North Korean Unification Policy .......... 179

For decades, North Korea actively propagated the concept of the ‘Korean Nation’ to unify the Korean Peninsula under Northern auspices. When this concept ultimately appeared to threaten the Kim family’s rule due to vast economic disparities and the global cultural appeal of the South, the North very recently dramatically reversed course and declared the ‘Korean Nation’ to be nonexistent. Kim Jong Un’s 2024 stipulation that South Korea is not part of the ‘Korean Nation’ is the strategic attempt to insulate the DPRK from the Southern threat of economic and cultural absorption. It resembles the ideological strategy of delimitation the GDR implemented in 1971 vis-a-vis West Germany, with the crucial difference of a complete shutdown and control of any cross-border contacts, influences, and connections of any kind with the ‘Southern enemy.’