Russia and the New Cold War

Russia's President Putin visited North Korean leader Kim Jong-un today.

It can be interpreted as the establishment of a new cold war era. Unfortunately, it can be said that the Korean Peninsula has become a dependent variable of the Cold War. It is funny to say this as a Korean, but it is also a moment when I am looking forward to Chairman Kim Jong-un's bargaining power. I hope that President Putin's visit will benefit North Koreans as well.

이형춘(Hyeong Chun Lee): russia에 대한 검색결과 (hyeong-chun.blogspot.com) 

Originally, Putin is friendly to the Korean Peninsula from a long-term perspective. Now that the intention to advance westward was thwarted by strong Ukrainian resistance, he may be looking forward to advancing eastward. Some might think that it is impossible for Russia to start a war and improve its isolated environment around the world. However, time justifies many changes. Russia is a durable country. It has abundant resources and territories, so it has its basics. Putin, a former intelligence chief, seems to think that Russia has still a long way to go.

 

On the other hand, when the Soviet Union collapsed in the past, the West's failure to quickly implement a project to integrate Russia into the liberal camp was a major mistake. Perhaps there was an optical illusion in which Russia, armed with nuclear weapons, appeared to be too big an opponent. Or perhaps it was because of the 'habit of the Cold War', which is still the most worrisome weakness of humanity. Even now. That is the case. The habit of the Cold War has come to life like a ghost. Leaders of each country may think they are smart, but when they look back on themselves, they have not deviated from those thoughts. Russia's Putin government, China's Xi Jinping government, the Biden government of the United States, Japan's Kishida government, South Korea's conservative government, and North Korea's government are all ideological governments. They are very determined to wage a grand war, even for a minor reason.

 

- At this juncture, I hope world leaders will either become a little more discouraged and become passive, or hand over power to young politicians. I'm scared to death. I suffered a lot from the trauma my parents experienced during the Korean War. What did I do wrong?

 

On the one hand, South Korea and North Korea should again become independent variables rather than dependent variables of ideology. So, South Korea and North Korea should not bleed into ideological fights that originated from powerful countries like they did 70 years ago. Seoul and Pyongyang must awaken. We must not repeat silly international relations.

 

Regardless of whether it originated from an independent defense strategy or whether it was a proxy war in the New Cold War, it is true that the Ukrainian people suffered a great tragedy. The same is true of Russia. Worse yet, Russia is likely to continue its supply offensive against Ukraine, as it did in World War II, with its large territory and abundant underground resources. The Putin administration will believe that the domestic economy, which has shrunk due to export bans, can be offset by increased domestic demand through war. And there is no doubt that, in time, a practical global community will be exonerated of war crimes. A ceasefire must be reached quickly between Russia and Ukraine.

 

 

Economic Geography of Russia and North Korea

Pragmatism is undermined by all ideologies, including nationalism and grand nationalism. Russia's invasion of Ukraine also has its roots in ideology.

 

At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia's geographical location was not good for the West to accept Russia as a European country. Although the Soviet Union itself is an integrated giant country, geographical conditions did not lead to economic integration or centralization of Russia's other regional countries (such as Ukraine). In other words, it had an economic structure that was not a problem even if it was divided into several countries.

 

Professor Paul Krugman expresses the problem in [Geography and Trade] as follows.

 

Well, not necessarily-because countries are not identical to regions. To take the most spectacular recent example, we have suddenly become aware that the Soviet Union, although a huge economic unit,is a collection of regional economies ; if,as seems to be happening, that economy breaks up into it geographical components, those components will individually bulk no larger than the nation’s erstwhile Eastern European satellites.

 

So it may be more accurate to think of a large country as consisting of many regions, we discover that it is by no means necessarily true that economic integration will favor regions in the larger country.

 

After the war between Russia and Ukraine ends, Ukraine can grow rapidly due to its closer geographical relationship with the West, but Russia has to be in a position of isolation as always. Presumably, Putin’s government may have expected North Korea and South Korea to communicate economically and open the way for the Russian economy toward Siberia.

 

However, Putin's government had political and economic flaws that failed to achieve Russia's integration, falling short of South Korea's Park Chung-hee administration. This is probably because Korea's dense economic geography conditions prevailed over Russia's lax economic geography conditions. Therefore, Russia must find a solution in a more different way. - A more conciliatory relationship with the outside world will be needed -

 

The same is true of North Korea. It is thought that the economic geographical conditions in which North Korea cannot reform and open its doors are distorted by ideological issues and are affecting North Korea. If national unity is needed, it is possible to try national unity using the "strong legal order" that Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew tried and succeeded.

 

Russia and North Korea should not be buried in the issue of leadership. This is because there will be many prosperous conditions in which the external economy will depend on the Russian or North Korean economy due to abundant underground resources in the future. Rather, in the case of China, there will be many conditions for a domestic economy or an isolated economy. Due to its large population compared to resources and territories, there will be concerns that it will gradually become difficult if China does not value its "relationship with the outside world."

 

 

From an isolated state to a central state / Russia

The situation in which North Korea, whose geographical location is isolated, was forced to isolate its relational position by locking up its doors with ideology in order to keep the country alive, is fully understandable if you think deeper. Korea was able to grow properly on the periphery of Northeast Asia by choosing the capitalist ideology that values economic exchange and actively communicating with the outside world through the sea

 

Finally, because information flows locally more easily than over greater distances, an industrial center generates what we would now call technical spillovers.

 

-  [Geography and Trade] by Paul Krugman -

 

Russia must have been very disappointed after Ukraine, which was annexed during the former Soviet era, was separated. Ukraine is rich in resources and agricultural products, as well as being geographically located in the center rather than Russia. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were gradually moving toward the economic center of Western Europe, economically, culturally, and even ideologically. That is why Russia had no choice but to try to resolve the inconvenience of isolation by forcibly claiming to be the leader of the eastern camp, even using the structure of the Cold War.

 

Russia would have expected North Korea and South Korea to interact and make East Asia a more active space for economic exchange. This is because Russia is likely to become more centralized along with the development of Siberia.

 

The unfortunate thing about Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that Russia did not try a more pragmatic policy, but tried a war like a habit. Pragmatism is different from opportunism, which Putin seems to dislike, more like pacifism. President Putin will not be the only responsibility for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is because President Putin could have been captured by the stubborn prejudice of the Russian people that Ukraine is part of Russia.

 

Russia should try to end the war and establish itself as a central country from an isolated state. The national ideology should be changed to have a more conciliatory attitude economically and diplomatically. In addition, North Korea is traditionally hostile to South Korea's conservative government, but if South Korea's conservative government shows a more practical attitude(Pragmatism ) toward North Korea, it is better to respond to it. It was also a point of great expectation for the young leader President Kim Jong-un. It is better to accept practical exchanges such as humanitarian support for COVID-19.

Geographical orientation / eastern Russia

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https://hyeong-chun.blogspot.com/search?q=Vertical+relationship

While driving a neighborhood bus, I carefully observed the location of the bus driver who had no power and whose identity was exposed. Now I'm going to write about Russian President Putin. But the neighborhood bus driver is in perfect vertical symmetry with President Putin. It is simply the humble station of the East. I wish I had known that bus drivers were treated so badly in Korea. I knew that a healthy worker would be treated with innocence. However, Korean society had not thought that there were many remnants of vertical Oriental society.

 

When the Soviet Union was separated, NATO, along with the Warsaw Pact, should have been disbanded. Or, jokingly speaking, we should have turned NATO into the character of the Earth Defense Force or the Kantapiya Defense Force and allowed Russia to join NATO. The reason why it reached this point today (Russia's invasion of Ukraine) is largely because it tied the West to Russia in a symmetrical relationship. Geographically and culturally, Russia has a strong desire for vertical status because it is close to Eastern society, and President Putin is at the peak of that desire.

 

I wrote in a lengthy response [the New York Times] published, along with a drawing by Macieck Albrechr, on October 28, 1996, “probide insights into internal problems and external intentions, the latter often an early warning of aggression.”

 

- [Why Geography Matters] by Harm de Blij -

Now Ukraine is waging a war on behalf of the West in a war that started with geographical and cultural relativity. The nature of this war has become a war between a great power controlled by an elderly Eastern monarch and a small and medium-sized country led by a Western youth leader.

 

I have never had the idea that dictatorship is unconditionally bad. Perhaps if the Western equal society was homogeneously located in the consciousness of leaders and people, as in the example of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, educated in the UK, there would have been many advantages such as policy consistency. I expected that from Putin in the early days, and I don't think Putin in the early days made such a mistake. However, historically and geographically, I think it has been difficult for Russia to break away from the tradition of oriental vertical society.

 

Ukrainian President Zelensky, who has outstanding leadership, asked South Korea to provide support for anti-tank missiles and other offensive weapons, while Russia previously asked North Korea to provide missile support. I think it is right for both South Korea and North Korea to provide passive support, such as humanitarian aid. South Korea and North Korea should not become proxy wars in the cutting edge of the Cold War. However, I think more generous support is needed for the right of Ukrainian refugees to survive.

 

As a former intelligence officer, President Putin made poor judgments. It did not predict the sacrifice of Russia, as well as Ukraine. As an oriental monarch's pride, it became a situation where he could not step down without income and justification. Russia must end the war as soon as possible. And I expect that Russia will have great political and cultural reforms in the future. Eastern vertical inequality society has stalled Japan's development, and so will China. Korea also has many worries. Russia should not resemble the bad side of the East.

 

 

 

War and Fool Ivan / Russia

A long time ago, I studied the behaviors of young people and the elderly at various workplaces. From the perspective of violence alone, young people possess an inherent, passionate violent drive, while the elderly—especially older men—possess an inherent violence aimed at replenishing the physical and mental energy they had been depleting. Especially in Korea, the divided situation and the military culture only added to that aspect.

 

The problem is Russia’s elderly, who have not stopped even after completely crushing Ukraine and Russia. There are statistics that more than 500,000 young people in Russia have already been killed. The elderly Russians, who think of the glory of the former Soviet Union, do not spare the young. Some people think it is merely a disaster caused by President Putin, but what became the political backdrop behind it is the consciousness of the Russian elderly, shaped through their experience of World War II and the communist superpowers. They were writing their own Legend of the Galactic Heroes without sparing the lives of the young people who would bring the nation to life in the future.

 

With the lament, “If only the old folks would come to their senses, there wouldn’t be war...,” I began a discussion with the AI. Artificial intelligence tells me not to lump an entire generation together and blame it.So soon the conversation connected to the works of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and Dostoevsky, which I like. Even in high school, I secretly read The Brothers Karamazov in class and longed for Russia, but now it seems to have become a country full of bad people.

Russia's Ivan the Fool

— The War in Ukraine, the Psychology of Old Age, and What Russian Literature Already Warned Us About

Lee Hyung-chun · A conversation with Claude · August 2026

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Foreword: Why "Ivan the Fool"

In Tolstoy's folk tale Ivan the Fool, a kingdom with no weapons and no money — ruled only by honest labor and simplicity — ends up prospering. The kingdoms of Ivan's clever brothers, built on swords and gold and the drive to conquer, destroy themselves. Tolstoy's point was unambiguous: greatness built on force and conquest ends in self-destruction.

Today's Russia looks like it is walking the very road the fable rejected — the brothers' road. This piece began as a look at the current state of the war in Ukraine, and grew, over conversation, into an inquiry that reaches from the psychology of Russia's aging hardliners all the way back to a diagnosis Russian literature itself made a hundred years ago.

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1. The Front: Stalemate and Escalation at Once

As of August 2026, the front line itself is close to stalemate. Russian forces continue offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Donetsk, but confirmed territorial gains remain minimal, while Ukrainian forces have managed small counterattacks near Sloviansk. What has escalated sharply, instead, is the missile and drone campaign against the rear. July was the deadliest month for civilians since May 2022, and the July 2 strike — 31 killed, over 100 wounded — was the single largest attack of the war. Reports that North Korea has deployed missile troops and ballistic missiles to Russia coincide with this intensification.

On the diplomatic track, the Trump–Zelenskyy relationship has visibly warmed, with talk of jointly producing Patriot interceptors and reviving negotiations — but this has not translated into an actual ceasefire or peace agreement.

2. Putin: Between an Intelligence Officer's Caution and Hardliner Pressure

Putin's thinking is not simple. The information control and threat-assessment instincts of a career KGB/FSB officer run through his entire governing style. At the same time, he shows clear signs of military and economic weakening: an estimated half a million casualties, domestic discontent over fuel shortages, the loss of allies like Venezuela and Hungary, and a scaled-down Victory Day parade. In May, he even paired conciliatory language — "the matter is coming to an end" — with agreement to a temporary ceasefire.

The most recent trend, however, points the other way. Seeing a gap in Ukraine's air defenses as an opportunity, Russia has intensified missile strikes rather than negotiating. Compounding this, hardliners — ultranationalist oligarchs like Konstantin Malofeev and siloviki factions — are pressing Putin to halt talks, order full mobilization, and even prepare tactical nuclear options. Observers note that if Putin were to visibly back down, this hardline bloc could brand him a traitor. In other words, Putin's range of choices is constrained less by his own caution than by how tightly the power blocs around him are bound to Soviet nostalgia and imperial narrative.

3. The Psychology of Old Age: The Gap Between Textbook Serenity and Reality

Textbook accounts often portray old age as a natural convergence toward wisdom and detachment. Clinical and field observation frequently shows the opposite: as people become aware of declining physical and cognitive capacity, they often grow more rigid about retaining control, or display "compensatory dominance behavior" — ostentatiously exercising whatever authority remains to them.

This drive toward dominance tends to split into two paths. One is overt — pushing through physical presence or hierarchy, strongly seen among older men from military backgrounds such as the Marines. The other is covert manipulation — leveraging guilt, disguised concern, or a sense of relational obligation, a path chosen by those without the physical force to push through directly. The methods are opposite; the goal is the same — drawing a fading sense of significance and control from someone else. Call it, as this conversation did, "energy vampirism."

Rather than generalizing this as a universal feature of aging, it is more precise to see it as most pronounced in people whose identity has compressed into a single narrative of past glory. Russia's hardline older men fit this condition almost exactly: for the generation that lived through the Soviet collapse and the humiliations of the 1990s, the myth of victory in the "Great Patriotic War" and the memory of superpower status are the last remaining proof of their own significance.

4. Why Kill the Young: Russkiy Mir and the Problem of Legitimacy

Friendly exchange with Ukraine alone could produce something functionally close to reunification — yet the Kremlin's hardliners insist on forced annexation. Their logic isn't framed as naked conquest but wrapped in the self-narrative of "Russkiy Mir" (the Russian World) — the idea that Russian speakers, Orthodox culture, and former Soviet territory form a single civilization whose defense is inherently defensive, not offensive. A security narrative casting NATO's eastward expansion as encirclement is layered on top. Even overt conquest gets repackaged, in its own telling, as survival.

The historical answer is cold: a leadership that believes abandoning this narrative would collapse its own legitimacy has, in practice, paid for that belief with hundreds of thousands of lives. Nostalgia is only the raw material; forging it, again and again, into a weapon for holding power is a choice made by those unwilling to let go of power.

5. How Lives Are Spent: A Structural Problem, Not Just Materialist Ideology

Russia's "meat assault" tactics lay bare a practice of treating soldiers as expendable. But tracing this only to Communist materialism doesn't hold up well. Imperial Russian forces were already notorious for mass frontal assaults in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I — well before the Bolshevik Revolution. Communism, if anything, simply added an ideological gloss — sacrifice of the individual for the collective — on top of a pattern that already existed.

More structural causes are usually cited: a long history of treating a vast population as a strategic asset; an extremely centralized command culture that grants junior officers almost no latitude (in contrast to Western "mission command" doctrine); an information-controlled system where mass casualties struggle to generate opinion strong enough to threaten the regime; and a corruption-riddled procurement system where cheap manpower is, in practice, cheaper than investment in precision weapons and training. Even the recent shift — sending small infantry teams on foot instead of expensive armor, now that drones dominate the battlefield — is simply an adaptation within the same calculus: machines are spared, and people remain the cheapest resource.

6. Russian Literature Already Warned Us

Remarkably, Russian literature diagnosed this entire pattern a century ago. Raskolnikov's "Napoleon theory" in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment — the division of humanity into ordinary people and "extraordinary" individuals entitled to transcend moral law — nearly mirrors the self-justification of today's Kremlin hardliners. The narrator of Notes from Underground shows how a man with no real power but an inflated sense of pride vents his unrecognized self-regard in twisted ways — an exact portrait of the "small heroes" psychology this conversation kept circling back to.

Tolstoy offered the opposite voice. In War and Peace, he relentlessly dismantled the great-man theory of history itself, portraying even Napoleon as a single point swept along by history's vast currents. Late in life he moved toward a Christian anarchism that rejected state violence outright — a stance that would later influence Gandhi. In other words, Russian culture has, from the start, contained both a sharp critique of the person intoxicated by a small heroic narrative, and the very narrative the Kremlin is now enacting at national scale.

The question posed by Legend of the Galactic Heroes — is it justified for the nameless many to be consumed so that one man's heroic story can be completed? — compresses all of this into a single sentence. The work's answer is unambiguous: however compelling the hero, a structure in which the many are sacrificed for that story is itself the problem.

7. Closing

Ivan the Fool's kingdom prospered with no sword, no gold — only working hands. His brothers' kingdoms, built on conquest and display, destroyed themselves. What Russia's hardline elders are holding onto today is not Ivan's wisdom, but the road his brothers walked — the road of finishing one generation's unfinished heroic story with the lives of the next.

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References

1. Al Jazeera, "Putin's 'illusion of victory:' Russia ramps up missile attacks on Ukraine" (Aug 18, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/18/putins-illusion-of-victory-russia-ramps-up-missile-attacks-on-ukraine

2. Al Jazeera, "Zelenskyy and Trump discuss Patriot deal and reviving Russian peace talks" (Jul 28, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/28/ukraines-zelenskyy-hails-good-meeting-with-trump-at-white-house

3. Al Jazeera, "Putin suggests Russia's war on Ukraine 'coming to an end'" (May 10, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/10/putin-suggests-russias-war-on-ukraine-coming-to-an-end

4. Atlantic Council, "With Putin visibly weakened, now is the time to back Ukraine." https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/with-putin-visibly-weakened-now-is-the-time-to-back-ukraine/

5. Critical Threats (ISW), "Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 5, 2026." https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-5-2026

6. National Security Journal, "Putin Is Being Cornered by His Own Hardliners — and the Plan They're Pushing Him Toward Crosses the One Line Left." https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/putin-is-being-cornered-by-his-own-hardliners-and-the-plan-theyre-pushing-him-toward-crosses-the-one-line-left/

7. SOFREP, "Russia's 'Wave-Style' Assault Tactics in Kursk: A Brutal Nod to History." https://sofrep.com/news/russias-wave-style-assault-tactics-in-kursk-a-brutal-nod-to-history/

8. Newsweek, "Russian soldier describes Russia's use of 'meat assault' tactic." https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldier-describes-moscows-use-meat-assault-tactic-1839375

9. Al Jazeera, "Russian weapons, tactics seen in Ukraine are shaping Myanmar's civil war" (Mar 24, 2026). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/24/russian-weapons-tactics-seen-in-ukraine-are-shaping-myanmars-civil-war

10. Leo Tolstoy, Ivan the Fool (Иван-дурак, 1885)

11. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Война и мир, 1869)

12. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание, 1866)

13. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Записки из подполья, 1864)

14. Yoshiki Tanaka, Legend of the Galactic Heroes (銀河英雄伝説, 1982–1987)

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Compiled from a conversation between Lee Hyung-chun and Claude, August 2026.

 

The inner stability of a politician / Russia

Long ago, during the conservative government, I confronted tens of millions of conceptual opponents while discussing ideological neutrality and productivity.

At that time, I was very busy promoting a neutral and rational path to the president in power, intelligence agencies, and religious groups that the president trusted. I thought it would be okay to invest all of my time and ability if the path was to national unity and inter-Korean cooperation. However, going down such a path required a lot of internal stability. So, I tried to equip myself with calm and cool-headed judgment while exercising such as shooting practice and skating. I also lived a vegetarian diet for quite a while.

 

Sometimes, I thought, "If politicians use showmanship and make strong and passionate voices, I will be in big trouble." His passion will obscure his judgment. In the last episode of the movie, Don Corleone, the main character, says, "Hating your enemy blurs judgment." I thought, "If a politician takes power and then says things that hate his predecessor too much or takes an ideological attitude, nothing will be done to him." Indeed, he did. However, time gone by cannot be undone.

 

Adenauer’s sense of inner security derived more from faith than from analysis. He was not a reader of books or a student of history like Churchill or de Gaulle. But he had spent his exile in reflection; he had gone through the school of his country’s convulsions and possessed an extraordinary intuition for the trends of his period. He also had a penetrating understanding of the psychology of his contemporaries, especially their weaknesses. On the occasion, I recall Adenauer deploring the absense of strong leaders in the Germany of the 1950s. When I responded by mentioning one of his more dramatic contemporaries. Adenauer replied in his lapidary manner; “Never confuse energy with strength.”

 

 - [DIPLOMACY] BY HENRY KISSINGER -

 

A few days ago, Russian President Putin showed a very favorable attitude toward the South Korean government. President Putin was originally friendly to South Korea. President Putin has the flaws of the politician I mentioned, but as an intelligence officer, he will know how to make cool-headed calculations. I don't think he is a person to deal with in a shallow mood. As mentioned a few times, Russia's isolated geopolitical, political, and economic position seems to have been the fundamental motive of the war in Ukraine. On the one hand, President Putin expects North and South Korea to cooperate to 'open up' areas where Russia can operate to the east. There are many things that South Korea will take, such as the development of Siberia, Russia's resources, North Korea's resources, railway connection to Europe, and North Korea's labor force.

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On the one hand, it seems that President Putin has an intention to end the war in Ukraine. If there is an action plan to the east, there will be a justification for the lack of allocation of forces to the west. On the other hand, there is a possibility that President Putin, who shows masculine loyalty, will comprehensively consider ways for North Korea to overcome its difficult situation. It is true that President Putin has shifted to a pragmatic and peaceful policy, and that South Korea should go beyond the camp's logic to resolve the issue of Russia.

 

A few days ago, a wise friend asked me a question, is human being originally evil or good? I think that those who try to be good are really good people. I think that the trying GOOD needs reason and does not change more than the emotional GOOD, so it is reliable. Like Adenauer's idea, Russia and Korea must 'cool-headly' cooperate with each other.

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.

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