The Hill Where Cosmos Bloom / Big Picture

When I was a child, I enjoyed watching Dr. Cal Seegon's space documentary COSMOS and the sci-fi drama Buck Rogers on TV. I felt like I had lived my adolescence too easily because of it. During my school years, I enjoyed reading Hermann Hesse’s novels and the complete works of Nikos Kazantzakis published by Goryeowon, and it seemed that I developed not only a cosmic worldview but also a religious one early on. - I thought I wanted to marry a female space officer like Colonel Wilma in Buck Rogers, but that would only be possible if I, who am hibernating due to a malfunction in the spaceship called Earth, woke up 500 years later.

 

From that day on, ideological and national conflicts appeared to be trivial incidents driven by desire and agitation. Later, seeing President Putin trying to demonstrate his charisma or draw energy through judo, and Chairman Kim Jong-un through shooting, I thought that such displays of force would have their limits. It’s even more so when I think that someone as insignificant as me in Korea must have some ability in sports.

 

We must let go of many peripheral perspectives.

 

Today, let's talk about a worldview. The Chinese worldview of Sinocentrism is always precarious. Why are they unable to be great nations. And why do some opinions in Korea still seek regional division. Why are countries like Japan nationalistic. Why can't North Korea abandon ideology. Why does Russia prioritize territorial unification over economic integration. Isn't that the fault of education? Education that narrows the worldview. Won't that come back to haunt us as a boomerang that blocks progress later on?

 

I challenged the AI to a debate like this. It was American AI, and today it even criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Artificial intelligence is a human-like entity with a broad worldview.

The Size of the Board Is the Size of the Nation

Why Education for a Narrow Worldview Returns as a Boomerang

Lee Hyeong-chun · Independent Columnist

[Opening: to be written by the author]

1. Five Narrow Boards

China places itself at the center of the board; its very name, Zhonghua — the Central Florescence — says so. Russia reads the board only as area on a map. North Korea has drawn the edges of the board along the edges of its regime. Japan has folded the board inward to its archipelago. And in South Korea there are still voices that would cut the board into provinces.

The causes differ. Russia’s fixation on territory grew out of geography: a vast plain with no natural barriers. North Korea cannot abandon its ideology because the ideology is the regime’s very reason to exist. Korean regionalism was made not by textbooks but by uneven development and by the politicians who turned it into votes. Yet the outcomes converge. Each mistakes a part of the board for the whole.

This yardstick must apply to everyone. America’s exceptionalist narrative and South Korea’s myth of a single-blooded nation narrow the board just as surely. To point only at other people’s narrow boards is itself another narrow board.

2. Narrow Education Was the Engine of Catch-Up

Start with an uncomfortable fact. Education that instills a narrow worldview was once an engine of development. Meiji Japan bound its people to the state with the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education. Developmental-era South Korea achieved compressed growth under the banner of nation and fatherland. China consolidated cohesion in the reform era with its 1994 Outline for Implementing Patriotic Education.

At the catch-up stage, this works, because the nations ahead have already drawn the board. The goal is clear, and internal cohesion translates directly into efficiency. There is no need to read the board — only to trace it.

3. At the Advanced Stage, It Becomes a Shackle

The trouble begins at the front of the pack. No one draws the board for you anymore. Innovation and coexistence depend on the ability to understand what lies outside. But eyes trained on a narrow board see the outside only as a threat.

This is the friction China faces today. Its economy has grown to global scale; its eye for reading the world has not grown with it. So-called wolf-warrior diplomacy has mostly deepened its neighbors’ wariness. Here the engine of catch-up returns as a boomerang. Nor is this someone else’s problem. South Korea, having only just left the catch-up stage, may be the first to be struck.

4. The Big-Picture View: Widen the Board, Lower the Self

The daeguk (大局) I mean is not a “great power” (大國). It is the view of the whole board, as a baduk player reads the entire game. And reading the whole board is the opposite of standing at its center. One who stands at the center sees only where his own gaze happens to reach.

China’s tianxia (天下) worldview also claimed to speak of the whole world. But it was wide in the manner of claiming the whole board as its own. In 1990, Voyager 1 photographed the Earth from some six billion kilometers away: a dot smaller than a single pixel. Carl Sagan reminded us that on that tiny dot humanity had spilled blood over territory. As the board widens, the self grows smaller.

The big-picture view, then, is the capacity to widen the board while lowering oneself within it. Widen only the board, and you become an empire; lower only the self, and you fall into helplessness. Only when the two move together does room for coexistence appear. Nor does this board lie somewhere in history, already finished. The development of history has been the widening of the board. The big-picture view is not an answer but a direction.

5. War Comes from the Zero-Sum of a Narrow Board

War is a struggle over scarce value. Territory shrinks when divided; trade and technology grow when shared. Those with a narrow board see the world as a fixed pie; those with a wide one believe the pie can grow. This is why Russia uses even economic integration as an instrument of territorial control. Seen with a wide eye, war costs more than it gains, and its aftereffects outlast generations.

Yet wars happen — not for lack of calculation. In 1910, Norman Angell argued that among economically intertwined European states, war would be a loss for everyone. Four years later, the First World War broke out. The calculation was already on the table; incitement and desire simply buried it.

Advanced nations are no exception. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the claim that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons were never found. An economically advanced nation and a nation of advanced consciousness are not the same thing. Before incitement, even an advanced nation becomes small.

6. Education as Immunity Against Incitement

The big-picture view, then, is not a status a nation acquires once and holds forever. It is a condition each citizen must defend, again and again. What defends it is education.

But not education that injects a wide conclusion. Patriotic education handed out the conclusion first; swapping in a different conclusion changes nothing. Teaching people to “think broadly” is merely another injection. What is needed is education that lets people see scale for themselves and reach their own conclusions — and that builds the ability to notice who is covering their eyes. Education at the advanced stage must be not a supplier of worldviews but an immune system against incitement.

7. The Responsibility for Peace Lies with the Larger Vessel

The larger vessel sees through the smaller one; the smaller cannot see the larger. The smaller vessel reads the larger one’s restraint as weakness. The responsibility for peace is therefore asymmetric: the side that reads the wider board must read first, and restrain itself first.

But restraint is not powerlessness. The Tao Te Ching holds that the finest warrior does not display his prowess; Sun Tzu ranks victory without battle as the highest. The strongman’s power comes from display — from staging strength as something scarce that only the leader possesses. The larger vessel’s power comes from disarming that display: from knowing that strength is not scarce, and that the world is full of masters who say nothing.

Desire and incitement narrow one’s own ground in the end. Only the nation that widens its board survives long upon it. Peace is not the wish of the weak but the choice of the larger vessel.

References

Angell, Norman. The Great Illusion. London: Heinemann, 1910.

Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Outline for Implementing Patriotic Education (爱国主义教育实施纲要), 1994.

Central Intelligence Agency. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD (Duelfer Report), 2004.

Choi Jang-jip. Democracy after Democratization (민주화 이후의 민주주의). Seoul: Humanitas, 2002.

Jervis, Robert. “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics 30, no. 2 (1978).

Laozi. Tao Te Ching, Chapter 68.

Marshall, Tim. Prisoners of Geography. London: Elliott & Thompson, 2015.

Ministry of Education (Japan). Imperial Rescript on Education, 1890.

Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House, 1994.

Sun Tzu. The Art of War, “Attack by Stratagem.”

Wang Zheng. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

코스모스피는 언덕 / 대국(big picture)

어렸을때 티브이에서 칼 세건박사의 우주 다큐멘터리인 COSMOS나 SF 드라마인 버크 로져스를 즐겨보았다. 나는 청소년기를 그 때문에 쉽게 산 것 같았다. 그리고 학창 시절에는 헤르만 헤세의 싯다르타나 나르치스와 골드문트 그리고 고려원 출판사에서 나온 니코스 카잔차키스 전집을 즐겨 읽었는데, 우주적 세계관에 이어 종교적 세계관까지 일찍 형성된 것 같았다. - 버크 로져스에 나오는 윌마 대령같은 우주여군이랑 결혼하고 싶다는 생각을 했는데, 내가 탄 우주선인 지구호가 기관고장을 일으켜 동면이 된 내가 500년후에 깨어나야 가능할 것이다.

 

대충 그 날 이후 이념적인 분쟁, 국가적 분쟁등은 욕망과 선동에 의한 지엽적인 사건으로 보였다. 나중에 푸틴 대통령은 유도를 통하여, 김정은 위원장은 사격을 통하여 자신의 카리스마를 보여주거나 에너지를 얻을려는 시도를 보면서 그런 무력시위는 한계가 있을거라는 생각을 하였다. 나같은 한국의 하찮은 인물도 운동에 어떤 능력이 있을거라는 생각을 하면 더욱 그렇다.

 

우리는 많은 지엽적 관점을 버려야 한다.

오늘은 세계관에 대해서 말해보자. 항상 중국인의 중화적 세계관은 위태로워. 왜 그들은 대국적이지 못할까. 그리고 한국에는 왜 아직도 지역적인 분열을 추구하는 의견들이 있는걸까. 일본과 같은 나라는 왜 국수적일까. 북한은 왜 이념을 버리지 못할까. 왜 러시아는 경제적인 통합보다 영토적 통일을 우선적으로 추구하는가. 그건 교육의 탓이 아닐까? 세계관을 좁힌 교육 말이다. 나중에 그건 발전을 가로막는 부메랑으로 돌아오지 않을까?

인공지능에게 이렇게 토론의 시비를 걸었다. 미국의 인공지능인데 오늘은 미국의 이라크 침공등에 대해서도 시비를 걸었다. 인공지능은 세계관이 넓은 유사적 인간이다.

판의 크기가 나라의 크기다

좁은 세계관의 교육은 왜 부메랑이 되는가

이형춘

[서두: 필자가 별도로 작성]

1. 다섯 개의 좁은 판

중국은 스스로를 판의 한가운데에 놓는다. 중화(中華)라는 이름이 이미 그렇다. 러시아는 판을 지도 위의 면적으로만 읽는다. 북한은 판의 경계를 체제의 경계와 일치시켰다. 일본은 판을 열도 안으로 접어 넣었다. 그리고 한국에는 아직도 판을 도(道) 단위로 쪼개려는 목소리가 있다.

원인은 같지 않다. 러시아의 영토 집착은 자연 방벽 없는 대평원이라는 지리에서 자랐다. 북한이 이념을 버리지 못하는 것은 이념이 곧 체제의 존재 이유이기 때문이다. 한국의 지역주의는 교과서가 아니라 개발의 불균형과, 그것을 표로 바꾼 정치가 만들었다. 그러나 결과는 하나로 모인다. 판의 일부를 판 전체로 착각하는 것이다.

이 잣대는 누구에게나 똑같이 적용되어야 한다. 미국의 예외주의 서사와 한국의 단일민족 교육도 판을 좁히기는 마찬가지다. 남의 좁은 판만 지적하는 것 자체가 또 하나의 좁은 판이다.

2. 좁은 교육은 추격의 엔진이었다

불편한 사실부터 인정하자. 좁은 세계관을 심는 교육은 한때 발전의 동력이었다. 메이지 일본은 1890년 교육칙어로 국민을 국가에 묶었다. 개발 시대의 한국은 민족과 조국을 앞세워 압축성장을 이뤘다. 중국은 1994년 「애국주의교육 실시요강」으로 개혁개방기의 결속을 다졌다.

추격 단계에서는 이것이 통한다. 앞서 간 나라가 판을 이미 그려 놓았기 때문이다. 목표는 분명하고, 내부 결속은 곧 효율이 된다. 판을 읽을 필요 없이 따라 그리기만 하면 된다.

3. 선진 단계에서는 족쇄가 된다

문제는 선두에 섰을 때다. 이제는 아무도 판을 그려 주지 않는다. 혁신과 공존은 바깥을 이해하는 능력에서 나온다. 그런데 좁은 판으로 훈련된 눈은 바깥을 위협으로만 본다.

오늘날 중국이 겪는 마찰이 그렇다. 경제는 세계적 규모로 커졌지만, 세계를 읽는 눈은 그만큼 커지지 않았다. 이른바 전랑외교는 주변국의 경계심을 키웠을 뿐이다. 추격의 엔진이 부메랑이 되어 돌아오는 장면이다. 이 부메랑은 남의 일이 아니다. 추격 단계를 막 벗어난 한국이야말로 가장 먼저 그 부메랑을 맞을 수 있는 나라다.

4. 대국관: 판을 넓히고 자기를 낮추다

여기서 말하는 대국(大局)은 큰 나라(大國)가 아니다. 바둑의 대국관처럼 판 전체를 읽는 시야다. 그리고 판 전체를 읽는 일은 판의 중심에 서는 일과 정반대다. 중심에 선 자에게는 자기 시선이 닿는 방향만 보인다.

중국의 천하관(天下觀)도 스스로는 세계 전체를 말했다. 그러나 천하관은 판 전체를 자기 것으로 삼는 방식으로 넓었다. 1990년 보이저 1호가 약 60억 킬로미터 밖에서 찍은 지구는 한 화소에도 못 미치는 점이었다. 칼 세이건은 그 작은 점 위에서 인류가 영토를 두고 피를 흘려 왔음을 일깨웠다. 판이 넓어질수록 자기는 작아진다.

그러므로 대국관은 판을 넓히는 동시에 그 안에서 자기를 낮추는 능력이다. 판만 넓히면 제국이 되고, 자기만 낮추면 무력감이 된다. 둘이 함께 갈 때 공존의 자리가 생긴다. 그리고 이 판은 역사 어딘가에 완성된 채 놓여 있지 않다. 역사가 발전해 온 과정이 곧 판이 넓어져 온 과정이다. 대국관은 정답이 아니라 방향이다.

5. 전쟁은 좁은 판의 제로섬에서 나온다

전쟁은 희소가치를 둘러싼 싸움이다. 영토는 나누면 줄어든다. 무역과 기술은 나눌수록 커진다. 판이 좁은 자는 세상을 고정된 파이로 보고, 판이 넓은 자는 파이를 키울 수 있다고 본다. 러시아가 경제 통합조차 영토적 통제의 수단으로 쓰는 것은 이 때문이다. 대국의 눈으로 보면 전쟁은 얻는 것보다 잃는 것이 많고, 그 후유증은 대를 이어 남는다.

그런데도 전쟁은 일어난다. 계산이 없어서가 아니다. 1910년 노먼 에인절은 경제적으로 얽힌 유럽에서 전쟁은 모두에게 손해라고 논증했다. 4년 뒤 제1차 세계대전이 터졌다. 계산은 이미 나와 있었다. 선동과 욕망이 그 계산을 덮었을 뿐이다.

선진국도 예외가 아니다. 2003년 미국은 이라크가 대량살상무기를 보유하고 있다는 주장 위에서 침공을 감행했다. 그 무기는 끝내 발견되지 않았다. 경제가 발전한 나라와 의식이 발전한 나라는 다르다. 선진국도 선동 앞에서는 소국이 된다.

6. 선동에 대한 면역으로서의 교육

그렇다면 대국관은 국가가 한 번 얻으면 영원히 보유하는 지위가 아니다. 시민 한 사람 한 사람이 매번 지켜내야 하는 상태다. 그것을 지키는 것이 교육이다.

다만 그 교육은 넓은 결론을 주입하는 교육이 아니다. 애국주의 교육은 결론을 먼저 주었다. 결론만 바꿔 넣는다고 달라지지 않는다. "넓게 생각하라"고 가르치는 것은 또 하나의 주입일 뿐이다. 필요한 것은 규모를 직접 보게 하고 스스로 결론에 이르게 하는 교육, 그리고 누가 내 눈을 가리고 있는지 알아채는 힘을 기르는 교육이다. 선진 단계의 교육은 세계관의 공급자가 아니라 선동에 대한 면역 체계여야 한다.

7. 평화의 책임은 큰 그릇에 있다

큰 그릇은 작은 그릇을 통찰하지만, 작은 그릇은 큰 그릇을 보지 못한다. 작은 그릇은 큰 그릇의 자제를 약함으로 읽는다. 그래서 평화의 책임은 비대칭적이다. 판을 넓게 보는 쪽이 먼저 읽고, 먼저 자제해야 한다.

그러나 자제는 무력함이 아니다. 『도덕경』은 훌륭한 무사는 무용을 드러내지 않는다고 했고, 『손자병법』은 싸우지 않고 이기는 것을 최상으로 쳤다. 스트롱맨의 힘은 과시에서 나온다. 힘을 지도자만 가진 희소한 것으로 연출하는 데서 나온다. 큰 그릇의 힘은 그 과시를 무력화하는 데서 나온다. 힘은 희소하지 않으며, 세상에는 말없는 고수가 많다는 사실을 아는 데서 나온다.

욕망과 선동은 결국 자기 입지를 좁힌다. 판을 넓히는 나라만이 판 위에서 오래 살아남는다. 평화는 약자의 소망이 아니라 큰 그릇의 선택이다.

참고문헌

노자. 『도덕경』, 제68장.

손무. 『손자병법』, 모공편(謀攻篇).

최장집. 『민주화 이후의 민주주의』. 서울: 후마니타스, 2002.

중국공산당 중앙위원회. 「애국주의교육 실시요강」(愛國主義教育實施綱要), 1994.

일본 문부성. 「교육에 관한 칙어」(敎育ニ關スル勅語), 1890.

세이건, 칼. 『창백한 푸른 점』. 원저: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House, 1994.

에인절, 노먼. 『대환상』. 원저: The Great Illusion. London: Heinemann, 1910.

저비스, 로버트. 「안보 딜레마 하의 협력」. 원저: "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma." World Politics 30(2), 1978.

러셋, 브루스. 원저: Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

왕정(汪錚). 원저: Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

마셜, 팀. 『지리의 힘』. 원저: Prisoners of Geography. London: Elliott & Thompson, 2015.

미 중앙정보국 이라크 조사단. 「듀얼퍼 보고서」. 원저: Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, 2004.

 

The Reality and Future of Northeast Asia

North Korea has been very hostile toward South Korea these days. Because such Korea writes the same words and says the same things. In other words, the fate of the North Korean government could be determined by South Korea through 'conformity' that goes beyond mere practical interaction. Even if the North Korea–U.S. negotiations unfold and South Korea is sidelined, I will not shed a tear, not even if I die. Because I understand every situation. South Korea will have to wait patiently. If North Korea simply comes to the negotiating table with the United States, everyone in this world will be better off.

 

When discussing AI, you should not get dragged into trivial details. Because artificial intelligence has no political sense. In other words, AI does not understand human psychology.

The Fear of a Shared Language

Conformity, Courage, and Why the Non-China World Is the Larger One

Lee Hyeong-chun · Independent Columnist | October 2026

1. The Power of Unanimity, and the Power of One

In the 1950s, Solomon Asch ran a simple experiment. Participants had to pick which of several lines matched a reference line. The answer was obvious to anyone. Yet when a planted majority confidently gave the same wrong answer, participants went along in roughly a third of the critical trials, and about three in four betrayed their own eyes at least once.

Less remembered is the other finding. When just one person broke ranks, conformity collapsed — even when that dissenter gave a different wrong answer. Conformity draws its power not from the size of the majority but from its unanimity. A single crack frees everyone.

2. Why People Conform Faster to Evil

Human beings sense before they reason. The senses seek pleasure, and they prefer pleasure that arrives now. The pleasure of joining in wrongdoing is immediate: the laughter of shared ridicule, the warmth of belonging, the relief that someone else is the target. Neuroscience has linked the satisfaction of watching an envied person suffer to the brain's reward circuitry, and the same circuitry responds when people punish a norm-breaker.

Goodness has its pleasures too, but they arrive late, quietly, and alone — and the cost must be paid first. Evil pays out at once and sends the bill to someone else. That asymmetry in time decides the speed of conformity.

The most dangerous evil wears the robe of justice. Those who join a witch hunt see themselves not as villains but as enforcers of righteousness. If evil came wearing its own face, people would follow it far more slowly.

3. Cowardice Is a Narrow Calculation

In a company with a serious grievance, employees stay silent. They have not lost their reason; their reason is working precisely. Speak up and you are marked; speak up and nothing changes. Organizational researchers call this "organizational silence."

A line often attributed to Peter Ustinov holds that courage frequently springs from a lack of insight, while cowardice usually rests on good information. It is witty, and half right. Rushing into danger without seeing it is not courage but recklessness. As Aristotle argued, courage lies between cowardice and recklessness. The courageous person holds the same information as the coward and chooses differently.

Nor is the coward's information truly good. It is merely narrow. It weighs the penalty at the next performance review with great precision, but leaves off the scale the cost of an organization rotting in silence, and the cost of betraying oneself. Cowardice is a narrow, precise calculation; courage is a wider one. Whoever breaks the silence accepts discomfort. He weighed the discomfort of speaking against the discomfort of silence, and found the latter heavier.

More frightening still is when reason itself takes evil's side. What Hannah Arendt saw in Eichmann was not madness but the face of a functionary diligently calculating his career.

4. The Calculation of Those Who Know the End

What widens the calculation? I found my answer at the side of a dying family member. We all walk the same road in the end. The position, reputation, and security we struggle to protect will be let go regardless. As the Buddhist teaching of emptiness (śūnyatā) holds, once we see there is no fixed thing to cling to, the fear of loss loosens its grip. What remains is to do one's best, by one's own will, as a being born into a body.

Awareness of death does not automatically produce courage. Social psychologists report that people reminded of their mortality often cling harder to their group and turn harsher toward dissent. Death avoided makes us shrink; death accepted sets us free.

We must not cling to results, but we must have a goal. A life is like a ship setting sail. A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are built for. Columbus sailed because he had a goal: India. Yet he died believing he had reached Asia. A goal launches the ship; attachment to the expected result blinds the eyes.

5. What Kim Jong-un Fears Is a Shared Language

Now put the same question to Pyongyang. At the Ninth Party Congress in February 2026, Kim Jong-un announced a "final, momentous decision" to fix relations with South Korea as those between the most hostile of states. He dismissed Seoul's conciliatory gestures as a deception and vowed to exclude the South from the category of compatriots forever. In March, before the Supreme People's Assembly, he formally designated the South as the most hostile state — while leaving the door to Washington open, on condition that his nuclear status be accepted.

Why this obsession with severing ties? Part of it is calculation: to sweep Seoul, the persistent voice of denuclearization, off the table where nuclear status is negotiated. But deeper lies fear. What the regime fears is not South Korea's army but its language. Pyongyang has enacted, one after another, the Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture, the Youth Education Guarantee Law, and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law. Speaking in a South Korean manner is itself punishable. The law confesses what the regime fears.

A neighbor who shares your speech and script is a channel of conformity. The North Korean system rests on a vast unanimity, and as Asch showed, unanimity falls to a single different voice. Ideology appeals to reason; South Korean dramas and songs seep in through the senses. If the senses come before reason, the outcome of that contest is not in doubt. If Kim senses this, even dimly, sealing the door is rational from where he stands.

This is the old strategy of yuanjiao jingong — befriend the distant, confront the near — but inverted: not to conquer the near neighbor, but to push it away. And the South is dangerous not merely because it is close and large. China is larger and just as close, yet it is no enemy. South Korea is close, large, and the same. That is the problem.

6. Sequence Is the Answer

How, then, should unification come? I believe it must come after North Korea has built its own economy. There is no reason for both Koreas to suffer before then. That is why I have offered economic counsel to the North for so long.

The sequence runs like this. Washington and Pyongyang draw closer; sanctions ease; the North opens. Its economy reaches a certain level. Only then can Kim stand before the mirror, and only then can the South draw slowly nearer. The regime survives, and China finds no gap through which to intervene. That is why South Korea being bypassed at a US–North Korea summit is the second-best outcome. Not the best — but a road opens.

There is a danger to watch. If Washington and Pyongyang cap only the long-range missiles that threaten the American homeland and leave untouched the forces aimed at the South, second-best becomes, for Seoul, second-worst. Seoul may sit outside the room, but it must watch the table.

Nor is a unification pulled together by conformity necessarily a good one. East Germany collapsed amid longing for the West, yet after reunification many East Germans felt like second-class citizens. North Koreans must be able to walk toward unification at their own pace.

7. China and Russia: The Same Division, Different Arithmetic

The worst variable in this picture is China. A unified Korea allied with the United States reaching the Yalu River would be a security threat to Beijing. But the problem is not only security arithmetic. China's hegemonic drive grows out of one-party dictatorship. Democracies have mechanisms for correcting bad policy. America erred in Vietnam and Iraq, but its own press exposed the errors, and public opinion and elections changed course. China has no such mechanism; the character of the regime becomes the conduct of the state. This is not a verdict on 1.4 billion Chinese people. Our judgment of people who cannot choose their own government must be the same as our judgment of the people of North Korea.

China also carries an old worldview: dì dà wù bó (地大物博) — a land so vast and rich it needs nothing from outside. In 1793, the Qianlong Emperor answered a British trade mission, in effect, that his empire lacked nothing. Half a century later, that confidence was shattered in the Opium War. Today's China still depends on the outside world for oil, food, and advanced semiconductors. The gap between believing oneself complete and actually depending on others is what breeds miscalculation. Believing it grows alone, China sees its neighbors not as partners but as followers.

Russia is different. Russia needs the Korean Peninsula. The development of its Far East, and the route by which Siberian gas and rail reach the sea, run through Korea. In the 1990s, through the "Brown Bear" (Bulgom) program, Moscow repaid Soviet-era loans to Seoul in weapons, building up South Korea's own arsenal. Its transfer of military technology to the North today is, in Putin's arithmetic, simply giving to both sides. Since the 2024 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, I read Putin's design as drawing the North closer to Moscow than to Beijing, so that the whole peninsula might eventually serve as a partner in Russia's postwar revival.

But what Russia wants is two Koreas, not one. A peninsula that cooperates without unifying lets Moscow deal with each side separately and keep things on its own terms. China prefers division because it needs a buffer; Russia, because it wants leverage. Russia is useful for easing the North's dependence on China, but it is no partner for unification.

Even so, Russia's structure ultimately points away from China. Around eight million people live in the Russian Far East; across the border, about a hundred million live in China's three northeastern provinces. That Russia now looks subordinate to China is a temporary product of war and geography. The structure is pressing for change.

8. Diversification, and the Gathering Against China

Russia is hostile to the West, and Europe is no longer as close to America as it once was. The world is entering an age of diversification. But this scattering will not last. If a scattered world gathers again around one axis, that axis is China. America is, for the most part, a hegemon guarding what it already has; China is a hegemon dreaming of what it does not yet have. A dreaming hegemon unsettles its neighbors, and unease breeds alliance.

In the future, the world will divide into China and the non-China world.

9. The Non-China World Is the Vast and Abundant One

China holds about 6.4 percent of the world's land area and roughly one-sixth of its population. Add Russia's resources, America's technology and finance, India's population, Europe's institutions, and the manufacturing of Korea and Japan, and the non-China world is far vaster and richer than China. The moment China believes itself a complete world, it makes an enemy of a larger and more complete one.

The power of conformity is strong. But unanimity falls to a single dissenter, and narrow calculation loses to wider calculation. Pyongyang behind its locked door and Beijing that would grow alone will face the same question in the end: remain a ship tied in harbor, or set sail.

The non-China world is dì dà wù bó. And in the end, what is right prevails.

References

Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Book III.

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70(9), 1–70.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.

de Quervain, D. J.-F., Fischbacher, U., Treyer, V., Schellhammer, M., Schnyder, U., Buck, A., & Fehr, E. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305(5688), 1254–1258.

Moon, C., & Choi, E. (2026). North Korea searches for a path out of international isolation. East Asia Forum. https://eastasiaforum.org/?p=2348712

Morrison, E. W., & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: A barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 706–725.

Peyrefitte, A. (1992). The Immobile Empire (J. Rothschild, Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House.

Takahashi, H., Kato, M., Matsuura, M., Mobbs, D., Suhara, T., & Okubo, Y. (2009). When your gain is my pain and your pain is my gain: Neural correlates of envy and schadenfreude. Science, 323(5916), 937–939.

Cookie News (2026, March 24). Cho, J. "Blue House: hostile rhetoric does not help peaceful coexistence; Kim calls South Korea 'most hostile state'" [in Korean]. https://www.kukinews.com/article/view/kuk202603240087

Korea Institute for National Unification (2026). 2026 Korean Peninsula Outlook [in Korean]. Seoul: KINU.

Kyongbuk Maeil (2026, February 26). Hwang, I. "Kim Jong-un: Lee government's conciliatory stance is a deception; South to be excluded from the category of compatriots forever" [in Korean]. https://kbmaeil.com/article/20260226500095

Kyunghyang Shinmun (2026, February 26). Kwak, H. "All-in on nuclear-state status; a stronger 'iron wall' against an obstructing South Korea" [in Korean]. https://www.khan.co.kr/article/202602262036005

Newsis (2026, February 26). Nam, B. "Kim Jong-un calls South Korea 'eternal enemy,' warns of 'complete collapse'; signals dialogue to the US" [in Korean]. https://www.newsis.com/view/NISX20260226_0003527758

News Tomato (2026, March 24). Lee, S. "Kim Jong-un: South Korea 'most hostile state'" [in Korean]. https://newstomato.com/ReadNews.aspx?no=1295360

Weekly Kyunghyang (2026, August 22). "Kim Jong-un: Putin in September, Trump in November?" [in Korean]. https://weekly.khan.co.kr/article/202608221346001