In “Good Fences, Good Neighbors,” Song Min-soon, who served as South Korean foreign minister from 2006-2008, offers a deliberately unsentimental reassessment of how South Korea has framed security, peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula.
The book does not seek to revive faith in reconciliation or to refine existing peace processes. Instead, it begins from a blunt diagnosis: North Korea’s denuclearization has moved beyond the realm of feasibility, and policies built on that premise have produced what Song describes as an “unstable form of status quo management.”
Song argues that South Korea has continued to pursue unification and peace strategies premised on denuclearization despite mounting evidence that Pyongyang has no intention of relinquishing its nuclear arsenal. As he writes, if “there exists a path that can broaden stability and peace — and even the road to unification — at lower cost,” then persisting with a failing premise becomes strategically irrational.
Another pillar of Song’s argument is the transformation of the international environment.
The intensifying US-China rivalry, he contends, has sharply narrowed the space for coordinated pressure on North Korea: Washington is unlikely to shoulder the risks associated with a grand bargain involving Beijing, while China has little incentive to trust US intentions or to expend political capital persuading Pyongyang to disarm.
Against this backdrop, Song suggests that South Korea’s effort to seek denuclearization by appealing to great powers has become increasingly detached from their strategic instincts.
From this assessment follows the book’s most controversial proposal concerning South Korea’s own strategic posture.
To maintain what Song calls a “cold peace,” he argues that a credible military balance is essential — including the option for South Korea to become a “nuclear-ready” state. This does not imply immediate nuclear armament, but rather the preservation of technological and institutional capacity for a rapid transition to nuclear weapons should circumstances demand it.
Song frames this not as provocation, but as a means of restoring strategic autonomy in a region already shaped by nuclear realities. By acquiring such latent capability, he suggests, South Korea could reframe the current security dynamic — shifting it away from a China-US-centered confrontation toward a more contained inter-Korean framework, thereby reducing the risk of escalation driven by great-power rivalry.
The book’s strength lies in its consistency. Structured around twelve questions on security and unification, it reads less like a normative manifesto and more as an effort to dismantle assumptions that have long gone unchallenged in Seoul’s policy discourse.
Song writes as a former policymaker, not a theorist or activist, and his arguments reflect the internal logic of statecraft rather than public sentiment. In that sense, his three-decadelong career lends additional weight to the book’s claims.
Born in 1948, Song graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in German language and literature before entering South Korea’s diplomatic service in 1975. He later served as deputy chief delegate to the 1999 Geneva Four-Party Peace Talks involving the two Koreas, the United States and China, and as ambassador to Poland.
He went on to serve Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun as a senior adviser on unification and foreign affairs, before becoming foreign minister. After leaving the cabinet, he served as a lawmaker and as president of the University of North Korean Studies.
Published in October 2025, “Good Fences, Good Neighbors” is neither a call for escalation nor a rejection of diplomacy. It is a warning against policies sustained by hope rather than assessment, and a reminder that peace built on denial can become a strategic liability.
Whether one accepts Song’s conclusions or not, the book succeeds in forcing a reassessment of assumptions that have long structured South Korea’s approach to security and coexistence.
flylikekite@heraldcorp.com
