[Global NK Special Report] ① A Preliminary Discussion on the Strategy of Individuation on the Korean Peninsula: Abolishing North Korea's Security-Legitimacy Dilemma and South Korea's Mid- to Long-Term Strategy toward North Korea

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Introduction: The Collapse of Basic Premises

For the past 30 years, South Korea's North Korea policy has shared two implicit premises. The first is the assumption that North Korea is ultimately on a path toward normalization of relations with the United States, which posits that if appropriate security guarantees and economic incentives are provided, North Korea can move toward the normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations and a long-term denuclearization path. The second is the premise that the issue of the Korean Peninsula can transition to unification through a single package of denuclearization, economic linkage, and regime security. Whether through absorption unification, consensus unification, or federalism, a singular image of a unified Korean Peninsula has always been the endpoint. However, as of 2026, both of these premises appear to have collapsed.

North Korea legalized its nuclear capabilities in September 2022, declaring its possession of nuclear weapons as 'irreversible,' and formalized the 'hostile two-state theory' by the end of 2023, thereby abandoning its unification orientation on the Korean Peninsula. The North Korea-Russia cooperation, mediated by the Russia-Ukraine war, provides a buffer against dependence on China, and as recently revealed through the North Korea-China summit, China is striving to maintain its relative influence over North Korea, which is moving toward Russia. In other words, the leverage of the denuclearization-incentive exchange model that South Korea and the United States have traditionally operated has been structurally neutralized, and South Korea has entered an environment where it cannot assume the normalization of political relations with North Korea as a basic scenario in the short term.

At the same time, the Korean Peninsula is faced with the necessity to redefine its position amidst larger structural changes, including U.S.-China strategic competition, the reconfiguration of the Asia-Pacific security order, and bifurcations in global supply chains and AI technology. A new strategic framework that can respond simultaneously to these two pressures—North Korea's strategic disconnection and the bifurcation of the regional order—is required, and this paper aims to present a preliminary discussion on the Korean Peninsula Individuation Strategy as a response.

Part 1. Diagnosis: The Security-Legitimacy Dilemma and Its Abolition

1.1 Starting Point — The Korean Peninsula as a 'Space of Incomplete Sovereignty'.

Jeon Jae-sung defines Northeast Asian states as 'incomplete sovereign states that, on the surface, have no disqualifying factors but, in reality, harbor the dream of being complete sovereign states' (Jeon Jae-sung 2020). South and North Korea were recognized as two sovereign states under international law by simultaneously joining the UN in September 1991, but they exist in a state of sovereignty deficit, divided in terms of territory, population, and government due to the division. An important aspect here is the interpretation that the organizational principle among Northeast Asian states is not a stable anarchy but a 'pre-anarchy.' The sovereignty game is still ongoing, and the process of mutually recognizing each other as complete sovereign states and creating an anarchic society is itself unfinished. Therefore, Jeon Jae-sung argues that for a divided state, unification is not merely a matter of enhancing national power but a 'matter of survival that must not lead to absorption unification,' and thus the sovereignty game relates 'not only to physical security but also to ontological security' (Jeon Jae-sung 2020).

Jeon Jae-sung's characterization of 'an unfinished state where a game toward the completion of sovereignty is ongoing' or 'pre-anarchy' in Northeast Asia bears structural similarities to the pre-individual state described by Simondon—a quasi-stable space filled with tensions of incompatible dimensions where individuation has not yet occurred. South and North Korea are not completed entities in themselves but are two units placed within a space of tension where their claims to sovereignty overlap and collide. This paper argues that the direction of North Korea policy must change to address the question of how this pre-individual tension can be resolved (individuated), and this will be discussed in detail in the latter part. Before that, the first part will trace how North Korea has dealt with this tension from 1994 to 2019 and how its approach has fundamentally changed from 2019 to 2026 following the failure of the Hanoi summit.

1.2 The Security-Legitimacy Dilemma: The Operational Logic from 1994 to 2019

What conditions determine North Korea's willingness to concede its nuclear capabilities? The North Korean regime has generally decided to concede its nuclear capabilities when two conditions are simultaneously met. First, a structural condition where accumulated domestic political-economic pressures erode the regime's actual legitimacy, thereby lowering the long-term opportunity cost of normalization, and second, a direct condition where the credibility of U.S. normalization commitments activates the normalization path. Importantly, these two conditions have asymmetric temporalities. Domestic pressures accumulate over years, gradually tilting the regime's long-term calculations toward normalization, influenced by the calculations of policymakers or elites. This condition can create North Korea's 'willingness' to concede but does not, by itself, produce 'action.' What triggers action is the more direct condition of the credibility of U.S. commitments. Conversely, when that credibility collapses, security threats become immediate and existential, while economic pressures remain gradual and manageable at a level that maintains regime security, allowing the regime to revert to nuclear activities even if domestic economic conditions worsen.

In this framework, normalization is not simply a 'carrot' as commonly thought, but rather a substitute that can replace nuclear deterrence. The normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations serves as a security asset that alleviates the regime's existential vulnerabilities in the form of political relations with the United States, while simultaneously serving as a political-economic asset that restores legitimacy by alleviating economic isolation. North Korea's persistent demand for light-water reactors (LWRs) instead of fossil fuel power plants in the early 1990s exemplifies this. As Christopher Lawrence suggests, the light-water reactor was an institutional embodiment of North Korea's intention to physically bind the U.S. to a long-term normalization relationship with North Korea, as it could not be operated without sustained technological support from the West. If North Korea simply wanted an energy supply as a carrot, it would be reasonable to demand fossil fuel power plants that are cheap, efficient, and do not require external technological support. However, North Korea stubbornly insisted on light-water reactors instead.

Robert Carlin and John Lewis, former State Department analysts who participated in most U.S.-North Korea negotiations from 1993 to 2000, point out that North Korea's ultimate goal was 'a long-term, strategic relationship with the United States,' and in fact, North Korea withdrew its demand for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in South Korea when other concessions were made and tolerated the indefinite presence of U.S. troops during the negotiation process (Carlin and Lewis 2007). For Kim Il-sung, who lost both his patron alliance and socialist trading bloc with the end of the Cold War, normalization with the United States was not merely an economic incentive but a strategic goal that addressed both security and legitimacy dimensions. In light of this logic, the five agreements from 1994 to 2019 can be explained not by the constant of regime type but by two variables: the domestic pressure of actual legitimacy and the credibility of U.S. commitments.

In particular, the collapse of KEDO established by the Geneva Agreement in 1994 (1998–2002) is a decisive case that verifies the temporal proposition of this framework. If nuclear concessions were maintained solely by economic pressure, the freeze should have been most firmly maintained at the very time when North Korea's economy was on the brink of catastrophe due to the Arduous March. The economic plight of North Korea during this period was the worst in the regime's history. Following the collapse of the socialist bloc and the loss of its patron state, North Korea's economic growth rate plummeted to an average of about -3.3% from 1990 to 1999, indicating that the previous growth trend had completely reversed due to the limits of external growth (Pyo Hak-gil, Jo Tae-hyung, Kim Min-jeong 2020; Jo Tae-hyung, Kim Min-jeong 2021). During the "Arduous March" period from 1994 to 1998, the public distribution system (PDS) collapsed, leading to an estimated hundreds of thousands to over a million deaths from starvation (Haggard and Noland 2007), and with cumulative negative growth of over 30% from 1990 to 1998, the North Korean economy showed no signs of stabilization until the early 2000s, failing to recover to pre-crisis levels (Lee Jong-min 2026). The regime's economic legitimacy, which had been sustained by ensuring basic survival, was being eroded.

However, North Korea appeared to be more sensitive to fluctuations in the immediate credibility of U.S. commitments than to underlying economic conditions. Despite the intensification of economic pressures, when the credibility of U.S. commitments collapsed due to the delays in KEDO and the designation as an "Axis of Evil," North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and reactivated Yongbyon. North Korea could not accept nuclear concessions that did not guarantee the political normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations, despite the weakening of its actual legitimacy due to economic stagnation. Subsequently, there were temporary agreements between the U.S. and North Korea within the framework of the Six-Party Talks, but these agreements did not last due to the imposition of sanctions against Banco Delta Asia.

The September 19 Joint Statement in 2005 contained the strongest normalization language since the Geneva Agreement—mutual respect for sovereignty, peaceful coexistence, and normalization measures—but was immediately undermined when the U.S. Treasury designated Banco Delta Asia as a primary money laundering concern, freezing approximately $25 million of North Korean assets. Amid this contradictory signal of extending normalization language with one hand while imposing financial sanctions with the other, North Korea escalated tensions with ballistic missile tests in July 2006 and its first nuclear test in October, before reverting to half-hearted concessions in February 2007 with agreements and the disablement of Yongbyon. This aligns with the paper's analytical framework, which predicts that intermediate levels of commitment credibility yield partial and unstable concessions. Ultimately, verification processes were not established, and with the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak government in 2008, even the channels for inter-Korean engagement were closed, leading to the rapid collapse of the multilateral framework that had sustained partial concessions (Song Min-soon 2016).

The February 2012 Leap Year Agreement serves as a limiting case for this analytical framework. The death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011 and the succession of Kim Jong-un added a new dimension to the security-legitimacy dilemma. The new regime had to establish authority domestically and signal continuity or change internationally, and this fragile transitional period gave rise to a desire for external legitimacy. The Leap Year Agreement, which exchanged a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests and uranium enrichment activities for U.S. food aid, can be interpreted as an attempt to alleviate the vulnerabilities of the succession period through external engagement. However, the Obama administration's policy of "strategic patience" offered little in terms of prospects for normalization or commitments. The agreement was narrow and transactional, not embedded in a broader normalization framework, and, above all, lacked institutional mechanisms—devices corresponding to KEDO—that could sustain the agreement amid disruptions.

As a result, when North Korea announced a satellite launch in March 2012, the agreement collapsed immediately. The structural framework of the agreement, lacking institutional depth or physical commitments, proved to be non-resilient. The Leap Year Agreement illustrates that even if domestic pressures create some willingness for engagement (the succession period produced both vulnerabilities and a desire for external legitimacy), the absence of reliable normalization commitments and institutional mechanisms that bind both parties in a continuous political relationship renders the agreement fundamentally fragile, sufficient to trigger a reversion from any disruptions occurring from either side.

It is noteworthy that over these 25 years, North Korea has repeatedly pursued the long-term normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations. The multi-year freeze under the Geneva Agreement, the disablement of Yongbyon in 2007, and the moratorium on nuclear and missile tests in 2018 were concessions chosen within the security-normalization dilemma. If there had been no willingness to resolve the security-normalization dilemma through the long-term normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations, the aforementioned choices by North Korea, particularly the Geneva Agreement, would not be explainable. The dual-track approach of simultaneous economic development and nuclear force construction that emerged in 2013 under Kim Jong-un's leadership is one facet of North Korea's simultaneous pursuit to resolve this security-normalization dilemma. Logically, it would make sense to choose either nuclear capability or economic development, but from North Korea's perspective, a political duality was necessary to resolve the security-legitimacy dilemma. Until the adoption of the frontal breakthrough strategy following the failure of the Hanoi summit in 2019, the announcement of the total concentration on socialist economic construction in 2018 and subsequent diplomacy with the U.S. and South Korea also reflect North Korea's response to this dilemma.

In the basic situation where U.S.-North Korea relations do not improve, North Korea has continued to develop nuclear weapons while assuming that nuclear weapons and normalization are partial substitutes, while simultaneously hedging against the possibility of U.S. commitments retreating. North Korea has made partial concessions on the nuclear issue when it judges that a political relationship with the United States can substitute for nuclear deterrence, and has reverted to nuclear activities when it assesses that that relationship is unreliable. The interpretation that "North Korea never intended to give up its nuclear weapons and that diplomacy was merely a means to buy time" is the most convenient post-hoc interpretation; however, if North Korea's preferences had been fixed, such fluctuations would not have been observed.

1.3 Hanoi as a Tipping Point: The Cumulative Crisis of Credibility

In this context, the breakdown of the Hanoi summit in February 2019 marked a tipping point that signified the collapse of the cumulative credibility of U.S. commitments over 25 years. The entire phase leading up to Hanoi from 2017 to 2019 was a compressed version of the security-legitimacy dilemma. In 2017, under conditions where the credibility of commitments had plummeted, North Korea moved to maximize its security items. Starting with the Hwasong-12 in February, numerous ballistic missile tests followed throughout the year, and in July, the Hwasong-14 ICBM capable of striking the U.S. mainland was test-fired, followed by the Hwasong-15 in November. The sixth nuclear test on September 3 showcased a qualitative leap in nuclear capability, claiming to possess hydrogen bomb-level power. The Trump administration pushed the "maximum pressure" policy with rhetoric of "fire and fury," deploying aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and a series of UN Security Council sanctions, escalating mutual threats to the brink of military conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

However, Kim Jong-un's declaration of "completion of national nuclear forces" immediately after the launch of the Hwasong-15 in November 2017 suggests that this escalation of crisis was aimed not at pursuing unlimited tension but at securing negotiation leverage. The self-declaration of nuclear force completion became a stepping stone for transitioning into a negotiation phase. As the situation on the Korean Peninsula changed rapidly in 2018, inter-Korean dialogue resumed around the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, followed by the Panmunjom Declaration in April and the U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore in June. North Korea declared the end of the dual-track approach and the total concentration on economic construction through a plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee in April 2018. Superficially, this was interpreted as a proactive stance toward denuclearization negotiations. The Singapore Joint Statement comprehensively included the establishment of a new U.S.-North Korea relationship, the creation of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, and the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but lacked a specific roadmap for implementation regarding the definition, order, and verification of denuclearization. The September Pyongyang Joint Declaration adopted at the third inter-Korean summit held in Pyongyang in September 2018 specified North Korea's willingness to permanently dismantle its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, conditional on corresponding measures from the United States, thereby concretizing North Korea's plan to exchange partial and phased denuclearization for partial corresponding measures. The gap between this "action for action" phased approach and the comprehensive deal approach demanded by the United States directly clashed in Hanoi in February 2019.

Subsequent three summits between the U.S. and North Korea, exchanges of letters, and dramatic meetings at the DMZ received diplomatic attention, but there was no bureaucratic support, congressional approval, multilateral framework, or institutional mechanisms equivalent to KEDO to back them. Ultimately, the summit in Hanoi broke down due to the gap between North Korea's proposal for partial denuclearization (dismantling Yongbyon) and the U.S. position demanding comprehensive denuclearization as a precondition. In fact, from North Korea's perspective, the conditions in Hanoi reproduced the very vulnerability that the collapse of KEDO in the 1990s had demonstrated—the risk of believing in political commitments without institutional mechanisms to support them while conceding nuclear capabilities.

The shock left by this breakdown for North Korea is encapsulated in a letter Kim Jong-un sent to Trump on August 5, 2019 (the last letter exchanged between the leaders of the two countries to date). In the letter, Kim Jong-un stated, regarding the joint military exercises between South Korea and the U.S., that "the main target of the war preparation exercises is our army," and added, "I have no intention of attacking South Korea or starting a war. I truly do not think that way" (Lee Jeong-cheol 2025, quoted again). The tension in these statements—emphasizing defense while revealing deep distrust of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance—suggests that the breakdown in Hanoi was internalized as a significant shock for the regime.

1.4 Qualitative Break: The Abandonment of Dilemma Logic

The changes following Hanoi represent not another oscillation within the security-legitimacy dilemma but the abandonment of the dilemma logic itself, which can be confirmed through three indicators. The first is the abandonment of the pursuit of normalization, as Kim Jong-un's speech at the Party Central Committee in January 2020 redefined the moratorium as "unilateral concessions" and declared a release from self-restraint. After the collapse of KEDO and the stagnation of the Six-Party Talks, the previous pattern of returning to negotiations after reversion has disappeared.

The second is the entrenchment of nuclear status. The policy adopted at the 14th Supreme People's Assembly on September 8, 2022, titled "On the Nuclear Force Policy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," legalized North Korea's nuclear status. This legislation defines North Korea's nuclear forces as "a powerful means to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state, prevent war in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, and ensure global strategic stability" (Joseon Sinbo 2022). Nuclear capabilities are no longer treated as assets that can be exchanged for political relations. This marks a shift that elevates nuclear capabilities from substitutes for normalization to prerequisites for normalization.

This shift had been foreshadowed discursively even before the legalization. On April 25, 2022, during the 90th anniversary parade of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, Kim Jong-un mentioned the "second mission of nuclear forces," stating, "The primary mission of our nuclear forces is to deter war, but in situations we do not wish to see arise on this land, our nuclear forces cannot be bound solely to the mission of preventing war" (Jaju Sibo 2022). The purpose of nuclear forces has expanded beyond 'deterrence' to the possibility of 'offensive use'.

The third is the restructuring of North Korea's alliance and a shift in its perception of South Korea. The 9th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea on December 31, 2023, provided substantial momentum for the theory of two hostile states. In the report from this meeting, Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean relations as "hostile relations between two states, a relationship of warring parties," while declaring the intention to further develop relations with countries that oppose the hegemonic strategies of the U.S. and the West, thereby launching international anti-imperialist joint actions (Rodong Sinmun 2023). At the North Korea-Russia summit in June 2024, reaffirming the relationship between the two countries based on "anti-imperialism" extended the ideological foundation previously attributed to North Korea-China relations to North Korea-Russia relations.

The shift in perception toward South Korea is even more explicit. In the plenary meeting, Kim Jong-un declared, "There can never be unification with the Republic of Korea, which has established 'absorption unification' and 'system unification' as national policy, which starkly contrasts with our path of unification based on one nation, one state, and two systems." In his New Year's address in January 2024, he reinforced the crisis narrative by mentioning "the special environment in which the greatest enemy, the Republic of Korea, coexists with us as our closest neighbor" (Joseon Sinbo 2024).

Jeon Jae-sung (2020) viewed South and North Korea as having "individually joined the UN as two sovereign states while maintaining a special relationship that keeps the possibility of unification open." The theory of two hostile states negates this very special relationship. It is a transition from "de facto two states" that kept the possibility of unification open to "two hostile states" where the possibility of unification has been abandoned. One axis of Jeon Jae-sung's diagnosis of the "dilemma of extinction"—the ultimate goal of the sovereignty game of unification—has been explicitly withdrawn on the North Korean side. This indicates that the security-legitimacy dilemma has culminated in the pursuit of security, and the very nature of the pre-individual field of the Korean Peninsula has changed.

1.6 Part I Conclusion: The Need for a New Perspective

From 1994 to 2019, North Korea operated within the security-legitimacy dilemma—seeking normalization when U.S. commitment credibility was presented while reverting to nuclear capabilities when that credibility collapsed amid the erosion of its actual legitimacy due to economic pressures. However, this oscillation reached a tipping point at Hanoi due to the cumulative failure of U.S. commitment credibility and was abandoned. If South Korea can no longer formulate policies based on the two collapsed premises—that North Korea is on a path toward normalization and that the issue can be resolved through a single unification package—what alternatives can be considered? This paper seeks to answer this question with the Korean Peninsula Individuation Strategy, positing the Korean Peninsula as a field of incomplete sovereignty as diagnosed by Jeon Jae-sung and as a pre-individual field as described by Simondon.

Part 2: Korean Peninsula Individuation Strategy

2.1 Why "Individuation"? — Redefining the Field of Incomplete Sovereignty

The existing unification paradigms—absorption unification, consensus unification, federalism—share a common epistemological premise despite superficial differences. Like classical form-matter theory, a singular unification form is pre-given at the endpoint, and policy is predicated on pushing reality toward that form. This premise considers political units as already completed entities and views change as an external adjustment of relations between those entities, based on a substantialist ontology. However, this premise not only does not fit within the environment of the theory of two hostile states but also produces counterproductive effects. The more directly one pursues a singular form, the more North Korea perceives it as a plan for regime collapse and retreats into a more deeply bound quasi-stable state.[1]

As previously mentioned, Jeon Jae-sung defines South and North Korea not as fully sovereign states but as incomplete sovereign states—two units that bear the "deficit of sovereignty" due to division, with territory, people, and government split—and views their relationship as an unfinished state where "the game toward the completion of sovereignty is still ongoing." It is noteworthy that he names the organizational principle among Northeast Asian states not as a stable anarchy but as "pre-anarchy." South and North Korea are not completed sovereign entities in themselves but are two units placed together in an unfinished field where their claims to sovereignty overlap and collide. This paper introduces Simondon's concept of individuation as a heuristic framework to redefine this "field of incomplete sovereignty."

This paper does not claim that Simondon's theory of individuation predicts or verifies the causal mechanisms of Korean Peninsula politics. Such a claim would be an unreasonable appropriation of concepts from natural philosophy into social scientific causal models. Rather, the argument of this paper is that the concept of individuation allows for a redescribing of the problem space that existing unification paradigms have failed to see, namely the space that Jeon Jae-sung has captured as the "unfinished sovereignty game." The legitimacy of the heuristic framework lies not in its predictive power but in the new policy implications generated through redescribing.[2]

The structural convergence of Jeon Jae-sung's diagnosis and Simondon's concept lies in both shifting the focus of analysis from substance to process. Unlike traditional philosophy, which starts from the "already individuated entity," Simondon sees the individuation process itself (ontogenèse; ontogenesis) as the primary reality. He reverses the reasoning that grants ontological superiority to constituted entities, proposing that "instead of knowing the individual from the individual, we should know the individual through individuation" (Simondon 1958, 2017, 40–41). This notion that the starting point of analysis should be the process that produces the outcome, rather than the outcome itself, directly corresponds to this paper's attempt to read the Korean Peninsula as a single emergent field that has not yet been individuated, rather than as the sum of two completed sovereign states. This shift targets both of the two classical schemas he critiques—substantialism, which views the individual as a self-fulfilling entity, and hylomorphism, which sees the external form imposed on passive matter. For Simondon, the pre-individual state that precedes the individual is a realm of potential that is "more than unity, more than identity" (plus qu'unité, plus qu'identité), where the coexistence of incompatible dimensions becomes potential energy.[3]

On the one hand, Jeon Jae-sung's "incomplete sovereignty" corresponds to Simondon's "pre-individuality" when applied to the Korean Peninsula. However, Simondon's concept goes a step further. While incomplete sovereignty is conceptualized as something that should be completed, Simondon's theory of individuation provides a perspective that interprets the deficit of sovereignty not as a lack that needs to be filled but as a reservoir of potential that has not yet crystallized in any direction. Individuation (l'individuation; individuation) is an event where this tension—neither stable nor unstable—resolves and a new structure emerges, and the "pre-anarchy" that Jeon Jae-sung speaks of corresponds precisely to this quasi-stable state. The metaphor Simondon often uses for individuation is crystallization in physical science, where a supersaturated solution appears stable but is actually a quasi-stable state charged with potential energy, and when a small seed crystal (germe) is introduced, that tension resolves into a structured crystal.

It is noteworthy that the seed does not impose a form. The seed is not a mold that casts the crystalline structure from the outside but merely a singularity that triggers the molecular potential inherent in the solution to be structured. In Simondon's terms, what the seed does is not to impose a form but to introduce information—where information refers to an event that establishes communication between previously incompatible entities. The final form of the crystal emerges not from the seed but from the conditions of the solution. This asymmetry—triggering but not imposing—can be the strategic core of the Korean Peninsula Individuation Strategy.

2.2 Two Levels of Individuation: The Meeting of the Sovereignty Game and Individuation

The Korean Peninsula Individuation Strategy operates on two distinct levels. It corresponds to Simondon's hierarchical concepts—individuation and transindividual—and overlaps with the two games distinguished by Jeon Jae-sung—the sovereignty game (where regional states compete for the completion of sovereignty) and the international political game (where regional and external states engage in a game of power and interests). The distinction between these two levels reflects the structural fact that the issues on the Korean Peninsula are simultaneously unfolding on both internal dimensions (inter-Korean relations) and external dimensions (the position of the Korean Peninsula within the regional order) and that they define each other.

2.2.1 Macro Level — Individuating the Korean Peninsula as a Unit of Regional International Politics

Even in scenarios where the theory of two hostile states becomes entrenched, the Korean Peninsula must be treated as an independent analytical and strategic unit within U.S.-China relations and the Asia-Pacific regional order. This goes beyond merely maintaining the agenda of the "Korean Peninsula issue." In Simondon's sense, it means securing its position as a relational entity that emerges with its environment—U.S.-South Korea alliance, trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the U.S., and Japan, the South Korea-China-Japan network, North Korea-China-Russia connections, ASEAN and Pacific island security order, global technology and trade networks, and the dissemination of AI as a general-purpose technology. For Simondon, an entity never exists separately from its environment. As he emphasizes, "What individuation shows is not just the individual but also the pair of individual-environment" (Simondon 2017, 41–42). An entity emerges from a state of existence where it does not exist as an individual or as a principle of individuation, and individuation manifests as a partial and relative resolution of the incompatibilities inherent in that system. The moment one assumes the Korean Peninsula as a "previously completed unit" detached from its environment, the analysis falls into the very error that Simondon warned against—placing the outcome in the position of the cause. Individuation produces both the individual and its environment, and the boundaries of the individual are constantly reconstructed at the surface where it negotiates with its environment.

Jeon Jae-sung's theory also explains why this macro level is inevitable. He argues that the sovereignty games of regional states in Northeast Asia cannot be separated from the international political games of external great powers like the U.S. and Russia, and that the completion of sovereignty by regional states is directly linked to the regional strategies of external great powers. The sovereignty issue of the Korean Peninsula is not confined to the South-North dyad. For Simondon, transindividuality refers to the situation where an individual cannot resolve the unresolved tensions within itself, and that resolution can only occur collectively, within relationships with other individuals. Both insights point to the same conclusion. Given that the internal tensions of the Korean Peninsula (the South-North disparation) cannot be resolved immediately between the two, South Korea's agency must be constructed transindividually—at the intersection where the sovereignty game and the international political game meet.[4]

The policy implications of this redefinition are as follows. South Korea should not position itself as an appendage of the U.S.-South Korea alliance or a dependent variable of U.S.-China competition, but rather secure its diplomatic agency as a quasi-stable entity that operates with its own milieu while considering the U.S.-South Korea alliance and U.S.-China competition. Specifically, one could envision placing the Ministry of Unification as a practical strategy department for the Korean Peninsula, tasked with long-term planning for North Korea policy and the Korean Peninsula strategy within the context of North Korea-China-Russia connections and U.S.-China relations. To this end, the Ministry of Unification could expand its engagement and response to North Korea-China relations and North Korea-Russia relations, as well as its lobbying efforts toward the U.S. and Japan. In a situation where North Korea has reduced the United Front Department to the 10th Bureau under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and cannot conceive a future-oriented strategy for the Korean Peninsula unit—having abandoned the orientation toward unification under the theory of two hostile states—South Korea's North Korea strategy should set the inter-Korean interactions themselves as the unit of analysis and strategy. Even if progress on the denuclearization agenda is difficult in the short term, the visibility, connectivity, and mediation capacity of the Korean Peninsula itself can be strengthened in separate multilateral tracks (G7, G20, ASEAN+3, NATO-IP4, MIKTA, etc.). This represents a strategic advantage of decoupling short-term stagnation in denuclearization from long-term strengthening of the Korean Peninsula's agency.

2.2.2 Micro Level — Redefining South and North Korea as a Pre-Individual Tension State

The Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are two UN member states under international law, but as Jeon Jae-sung (2020) shows, they are politically not complete entities but two units in a pre-individual state. According to Jeon Jae-sung's diagnosis, both countries overlap in their constitutional claims to sovereignty, positing the entire Korean Peninsula as their territory (or are only separated in a negative form as the theory of two hostile states), and cannot complete their own security and identity without alliances or patronage from external great powers, while the absence of a peace treaty means that the armistice regime is essentially a quasi-stable state. This is how the "deficit of sovereignty" manifests at the unit level.

Here, the disparation described by Simondon—coexistence of incompatible dimensions—structurally takes root. It is noteworthy that Jeon Jae-sung distinguishes the sovereignty games of divided states from the international political games of fully sovereign states, viewing them as related to "not only physical security but also ontological security." Each row in the table below represents not merely policy differences but the battlefronts of the sovereignty game in which the two units stake their respective ontological identities.

This disparation can be read politically according to four principles, which form the epistemological foundation of the entire strategy. First, the disparation between South and North is a matter of dimensions rather than conflict. Reading the incompatibility between South and North, and North and the U.S. as disparation means viewing it as a coexistence of two political orders belonging to different dimensions within the same geographical and historical unit of the Korean Peninsula, rather than as "differences in positions" or "conflicts of interest." The dimensions of democracy-denuclearization-global trade and nuclear capability-authoritarianism-circumvented trade cannot be narrowed through concessions or compromises at the negotiation table, as they exist on different dimensions that do not translate into one another. This distinction has practical implications—if the distance is on the same dimension, it is reasonable to narrow that distance through negotiation, but if the disparation at the current point represents coexistence of different dimensions, any attempt to narrow it is a categorical error and may produce counterproductive effects.

Second, resolution is the emergence of a new dimension. The resolution of disparation is not the average of two dimensions or the absorption of one by the other. For Simondon, it is an event where two dimensions are integrated and emerge as a transformed new dimension. Applied to the Korean Peninsula, unification (absorption by one side) and permanent division (permanent separation of two dimensions) are not true resolutions of disparation. True resolution is an event where the two dimensions are transformed into a new political dimension—for example, competitive attraction within bifurcated coexistence, or a phased non-proliferation-peace regime.

Third, disparation is potential energy. Simondon's core insight is that this incompatibility is not a flaw but a source of potential energy. In Jeon Jae-seong's terms, the deficit of sovereignty and the incomplete sovereignty game are not deficiencies to be filled, but—although compromise is inherently difficult due to existential security concerns—a field of potentiality yet to be determined in any direction. The perspective that views incompatibility as a flaw diagnoses it as a "suboptimal state of normalization" and prescribes a single, deterministic unification model. However, the perspective that views it as potential energy reinterprets the same incompatibility as a generative basis that enables multiple transformation pathways.

Fourth, policy as a seed of crystallization. Just as a supersaturated solution does not crystallize without a seed, disparation does not resolve on its own. A seed of crystallization is needed to trigger its resolution. In the Korean Peninsula individuation strategy, South Korea's policy intervention—in terms of its role as a mediator, small points of stability, and self-validation in technological diversity—functions as this seed. While South Korea cannot directly resolve disparation, it can plant seeds in the milieu that transform the direction of its resolution. This is the political meaning of applying Simondon's transduction to the Korean Peninsula.

2.3 Core Dynamics of the Strategy: Metastability, Seeds, Transduction, and Recrystallization

The originality of the Korean Peninsula individuation strategy lies not in static scenario classification but in its dynamics (動學). These dynamics correspond to the four phases of crystallization, with each phase being a translation of Simondon's concepts into the language of Korean policy.

First, recognition of metastability, or redefinition of the current state, is necessary. The current Korean Peninsula, solidified as a theory of two hostile states, is not a "failed unification" but a metastable state. It is a field of tension, seemingly static but charged with potentiality. This redefinition is not mere rhetoric but changes the temporal horizon of policy. If the current state is defined as "abnormal/failed," policy tends toward immediate short-term pressure for resolution. However, if defined as "metastable," policy is reset as a medium-to-long-term endeavor to manage tension while fostering conditions for crystallization. The starting point of the strategy is to refrain from the impulse to hastily resolve this state and to acknowledge it as manageable tension.

Second, planting crystallization seeds (scenario-independent continuous work) is required. South Korea does not directly pursue a single unification. Instead, it plants small points of stability (crystallization seeds) throughout the milieu. This includes engagement in North Korea-China and North Korea-Russia relations, lobbying the US and Japan, agricultural and humanitarian cooperation with the Global South, AI technology support, joint response to health and infectious diseases, climate issues, separated families, disaster management, minimal mechanisms for military confidence-building, and channels for preventing accidental clashes. These seeds do not, in themselves, create a single image of the Korean Peninsula such as unification. Like Simondon's seeds, they are not about imposing a specific form, but about pre-placing nuclei where crystallization can begin when tensions are eventually resolved.

What needs to be emphasized here is that seed planting is not a subordinate task dependent on a specific scenario, but a scenario-invariant continuous operation that bends the probability of bifurcation in favor of South Korea, regardless of which scenario is realized. While conventional policy planning is structured around "predicting the future and preparing accordingly," the seed strategy is structured to bias the direction of crystallization toward South Korea, whatever the future may be. Although it is unpredictable when and under what circumstances crystallization will begin, the presence or absence of pre-planted seeds determines the direction of crystallization. In this respect, the seed strategy does not rely on the accuracy of prediction and can therefore operate even in highly uncertain environments.

Third, the possibility of shock and transduction. Simondon's transduction is a self-amplifying operation where structuration occurring in one domain propagates to adjacent domains, simultaneously creating new dimensions and mediations. Just as one formed layer in crystallization becomes the condition for the formation of the next layer, in transduction, each structured domain becomes the principle for the structuration of adjacent domains. When a shock occurs on the Korean Peninsula—such as changes in North Korean elite dynamics, fluctuations in US-China relations, exposure of critical limitations in North Korea-Russia cooperation, leadership variables, or structural pressures from AI technological advancements—if seeds have been pre-planted, the shock can lead to structured propagation rather than chaotic collapse. It is a layered propagation where trust formed in one domain (e.g., humanitarian cooperation) becomes a condition for structuration in adjacent domains (e.g., economy, health, security). While the shock itself cannot be controlled, the path through which the shock propagates can be predictably biased by pre-arranged seeds; this is the core implication of transduction dynamics.

Fourth, simultaneous recrystallization of the individual entities and the encompassing environment, or simultaneous individuation, must be pursued. As crystallization progresses, both the individual entities (South and North Korea) and the encompassing environment (regional order) are simultaneously transformed. The individuation of the Korean Peninsula does not occur in a vacuum. Just as Jeon Jae-seong views the sovereignty games of regional states and the international political games of external powers as inextricably linked, the recrystallization of the Korean Peninsula occurs concurrently with the reshaping of the regional order, including the US, China, Japan, and Russia. Whichever direction the sovereignty games of South and North Korea crystallize, it will immediately transform the international political games of the encompassing environment, and conversely, fluctuations in those international political games will alter the crystallization conditions of the South-North sovereignty games. Therefore, South Korea's strategy must target not only the internal dynamics of the Korean Peninsula but also the entire encompassing environment—this is where the macro and micro levels are integrated into a single endeavor.

2.4 Individuation Scenario Matrix: Four Axes and AI as a Transformation Coefficient

Each scenario is derived from the bifurcation of four axes: (i) the persistence versus change of North Korean policy (leader and domestic factors), (ii) the trajectory of US-China relations, (iii) the intensity of North Korea-China and North Korea-Russia linkages, and (iv) external pressures arising from the global advancement of AI technological innovation. The causal mechanism of the first analysis, the accumulation of domestic pressure and fluctuations in the credibility of external commitments, also operates within this matrix, but it must now be evaluated in an environment that assumes the theory of two hostile states as the default.

The fourth axis differs in nature from the preceding three. It is not simply an additional variable but an exogenous shock that transforms the structure of the milieu itself, acting as a transformation coefficient multiplied across the other three axes. The simultaneous advancement of AI, semiconductors, autonomous weapons, and synthetic biology alters the crystallization conditions of the Korean Peninsula through three pathways. First, it can accelerate the widening gap between global technological systems and the authoritarian-self-reliance model, deepening the North Korean regime's techno-economic legitimacy crisis (amplifying the "domestic pressure" component in the security-legitimacy dilemma discussed in Part I). Second, it reconfigures the security dilemma through AI competition and militarization. Third, it accelerates the bifurcation of global supply chains and technological standards. Thus, the AI axis, rather than being a separate scenario, constitutes a new dimension of scenario analysis by acting as a transformation coefficient that applies transversally to all four scenarios.[5]

It should be noted here that the "techno-economic legitimacy crisis" should be understood as a structural, long-term gap rather than a short-term economic collapse. The North Korean economy experienced a stepwise negative growth of approximately -2.0% annually from 2017–2022 due to intensified sanctions and the impact of COVID-19. It then entered a recovery phase with growth rates of 3.1% in 2023 and 3.7% in 2024, driven by trade resumption and North Korea-Russia cooperation (Lee Jong-min 2026). While real GDP in 2024 has recovered to about 95% of the pre-sanction level of 2016, the per capita income shows a gap of about 20 times (in purchasing power parity terms) compared to South Korea and has not yet reached the level prior to the economic crisis of the 1990s. In other words, what the AI transformation coefficient amplifies is not immediate regime collapse pressure, but the techno-productivity gap between North and South that is not narrowing—and is in fact widening with the bifurcation of cutting-edge technologies—even during the recovery phase, and this erodes the legitimacy base of the authoritarian-self-reliance model in the long term.

Scenario A, Frozen Metastability, is close to the persistence of the current state. This signifies a state where the theory of two hostile states in North Korea persists, US-China strategic competition is entrenched, North Korea-China-Russia linkages are strengthened, and AI arms race intensifies. In this scenario, the two entities remain in a long-term metastable state, deeply embedded in their respective milieus. South Korea's task is to strengthen its regional actorness (diplomatic cohesion, technological and trade hub status, credibility of extended deterrence) and restore or establish alternative crisis management infrastructure (channels for preventing accidental clashes).

Scenario B, Gradual Transduction, occurs when internal changes in North Korea (elite differentiation, generational change, cumulative economic pressure), strategic stabilization between the US and China, fissures in North Korea-China relations or exposure of limitations in North Korea-Russia cooperation, and the vulnerability of trade dependence on China are combined, along with the deepening techno-economic crisis in North Korea due to the AI gap. In this environment, the logic of the security-legitimacy dilemma from the first analysis may be partially reactivated. However, rather than a simple restoration of the 1994–2019 model, it transforms into an approach that pursues non-proliferation while acknowledging the realities currently facing the Korean Peninsula. South Korea utilizes crystallization seeds (confirmation of denuclearization pledges between the US and China, humanitarian cooperation including with the Global South, creating conditions for negotiations on freezing and reducing North Korean nuclear weapons through engagement with China and Russia) as a medium for transduction and plays the role of a convener, bringing the US and China to the same table.

Scenario C, Bifurcated Coexistence, envisions a model where the two entities coexist in different technological universes amidst the bifurcation of US-China supply chains and technologies, and the intensifying competition in AI, semiconductor, and other standards. Here, the concepts of technological philosopher Yuk Hui provide a macro-coordinate. Hui proposes the concept of cosmotechnics, arguing that all technologies are embedded in specific worldviews and ethical frameworks, implying not a single universal but multiple ones. He advocates for technodiversity as resistance against a singular global technology and monoculture, and calls for considering multiple futures through bifurcation, rejecting a unified endpoint. Applied to the Korean Peninsula, this means the liberal-technological network world (South) and the authoritarian-self-reliance-anti-imperialist world (North) bifurcate in a mode of coexistence rather than conflict. Unification is considered one possible pathway that may occur if conditions are met, but the more crucial task is crisis management to prevent the conflict between the two technological worlds from escalating into military confrontation, and ultimately, self-demonstration of the long-term attractiveness and superiority of the liberal-democratic technological world.[6]

Scenario D, Forced Individuation due to External Shock, involves uncontrolled and rapid structural transformation resulting from a North Korean internal political crisis, leadership vacuum, drastic changes in China's or Russia's North Korea policy (especially reduced Russian engagement after the end of the Ukraine war), changes in the AI-based information and surveillance environment, or excessive dependence on China by North Korea in response to AI. The outcome is subsequently determined by the crisis management capabilities of South Korea, the US, and China. South Korea's task is to prepare, even in peacetime, contingency consultation channels among multiple parties, humanitarian and civil affairs operational capabilities, and scenarios for controlling nuclear and missile assets.

Crucially, these four scenarios are not mutually exclusive future states but a distribution of potentials operating simultaneously. Just as Simondon's integral field contains multiple incompatible potentials, the current state of the Korean Peninsula also implies the potentials of the four scenarios simultaneously. While the theory of two hostile states persists (A), seeds of change (B) may accumulate within North Korea. The bifurcation of two technological diversities (C) is already underway, and the contingency of forced individuation (D) is a low-probability but necessary scenario to prepare for. Therefore, South Korea's policy is not about predicting a single "best" scenario, but about managing all four scenarios simultaneously and driving the transformation toward a bifurcation favorable to South Korea. This evaluation does not point to a single "optimal" scenario; the key insight is that South Korea's policy should not be a deterministic pursuit of a single scenario, but an endeavor to transform the probability of bifurcation among scenarios in its favor.

2.5 Perception of Tension: Dual Readability of Seed Planting

The Korean Peninsula individuation strategy must directly confront an uncomfortable tension. The "crystallization seeds" planted by South Korea can be interpreted by North Korea as a scheme for regime subversion. Engagement in North Korea-China and North Korea-Russia relations, humanitarian cooperation including with the Global South, information inflow, market contact, and lobbying the US and Japan—all of these could be perceived in Pyongyang as attempts to undermine the foundations of the regime's legitimacy. Concealing this tension undermines both the strategy's honesty and its robustness. Therefore, this paper explicitly states this dual readability as a structural characteristic of the strategy.[7]

Here, Simondon's insight offers a form of defensive resource. As emphasized earlier, seeds do not impose a form. The crystallization structure arises from the inherent potentiality of the solution itself, and the seed is merely a trigger point for crystallization in an undetermined direction. The seeds planted by South Korea are not tools to enforce a specific unification form (e.g., absorptive unification), but nuclei that ensure the inherent potentiality of the integral field of the Korean Peninsula—when a shock occurs—leads to structured propagation rather than chaotic collapse. The final form is not something South Korea unilaterally molds or can mold.

This connects to the "dilemma of annihilation" raised by Jeon Jae-seong in his presentation of the theory of incomplete sovereignty. Jeon argues that the security dilemma of a divided nation fundamentally differs from that of a sovereign state. While the security of sovereign states may be threatened, the state itself rarely faces annihilation. However, for divided states with incomplete sovereignty, the security dilemma operates as a dilemma of annihilation, where the state itself could be annihilated. Unification must not be absorptive unification; it is a matter of survival, meaning the completion of sovereignty for one side can imply the annihilation of the other. In the language of individuation, the completion of individuation (single crystallization) in a divided state means the annihilation of one unit. For this reason, the dual readability, where the seeds planted by South Korea are interpreted as a "regime subversion scheme," is not an accidental side effect of the strategy but a condition imposed by the dilemma of annihilation.

It is precisely at this point that South Korea's strategy, while originating from Simondon, shifts its weight toward Hui's concept of bifurcation in decisive moments. Facing the dilemma of annihilation, what should be pursued is not the completion of individuation (single crystallization resulting in the decisive victory of one side), but the maintenance and management of tension as productive metastability, while shaping the probability of bifurcation in South Korea's favor. As Simondon suggests, the hasty completion of individuation means the cessation of all change, process, and creation.[8]From Jeon Jae-seong's framework, this becomes even clearer: in a field where the dilemma of annihilation operates, rushing toward single crystallization will only drive the opponent toward the fear of annihilation, leading to a deeper entrenchment (strengthening of nuclear capabilities, anti-imperialist solidarity). What South Korea should pursue is not hasty single crystallization, but an open metastability that preserves the potential for future individuation while managing the threat of annihilation. This is the only way the seed strategy, which "triggers but does not impose," can be compatible with the dilemma of annihilation.

2.6 Policy Implications: A Combinatorial Synthesis Strategy

The analysis above suggests that South Korea's policy should be designed not as a sum of fragmented responses to individual scenarios, but as a combinatorial synthesis strategy that manages all four scenarios simultaneously. This is because no single scenario will occur in isolation; rather, two or more will operate partially and simultaneously depending on the time and phase. Synthesis consists of the simultaneous operation of the following four layers.

(1) A·D Foundation Layer: Integration of Peacetime Crisis Management, Deterrence, and Contingency Planning.

The crisis management, extended deterrence, and regional hub assets of Scenario A (Frozen Quasi-Stability) operate on the same infrastructure as the contingencies for the uncontrolled transition in Scenario D (Forced Individualization). Peacetime multilateral private contingency consultations serve as Scenario A's crisis prevention channel and Scenario D's post-crisis management asset; the responses of the two scenarios are not separate tracks but two operational modes of a single, permanent infrastructure. In a situation where the direct inter-Korean channel is severed due to the adversarial two-state theory, the core task at this level is to restore minimal mechanisms for preventing accidental conflict and crisis communication through multilateral channels (including informal tracks among South Korea, the US, and China) or alternative routes.

(2) B·C Transformation Layer: The Convergence of Mediating Infrastructure and Self-Attestation

The small stable points of Scenario B (Gradual Transformation) (e.g., humanitarian aid, health, climate, ICBM moratorium, nuclear freeze and reduction) and the cosmotechnical self-attestation in Scenario C (Branching Coexistence) share the same assets, differing only in their time horizons. Informal tracks among South Korea, the US, and China, along with multilateral diplomatic assets, function as seeds of decision-making in Scenario B and as infrastructure for conflict prevention in Scenario C. South Korea's inherent attractiveness within democratic and technological networks serves as a long-term asymmetric asset in Scenario C, but in Scenario B, it translates into external pressure that promotes cumulative internal changes in North Korea. Therefore, the accumulation of cooperation seeds in the low-politics domain and cosmotechnical self-attestation must be integrated and operated within a single transformation layer, rather than being separate tasks. However, this assumes a design that minimizes the potential for these seeds to be interpreted as regime subversion, acknowledging the dual readability mentioned.

(3) Transversal Operation of the AI Technology Axis

The fourth scenario axis (AI Innovation) is not a separate response item but a modification coefficient applied transversally to all four scenarios. In Scenario A, it functions as AI-augmented deterrence and information warfare capabilities; in Scenario B, as a new mediating format for cooperation in humanitarian aid, health, and climate through AI; in Scenario C, as the core content of cosmotechnical superiority; and in Scenario D, as a key technology for tracking nuclear and missile assets and for civil operations during contingencies. South Korea's superiority in AI and semiconductors is an asymmetric asset that cuts across all scenarios and must therefore be integrated as a central resource of the comprehensive strategy, rather than a peripheral element of North Korea policy.

(4) Active Operation Layer of Incomplete Sovereignty

South Korea cannot currently act as a fully sovereign state. However, by actively reversing Jeon Jae-seong's insight from Simondon's perspective, this incompleteness becomes not a weakness but a space for mediation, connection, and transformation within a complex anarchy. South Korea's comprehensive strategy actively operates within this space—leveraging the strategic implications of the Korean Peninsula unit within the US-China relationship, analogous to the incomplete sovereignty of "One China" within the cross-Strait relationship, and integrating multilateral diplomacy and regional intermediary roles such as the ROK-US Alliance, ROK-US-Japan cooperation, ROK-China-Japan networks, ASEAN+3, NATO-IP4, and MIKTA into a process of transduction that modifies the branching probabilities of the four scenarios in South Korea's favor. This paradoxical redefinition of incomplete sovereignty as an asset to be operated, rather than a deficit to be filled, is the ultimate proposition reached at the macro level of the individualization strategy.

These four layers constitute a space where a single comprehensive strategy is operated simultaneously. The foundational layer (1) provides the basis for preventing the militarization of tensions, the transformation layer (2) accumulates seeds of decision and self-attestation, the AI axis (3) provides asymmetric assets that cut across all layers, and the incomplete sovereignty operation layer (4) integrates all of these into regional agency. Instead of predicting which scenario will occur, the core of combinatorial synthesis lies in securing a crystallization direction favorable to South Korea, regardless of which scenario unfolds, by operating the four layers simultaneously.

2.7 Conclusion: From Imposing Form to Creating Conditions

The Korean Peninsula individualization strategy proposes a paradigm shift in South Korea's North Korea policy. Whereas previous strategies involved pushing reality towards a singular, unified form, the individualization strategy involves creating conditions in the field of inter-entity tensions and shaping the branching probabilities in South Korea's favor when shocks occur. This represents a transition from imposing form to creating conditions.

This transition does not mean abandoning denuclearization or unification. Rather, by re-framing them not as deterministic endpoints but as individualization pathways that can emerge when conditions are met, it opens a path for South Korea to maintain active agency even within the new reality of the adversarial two-state theory. Jeon Jae-seong's theory of incomplete sovereignty diagnoses the Korean Peninsula as "a field where an unfinished sovereignty game is underway," Simondon's concept of individualization describes the dynamics (quasi-stability, seeds, transformation) of that field, and Huh Wook's concept of branching provides the macro-coordinates for the era of US-China technological bifurcation. What we cannot control are the timing and form of shocks. However, what we can control is to preemptively sow seeds so that crystallization begins in a direction favorable to South Korea when those shocks arrive. This is the essence of the Korean Peninsula individualization strategy proposed in this policy paper. ■

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[1]The relational and processual ontology that views political units not as pre-existing entities but as emerging from relationships has been actively discussed in recent international relations theory. However, while existing relational ontologies are generally static and constructivist, the concept of individuation employed in this paper is differentiated by its provision of a language of dynamics—quasi-stability, transformation, and phase transition.

[2]The positioning of individuation as a heuristic framework is a preemptive response to the most common criticism of this strategy: "Is the appropriation of a natural philosophy concept for the social sciences justified?" This paper does not present the concept of individuation as a verifiable causal law; rather, it is used as a tool for re-articulation that opens up policy spaces unseen by existing paradigms.

[3]For Simondon's critique of hylomorphism and substantialism, and the standard formulation of the concepts of trans-individuation and quasi-stability, see Simondon (2005[1958]). The point that he uses crystallization as a paradigm for physical individuation but notes that it does not fully explain physical individuation aligns with the heuristic framework of this paper.

[4]For Simondon, meta-individuation originally deals with psychic and collective individuation (Simondon, L'individuation psychique et collective). However, this paper appropriates it by analogy to describe how actorhood at the state level is constituted within regional networks.

[5]The introduction of AI technology as a transformative variable is a tentative proposal of this essay; the specific mechanisms and measurable indicators in each scenario remain a task for future research.

[6]For Hui's concepts of cosmotechnics and technodiversity, see Hui (2016; 2024). Applying Hui's bifurcation thesis to the Korean Peninsula allows for the strategic centering of asymmetric competitive attraction between the two systems, without presupposing unification as a single endpoint.

[7]Dual readability is a conceptualization of the dilemma that North Korea engagement policies have historically faced: engagement is interpreted by Pyongyang as a threat to the regime, leading to counterproductive outcomes. This paper does not deny this dilemma, which Jeon Jae-sung termed the "dilemma of disappearance," but rather specifies it as a structural condition of the strategy.

[8]The insight that the completion of individuation signifies the cessation of change, process, and generation (and ultimately, death) is one of the core implications of Simondon's theory of individuation, connecting to his discussion that living beings are alive only insofar as they maintain perpetual individuation. This paper appropriates this as a strategic rationale for "being wary of hasty, singular crystallization."

■ Oh Inhwan_Senior Research Fellow, East Asia Institute; Lecturer, Seoul National University.

■ Managed and Edited by: Lee Sangjun_Research Fellow, East Asia Institute

Inquiries: 02 2277 1683 (ext. 211) | leesj@eai.or.kr