The Peninsula's Present and Future — Living in the Gap

On April 27, 2018, a single man stepped over a low concrete curb set upon the Military Demarcation Line. It was the moment North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, set foot on South Korean soil for the first time in history. He exchanged a smiling handshake with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who was waiting, and the two held hands and stepped back and forth across the line for all to see. This footage, broadcast around the world, gave the impression that a spring of reconciliation had once again come to the peninsula.

That year, dialogue moved all at once. In June, the first North Korea–United States summit in history was held in Singapore. U.S. President Trump and Kim Jong-un exchanged a handshake, and the joint statement included language directed toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The very fact that the leaders of two countries that had been hostile for nearly 70 years sat at the same table was a historic event. The wind around the peninsula did seem, indeed, to have shifted.

After the Handshake — A Relationship That Swings Back

But the season of jubilation did not last long. In February 2019, the second North Korea–United States summit, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, broke down without producing an agreement document. It was reported that the gap between the two sides over the scope of denuclearization and the degree of sanctions relief could not be bridged. In June of that year, Trump and Kim met again at Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border, but the subsequent negotiations made no substantive progress and lost their momentum.

Inter-Korean relations, too, swung back. In June 2020, North Korea blew up the inter-Korean joint liaison office that had stood in Kaesong. Footage of the facility, a symbol of reconciliation, collapsing amid smoke told of how fragile the thaw had been. And from late 2023 into 2024, North Korea went further. Kim Jong-un stated that the South was no longer the same people but a relationship of ‘two hostile states,’ and it was reported that he indicated a policy of removing reunification from the nation’s goals. The North appeared to be officially letting go of the very ideal of reunification it had long upheld—it was a major turning point, received that way by many.

In the Gap Between the United States and China

The structure in which the peninsula is placed may, in essence, be unchanged from the eve of its opening to the world. The peninsula that was once caught between the great powers of Qing China, Japan, and Russia now stands in the gap between two immense forces, the United States and China.

South Korea, while forming an alliance with the United States in security, is deeply bound to China, its largest trading partner, in economics. If one side surges, friction arises with the other. Within this bind, South Korea has continued to be pressed into delicate steering. North Korea, too, while seeking its backers in China and Russia, shows independent moves that do not entirely follow those countries’ calculations. As the U.S.–China rivalry deepens on a global scale, the peninsula is placed in the very midst of tension, as one of its front lines.

Culture, Another Kind of Power

Tension is not the only word for telling of the peninsula’s present. In the same era, South Korea was moving the world in an entirely different domain. The power of culture—the so-called ‘Korean Wave.’

It began in the early 2000s with television dramas gaining popularity across Asia, and South Korea’s popular culture spread rapidly to the world. In music, K-pop, led by groups such as BTS, stood at the summit of the American music charts; in film, the works of director Bong Joon-ho received worldwide awards; and streaming dramas were watched in record numbers around the world. The southern half of a peninsula that was once tossed about by great powers and burned to ashes in war is now a hub of culture that gives rise to the longing of the world’s young people—this, too, is a sure facet of the peninsula’s present.

Some see this cultural flourishing as the state’s strategic soft power, while others see it as the result of talent and capital joining within the market. Either way, that a country making its presence felt in the world through cultural power—neither military force nor economic might—has been born on the peninsula can be called an unexpected, and deeply striking, development in this story.

This story, which opened as the Hermit Kingdom, has advanced while changing its scenes at a dizzying pace—opening, annexation, liberation, division, war, and then two states. What flowed beneath it consistently was the geopolitical fate of a peninsula caught between great powers. This history cannot be grasped in the simple scheme of who is good and who is evil. Each nation has piled up choices within its own position and circumstances, and that accumulation has shaped the peninsula of today.

What will become of the peninsula’s future, no one can say for certain. Whether it heads toward reconciliation, whether the conflict continues, or whether some unforeseen development awaits. The one thing that can be said is that the peninsula will likely continue, hereafter, to be pressed into difficult choices in the gap between great powers. History has not yet closed, and its continuation is, right now, being written. What we can do, perhaps, is to keep watching quietly over the steps of the people who live on this peninsula, without carelessly siding with one position or the other.

Thank you for joining this long journey to the very end. Through the modern history of a single peninsula, if even a little of the weight of what it means to be tossed about by great powers has come through, I would be glad.

【The Tossed Peninsula: A Modern History of Korea Among Great Powers — End】