Criticizing the Discussions on Korean Peninsula Unification by Kim Jong-un, Yoon Suk-yeol, and Im Jong-seok * The Forgotten Dialogue Between North and South Korea: Is Unification an Impossible Dream? @iStock Il Young Jeong Research Professor_Institute of Social Sciences_Sogang University There was a movie titled The Good, the Bad, the Weird , set in Manchuria during the Japanese colonial period. Recently, another trio has emerged on the Korean Peninsula: the dangerous one, the ignorant one, and the strange one. These terms refer to Kim Jong-un, Yoon Suk-yeol, and Im Jong-seok. Kim Jong-un, the "Dangerous One“ North Korean leader Kim Jong-un claims his development of nuclear weapons is for self-defense. However, he now threatens the people of South Korea, saying he could launch nuclear weapons toward the South. By denying the ethnic kinship between North and South and threatening peace on the Korean Peninsula, Kim Jong-un is indeed a “dangerous one.” Furthermore, Kim portrays t
*Another gloomy day in Pyongyang. Are we truly seeing North Korea as it is? @iStock Il Young Jeong Research Professor_Institute of Social Sciences_Sogang University It has been over five years since inter-Korean dialogue was suspended. In relation to this, discussions are ongoing about how to forge new inter-Korean relations. Throughout this process, numerous researchers and journalists have been discussing the crisis and changes in North Korea. However, there seems to be something missing in their discussions. Can we really generalize the subject we are researching and reporting on as “North Korea”? I believe that we can no longer single out and generalize events happening in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula with the subject "North Korea." But why is that? We can no longer generalize under the name "North Korea." From my perspective, until the economic crisis of the mid-1990s, the social community in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula could be ca