South Korea and its markets have long been exposed to high geopolitical risk, in particular from North Korean nuclear and missile threats. The possibility of a seventh nuclear weapons test and the country’s routine launches of various projectiles have only deepened global concerns about the DPRK’s weapons programs.

But kinetic threats do not tell the whole story about events on the Korean Peninsula. For one, geopolitical tensions eased substantially around the inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korea summitry in 2018 and 2019, showing how the interplay between great powers in the region produces a complex and fluid