Seoul’s Unification Ministry recently published a white paper that signaled a shift in how South Korea approaches its relationship with North Korea, reorienting policy away from unification and toward “peaceful coexistence.”

While this goal reflects a more pragmatic reading of current conditions, the path to achieving it remains far from straightforward given North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the lack of any dialogue between the two sides.

In light of this, it's worth considering even more modest goals than peaceful coexistence as an intermediate step, and an example of what this looks like can