Peaceful Coexistence on the Korean Peninsula? First, End the War

 

*Participants at the Korea Peace Rally chanting slogans “NO WAR! YES PEACE!” ⓒ Il Young Jeong

Il Young Jeong

Senior Research Fellow_Institute of Social Science_Sogang University

“Are the Two Koreas Still Technically at War?”

 

Yes. North and South Korea are still in a state of war. The Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950, was suspended with the signing of the Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953. Since then, the war has never officially ended.

The Lee Jae-myung government is currently pursuing a “Policy of Peaceful Coexistence on the Korean Peninsula.” In essence, the policy aims to create “a Korean Peninsula where North and South peacefully coexist and grow together.”

Compared with the Yoon Suk Yeol administration — which heightened tensions with North Korea through hardline rhetoric symbolized by the slogan “Immediate, Strong, and Until the End” — tensions on the peninsula have clearly eased. Yet few would describe the current situation as genuine “peaceful coexistence.” It is now time to address the fundamental issue. What must we do to achieve sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula?

 

Why Have We Failed to End the War?

The Korean Peninsula is still at war — or, more precisely, in a state of armistice. Surprisingly, many people still find it hard to believe that the two Koreas remain technically at war. “What war? The Korean War? Didn’t that happen a long time ago?” Indeed, the Korean War entered a ceasefire phase with the signing of the Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953 — seventy-three years ago. So let us ask again: why have we still failed to end the war?

The logic that has dominated until now goes like this: if the war officially ends, the justification for stationing U.S. forces in South Korea disappears. And if U.S. troops withdraw, North Korea could invade the South again. For this reason, North Korea has long demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the peninsula.

According to this argument, ending the war would make South Korea less secure. As strange as it sounds, whenever discussions about a formal end to the war emerge, calls for peace are often dismissed as serving North Korea’s interests, and advocates of an end-of-war declaration are branded as pro-North.

Some argue that peaceful coexistence with a nuclear-armed North Korea is simply impossible. That concern is understandable. No one can feel truly secure while living alongside a nuclear-armed state. But even so, what justification is there for continuing the state of war? Is it not even more dangerous to remain technically at war with a nuclear-armed North Korea?

 

As Unification Fades, So Does the Rationale for Continuing the War

For decades, South Korean society has been dominated by the strange logic that the war cannot end if we are to remain secure. Recently, however, a major variable has emerged: North Korea has declared that it no longer wishes to speak of unification at all.

In December 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared that inter-Korean relations were “no longer relations between people of the same nation, but relations between two hostile states and two belligerents still at war.” He reaffirmed this position once again at the Ninth Party Congress held in February 2026. North Korea, which once referred to South Korea as “Nam Joseon” (“South Chosun”), now officially calls it the “Republic of Korea” and is even erasing the very word “unification” from its vocabulary.

Let us return to the central point. North Korea — more precisely, Kim Jong Un — has rejected unification and declared that the two Koreas should live as separate states. In effect, Pyongyang is saying: let us stop pretending to be one people. Frankly, that may be emotionally unsettling. But if we think about it rationally, what reason remains for refusing to formally end the war? If both sides are to exist as separate states, there is nothing more awkward or dangerous than remaining trapped in a wartime system indefinitely.

From a different perspective, the Lee Jae-myung government is also exploring a “two-state relationship” on the peninsula — though one defined as “a peaceful two-state relationship oriented toward eventual unification.” According to the 2025 Seoul National University Survey on Korean Unification, 54 percent of South Koreans now agree with the statement that “North Korea is a separate country.” The sense of ethnic unity between the two Koreas continues to fade, while hostility and division deepen, leaving little emotional foundation for reconciliation.

 

Let Us Begin Again at a Healthy Distance

Yet this growing distance between the two Koreas is not entirely negative. After all, are we not often told that even the most important relationships require a healthy distance? Whether the relationship is described as “hostile” or “peaceful,” if both Koreas can acknowledge the reality that two separate states now exist on the peninsula, perhaps this is precisely the moment to finally end the war.

I believe that discussions of reunification will one day reemerge, driven by new circumstances and new opportunities. The five-thousand-year history of the Korean Peninsula itself points in that direction. Even if Kim Jong Un attempts to erase the ideas of “shared nationhood” and “unification,” he cannot erase them from the minds of the North Korean people. But we should not become so fixated on a distant vision of reunification that we ignore the realities of the present. Before anything else, we must bring this absurd state of war to an end.

*IL-Young Jeong is a Senior Research Fellow at Sogang University in Seoul. His key research interests include North Korea's social control system, inter-Korean relations, and peace on the Korean Peninsula.