A Map and Compass for Peace: From Confrontation to Coexistence

Byeong-gil Jeon

Adjunct Professor, Kookmin University

CEO, Yes Innovation

A New Direction for the Korean Peninsula from the UN Podium

On September 22, President Lee Jae-myung outlined South Korea’s role in promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula and advancing cooperation within the international community in his address to the General Debate of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York City. In his approximately 17-minute speech, President Lee assessed the complex crises confronting the international community while clearly conveying the message that the Korean Peninsula must move beyond confrontation and conflict toward an order based on peaceful coexistence.

A notable feature of the speech was that it did not approach peace on the Korean Peninsula solely through the narrow lens of improving inter-Korean relations. President Lee emphasized the principle that the international community must work together to address shared challenges and articulated South Korea’s commitment to contributing to global peace and stability as a responsible middle power.

With respect to the Korean Peninsula, in particular, he stressed the need for North and South Korea to respect each other, prevent military confrontation, and work toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula over the long term. This is particularly significant given the current security environment. The Korean Peninsula remains under an armistice, while North Korea continues to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities. Inter-Korean dialogue and exchanges have been largely suspended for an extended period, and military tensions remain unresolved.

Under these circumstances, simply invoking peace as an ideal is insufficient. Moving toward peace requires a clear roadmap and a compass. The significance of President Lee’s UN address lies in part in its effort to articulate such a framework.

The Starting Point for Peace on the Korean Peninsula Is “Peaceful Coexistence”

At the core of President Lee’s vision for peace on the Korean Peninsula is the concept of peaceful coexistence. It recognizes the reality that North and South Korea have different political systems and institutions while seeking to prevent military conflict and expand the space for coexistence through dialogue and cooperation. This does not mean abandoning the goal of reunification. Rather, peaceful coexistence can be understood as a process of creating the minimum stable conditions necessary for meaningful discussions about reunification.

It is important to maintain reunification as the ultimate objective of inter-Korean relations. At the same time, given current realities, if competition over the means and timing of reunification intensifies confrontation between the two Koreas, the path toward reunification itself could become even more difficult. What is needed now, therefore, is not to rush toward reunification, but to reduce the risk of war and institutionalize peace.

Once peace is firmly established, opportunities for contact and exchange between the peoples of North and South Korea can expand. As cooperation in the economic, social, and cultural spheres increases, the foundation for mutual understanding can also deepen. Only through the sustained development of such interactions can discussions of reunification eventually take place on a more realistic foundation. In this sense, peaceful coexistence is not a substitute for reunification, but a pragmatic intermediate stage on the path toward it.

The most pressing issue in any discussion of peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula is North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. North Korea’s advancing nuclear capabilities are transforming not only inter-Korean relations but also the broader security environment in Northeast Asia. As long as North Korea continues to expand its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, it will be difficult to establish sustainable peace through confidence-building measures or economic cooperation alone. Peaceful coexistence and denuclearization, therefore, cannot be treated as separate policy challenges.

The phased approach advanced by the Lee Jae-myung administration—first halting the further advancement of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, followed by reducing those capabilities, and ultimately moving toward their elimination—can be understood as an approach that seeks to reconcile present realities with long-term objectives.

What is essential is that this phased approach must not undermine the ultimate objective of denuclearization. A halt to nuclear activities should not be interpreted as permanent recognition of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. Rather, it should constitute an initial step toward denuclearization. This would involve preventing further production of fissile material and the development of additional nuclear weapons and delivery systems, while progressively reducing existing capabilities through a series of verifiable measures.

In this process, verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), together with sustained cooperation from the international community, can play a critical role.

Ultimately, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula cannot be achieved through a single summit or political declaration. It requires a sustained process in which incremental agreements are reached, their implementation is verified, and the parties proceed to the next stage based on the results of that verification.

For peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula, managing military tensions and establishing a durable peace regime must proceed in parallel. The 1953 Armistice Agreement brought an end to active hostilities on the peninsula. An armistice, however, is not the same as a peace agreement. This distinction helps explain why military tensions and crises have repeatedly emerged on the Korean Peninsula over the past seven decades.

The first condition for peaceful coexistence, therefore, is the establishment of a stable military management system capable of preventing renewed conflict. To this end, military communication channels between North and South Korea should be restored, along with mechanisms designed to prevent unintended military clashes. It is also important to establish effective crisis-management procedures for incidents in and around the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) so that military misunderstandings do not escalate into armed conflict.

The recent landmine explosion in the western sector of the DMZ further demonstrates the fragility of peace on the Korean Peninsula. This underscores why practical safeguards to prevent military conflict must accompany diplomatic efforts to establish peace. Peaceful coexistence does not require weakening military deterrence. Rather, maintaining a credible defense posture while simultaneously pursuing dialogue and building military confidence can constitute a realistic approach to promoting peace. Deterrence and dialogue are not mutually exclusive. Deterrence is necessary to prevent war, while dialogue is necessary to address the underlying sources of conflict.

Lessons from Past Agreements

There is already a substantial body of inter-Korean agreements concerning peace and relations on the Korean Peninsula. Beginning with the July 4 North-South Joint Statement of 1972 and continuing through the 1991 Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation, the June 15 Joint Declaration of 2000, the October 4 Declaration of 2007, and the 2018 Panmunjom Declaration and Pyongyang Joint Declaration, the two Koreas have repeatedly committed themselves to improving relations and reducing military tensions.

The central problem has not been the absence of agreements. Rather, it has been the lack of sufficiently durable institutional mechanisms to ensure their consistent implementation. With changes in government, the policy direction toward inter-Korean relations has frequently shifted, weakening the continuity of previous agreements. Because inter-Korean relations have been heavily influenced by changes in domestic politics and the international environment, establishing a sustained, long-term peace process has proven difficult.

One of the most important tasks for future peace policy, therefore, is to ensure policy continuity. A minimum set of principles governing inter-Korean relations that can be sustained across changes in government should be established through broad social consensus. Institutional mechanisms should also be developed to ensure that inter-Korean agreements are not easily discarded based solely on the policy preferences of a particular administration, but instead receive sufficient legislative and public support to remain effective over time.

North Korea currently defines its relationship with South Korea as one between two hostile states. Restoring inter-Korean relations according to the model of previous periods will therefore be difficult. This is precisely why a new approach centered on peaceful coexistence is necessary. Rather than seeking to transform North Korea’s political system or pursue reunification through absorption, such an approach would acknowledge the reality of the North Korean system, reduce mutually hostile actions, and gradually expand the space for dialogue and cooperation.

One possible starting point is to pursue cooperation in areas that are relatively less vulnerable to political and military tensions, including public health and medicine, disaster response, climate change, forestry, and environmental protection. Limited forms of cooperation can help build confidence, and greater confidence can create opportunities for broader cooperation. This does not, of course, mean responding to North Korean provocations or its continued development of nuclear and missile capabilities without a clear strategy. A balanced approach is necessary—one that maintains credible deterrence grounded in the ROK-U.S. alliance while keeping channels for dialogue open.

Peaceful Coexistence Must Be a Long-Term National Strategy

President Lee’s address to the United Nations is significant because it presented the Korean Peninsula not merely as a matter of inter-Korean relations, but as a broader peace and security issue closely linked to the international order. Peace on the Korean Peninsula cannot be achieved through South Korea’s efforts alone. Cooperation with neighboring countries—including the United States, China, Japan, and Russia—is also necessary. In particular, addressing North Korea’s nuclear issue requires a framework in which U.S.-North Korea engagement and inter-Korean dialogue can reinforce and complement each other.

At the same time, South Korea cannot simply wait for support from the international community. It must maintain a coherent and consistent national strategy for peace. The core elements of that strategy should be clear: maintaining strong national security while keeping the door to dialogue open; halting the further advancement of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities; pursuing phased denuclearization; preventing military clashes between North and South Korea; and establishing durable institutions for peaceful coexistence.

Ultimately, the objective is to create a Korean Peninsula free of the threats posed by nuclear weapons and war. This process cannot be completed in the short term, nor is it likely to be achieved within the tenure of a single administration. That is precisely why a long-term national strategy is necessary. Peace is not achieved through a single summit. Rather, it becomes sustainable only when a succession of smaller agreements and concrete actions accumulates over time.

We Must Chart the Course, and Peace Must Be Our Compass

History offers an important lesson. The Korean Peninsula has seen numerous declarations and agreements intended to promote peace. Yet peace cannot be secured through declarations alone. It requires institutions capable of sustaining agreements, building mutual trust, and ensuring policy continuity. President Lee Jae-myung’s recent UN address is significant in part because it seeks to chart a new direction for the Korean Peninsula in light of these historical experiences.

What is needed now is not another set of broad declarations. The priority should be to prevent war, reduce tensions, restore dialogue, mitigate nuclear risks, and gradually establish institutions for peaceful coexistence. Peaceful coexistence is neither a concession to North Korea nor a renunciation of reunification. Rather, it can serve as a pragmatic national strategy through which the two Koreas acknowledge existing realities, reduce the risk of war, and prepare for the future. Advancing peace on the Korean Peninsula requires both a map to chart the course and a compass to keep us on the path toward peace.

The direction of that compass should be clear: a Korean Peninsula defined by peace rather than war, coexistence rather than confrontation, and denuclearization rather than nuclear armament. If President Lee’s address to the United Nations articulated this direction, the task now is to translate that vision into sustained policy and concrete action. Only when the principle of peaceful coexistence is consistently reflected in domestic politics, inter-Korean relations, the ROK-U.S. alliance, and engagement with the international community can peace on the Korean Peninsula move beyond declarations and become a durable reality.