By Kim Sang-woo
In times of shifting geopolitical moments, levels of volatility are typically matched by the potential to address unfolding crises and challenges to shape history. Now is no exception. It’s leadership that makes the difference — it will be so again.
At the World Economic Forum last month, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan defined our currently unfolding post-Cold War era as “strategic competition in an age of interdependence.” He added, “We have the capacity to shape what it looks like … The question is, are we prepared to put it to work?” It is a question of summoning the political will to respond to the challenges that we face.
At the end of 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared that reunification with the South was impossible and that the two Koreas no longer have any kinship or homogeneity. They are instead, he said, two separate “belligerent states in the midst of war.” This declaration is a significant, even momentous event. With this statement, Kim criticized and reversed his father’s and revered grandfather’s policies concerning reunification.
However, it is unclear whether Kim’s abandonment of “reunification” will lead to peace on the Korean Peninsula, because this policy shift was accompanied by Kim’s instruction to the military to prepare for a “showdown with the enemy.” This should, he said, be done through nuclear war, if necessary.
War could break out due to North Korean provocations, ranging from more missile or nuclear tests to limited conventional clashes with South Korea. It is still doubtful that Kim would launch a nuclear attack on the South, because it would likely result in North Korea’s demise, but a raid similar to the one undertaken by Hamas against Israel in October is a possibility that concerns South Korea.
Kim might be tempted to ramp up tensions to keep the pressure on during this election year, on both South Korea and the U.S., and to set the stage for negotiations if Trump wins the presidency. Kim has learned through experience that there are few consequences for misconduct but many potential rewards.
Kim probably does not want a major war, but it is possible that he could miscalculate and accidentally start one. Since the failure of the Hanoi summit in 2019, there have been almost no guardrails to prevent situations from spiraling out of control.
The advice offered by a fourth-century Roman general, "Si vis pacem para bellum" (if you want peace, prepare for war), has been a critical foundation of security for many centuries. Today it is called deterrence.
Deterrence — or peace through strength — has stood the test of time because it is widely believed to have worked. But it is not without risks. Strengthening defenses to deter an adversary may be interpreted by that adversary as an indication of aggressive intent and a serious threat to one's own security.
North Korea’s initial motivation for pursuing nuclear weapons may well have been defensive — to deter what it perceived as efforts to undermine or eliminate its regime. But now, Kim may feel emboldened by his increased capabilities to pursue offensive objectives.
In such an environment, the risk of armed conflict breaking out as a result of an accident, misperception or miscalculation can grow. To avoid war and ultimately achieve peace, deterrence should be accompanied by diplomacy.
North Korea recently denounced the reunification of the Korean Peninsula and began calling South Korea by its official name (the Republic of Korea). This was followed by describing South Korea as “a separate belligerent state.”
Despite the ambivalence, South Korea should consider Kim Jong-un’s “separate state” statement as an opportunity to raise the idea of a two-state system to North Korea.
A two-state system would establish a legal and political framework that could help facilitate peaceful coexistence and reduce security risks on the Korean Peninsula.
Although experts have explored a two-state system in the past, public sentiment has been negative due to criticism that it was anti-nationalist, anti-unification and anti-constitutional. However, today more than a majority of South Koreans approve of such a system, and amid the risk of conflict, especially nuclear, it is certainly worth exploring.
South Korea should take the initiative and convene an inter-Korean dialogue for the discussion as it did in 1991, when both Koreas entered the United Nations. At the time, they signed the Basic Agreement and were even considering to institutionalize it.
The two Koreas could sign a basic treaty that enables a two-state system. And the new treaty should include most elements of the 1991 Basic Agreement, and recognize each other as sovereign states with territorial integrity just like the 1972 Basic Treaty between the two Germanys. To ensure the international legal status of this treaty, it should be signed by the heads of the two Koreas, ratified by their legislatures and registered as an international treaty at the U.N. Secretariat per article 102 of the U.N. Charter.
Furthermore, it is essential to secure the support of major stakeholder states such as the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
Negotiating both the Basic Treaty between the two Koreas and U.S.-North Korea diplomatic normalization will be extremely challenging. Nevertheless, the parties concerned should take these measures seriously, and try to realize a two-state system even if the possibility of success is low.
John Maynard Keynes wrote in a 1930 essay: “I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism … will be proved wrong over time: the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.”
Kim Sang-woo (swkim54@hotmail.com), a former lawmaker, is chairman of the East Asia Cultural Project and a member of the board of directors at the Kim Dae-jung Peace Foundation.
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