May our brief youth not be a dream. / Aging leaders

I grew up in an environment where my father and mother suffered from the aftereffects of the war. So I tasted the bitterness of the family. Since I was a child, I have been aware of this problem and have devoted my heart to finding the root. Even while living in the lower reaches of society, I have always observed society and tried to find ways to improve it. Everyone must have been pure when they were young. Peace, hope, and justice were alive in the minds of young people. But now everyone is getting old. Desire, power, and distrust take place in an innocent mind.

 

When North Korean President Kim Jong-un took power and took various forms of reconciliation, I was most happy. I had hope because he was just a young leader. I interfered a lot because I was worried that it would help North Korea's reform. At that time, I decided that I wouldn't get old either. If reality was lacking, I put off all my homework to hope for the future. I think youth is good because it has hope.

 

During Korea's previous administration, I thought an aging politician and his supporters were either elderly or in the process of aging, pushing the aging country into an increasingly ill-fated environment. Moreover, watching the three leaders of major powers immerse themselves in expansionism or war now, I know there is little correlation between a pure young age and an old age. Then comes the gloom.

 

I didn't discuss it with artificial intelligence, I just talked about it at first. Artificial intelligence thought I had a depressed mind, so I tried to ask a question related to psychiatry. But I always had a peaceful mind close to sports, and he said that the outside world didn't seem like my heart. So it turned to a discussion and organized the contents.

 

Power and Aging: How Elderly Leaders Threaten the World Order

A Single Question That Cuts Across Psychology, Geopolitics, and the Korean Peninsula

 

1. Aging and Emotion — The Gap Between Perception and Research

The popular assumption that old age brings emotional instability is not well supported by the psychological literature. Research consistently shows that healthy aging is associated with improved emotional regulation and a phenomenon known as the "Positivity Effect" — an increased tendency to attend to positive rather than negative stimuli. Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen's Socioemotional Selectivity Theory argues that the perception of limited remaining time actually deepens emotional wisdom rather than eroding it.

Why, then, do we so frequently observe emotionally volatile elderly individuals? The answer lies not in aging per se, but in its secondary companions: chronic pain, sleep disruption, social isolation, loss of social roles, and the early stages of cerebrovascular disease. Emotional instability in old age is not an inevitable product of aging — it is a pathological outcome that emerges when aging intersects with adverse conditions.

The picture changes decisively when one additional variable is introduced: power.

2. Power Accelerates Cognitive Aging — The Formation of the Cognitive Bubble

Power creates a structural environment that amplifies the negative dimensions of aging. Neuroscientist Ian Robertson, in The Winner Effect, demonstrates that power alters dopamine systems in ways that distort perception of reality. Long-term holders of power show measurable declines in their capacity to absorb counter-arguments and a corresponding increase in overconfidence in their own judgment.

When this phenomenon combines with aging, the result is what might be called a "cognitive bubble." Three elements converge: progressive rigidity in thinking associated with frontal lobe changes; a surrounding structure of yes-men who eliminate friction; and decision-making environments stripped of feedback loops. A leader operating inside this bubble makes consequential decisions at an increasing remove from reality.

Were this merely a psychological curiosity, it would be of limited concern. But when nuclear codes and military force exist inside such a cognitive bubble, the result is geopolitical events that reshape the lives of millions.

3. Three Old Men, Three Threats

Three figures currently destabilizing the international order can be analyzed through this framework.

Vladimir Putin (age 72), after 24 years in power, made the decision to invade Ukraine from within a cognitive bubble of his own construction. The early strategic miscalculation — an expected fall of Kyiv within days — represents a severe disconnection from operational reality. Those within his circle who might have offered corrective judgment had long since been removed or silenced.

Donald Trump (age 78) presents a different profile. The military confrontation with Iran reflects a decision-making pattern that prioritizes immediate emotional response and short-term visible victory over complex diplomatic variables. Some researchers interpret this pattern as consistent with the diminished impulse regulation associated with frontal lobe changes in aging.

Xi Jinping (age 71) differs from the other two in method. Rather than direct military confrontation, he pursues a patient, incremental expansionism — in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and through the Belt and Road Initiative. However, his 2018 constitutional revision eliminating term limits effectively dismantled the feedback mechanisms through which the system might have corrected its own errors.

4. The Korean Peninsula — What the Failure of a Young Leader Reveals

An instructive paradox exists in North Korea. Kim Jong-un, at 41, is considerably younger than the three figures analyzed above. His early years in power — Swiss education, a different public style from his father, early signals of economic pragmatism — generated genuine expectations of possible change.

The current Kim Jong-un contradicts those expectations. This carries an important analytical implication: a variable more powerful than aging exists — the structure of the system itself. A three-generation totalitarian inheritance captures its leaders within its own logic, independent of individual age or temperament. Kim Jong-un did not change North Korea; North Korea changed Kim Jong-un.

This requires a recalibration of the analytical framework for Korean reunification. Rather than investing expectations in the generational characteristics or personal disposition of individual leaders, attention should be directed toward the structural conditions that might enable systemic change — and the complex interplay of internal pressures and external forces that  could produce it.

5. South Korea's Structural Variable — Demographic Aging and Political Dynamics

The Korean Peninsula problem is further complicated by structural changes within South Korea itself. Korea is among the fastest-aging societies in the world. As of 2025, the population aged 65 and above has surpassed 20 percent, while the total fertility rate has reached approximately 0.75 — the lowest among OECD member states.

This demographic shift carries direct implications for political dynamics. An expanding elderly population with relatively conservative political preferences tends to reinforce political equilibria favoring stability over change. The fact that recent Korean political leadership widely regarded as contrary to basic norms of governance retained substantial popular support is best understood not as an anomaly attributable to individual politicians, but as a phenomenon structurally connected to these demographic trends.

6. Conclusion — The Need for Institutional Responses to Aging Power

The conclusion toward which this analysis points is not moral exhortation directed at individual leaders, but a question of institutional design. The cognitive limitations that accompany aging in positions of power are unlikely to be overcome by personal will. What is required are structural mechanisms of constraint.

Term limits, collective decision-making structures, independent advisory bodies, and institutionally guaranteed channels for dissent — these are the practical instruments for preventing the formation of cognitive bubbles in aging leaders. One of the reasons democratic systems prove more durable than authoritarian alternatives over the long run is precisely that they contain such self-correcting mechanisms.

Peace and eventual reunification on the Korean Peninsula depend less on the will of particular leaders than on whether such structural conditions develop — in both Koreas and among the surrounding great powers. That path is slower and less dramatic. It is also more durable.