brave new world.”

Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at CEIP, on North Korea’s military build-up, the international response, and the potential for South Korea to go nuclear.

Insights from Soo Kim.

With a decisive change in the North’s policy toward the South, the Korean Peninsula has now devolved from a state of armistice to one where conflict could loom at any moment.

Underneath the belligerence, the reframing by Pyongyang actually opens an opportunity, if Seoul can seize it.

“Finlandization” for the North and “Austriazation” for the South provide a path toward unification – and denuclearization.

Support for unification has been weakening for a while. Will changing attitudes be reflected in the next presidential administration?

No South Korean president in the last 38 years has trodden outside the elite blueprint for interacting with North Korea.