Last month, South Korean President Moon Jae-in pitched a big idea to the U.N. General Assembly: a public health cooperative among Northeast Asian countries — namely, North and South Korea.

Moon argued that the COVID-19 era makes this kind of cooperation more important than ever. His “Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative for Infectious Disease Control and Public Health would include both Koreas, as well as China, Japan and Mongolia. 

However, no detailed action plan or official report has been published yet. That’s not a good sign for an initiative that is already likely to fail. Moon’s idea is already facing inherent