The South Korean government is planning to fund research projects into a range of potential models for unification with North Korea, documents seen by NK News showed this week, with case-studies including federation and EU-style confederation among several under consideration.

In plans for the two research projects, the South Korean Ministry of Unification (MOU) asked prospective participants in the project to examine cases of gradual unification.

Previous research on unification, it said, has concentrated on comparing Korea’s case to that of the “radical unification” of Germany in 1990, asking researchers to assume the North and South would likely take a more