Inter-Korean Relations between Strategies of Cooperation, Unification and Confrontation

The article attempts to analyze new developments in the situation on the Korean Peninsula. In recent years, significant changes have occurred in inter-Korean relations. The leadership of the DPRK has abandoned the goal of unification of Korea, stating that it will proceed from the realities of the existence of “two warring states” on the peninsula. The administration of Yun Sok-Yeol, for its part, continued to raise the issue of unification, promoting plans to increase influence for these purposes directly on the population of North Korea, bypassing the official authorities. The new Cold War that has gripped the Korean Peninsula after a brief period of détente in 2018–2019, and the subsequent move by the two Koreas to mutual nuclear deterrence, has long buried hopes for inter-Korean reconciliation, dialogue and cooperation. Instead of gradual rapprochement with subsequent integration into one state entity, the opposite process is now gaining momentum – dismantling and destruction of all the acquisitions and developments of past years: the contractual and legal framework, cooperation mechanisms, communication channels. It has been shown that the idea of Korean unification, a goal that was considered quite realistic in the past, is now turning into an utopia, an abstract slogan behind which there is no real program of action. Despite the obviousness of the task to establish relations of peaceful coexistence, including, of course, the resolution of the consequences of the Korean War, the DPRK and the ROK are still far from finding a reasonable formula for settlement that would allow the contradictions existing between them to be removed. In the current conditions, the general dynamics of the development of the situation will most likely remain quite high and saturated with conflict events. This is fraught with the emergence of new complications on the Korean Peninsula, making peace and security in this region vulnerable to challenges of a military, political and other nature.