President Yoon Suk-yeol’s August 15 Liberation Day speech unveiling South Korea’s new approach to unification sent a clear message: North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un have no place in a future unified “Republic of Korea.” 

Yoon’s articulation of a free, democratic and prosperous Korea leaves no room for the North’s current political system or leadership, effectively denying Pyongyang any agency in shaping the peninsula’s future.

But while Yoon’s speech offered several new twists to Seoul’s approach to unification, including proposals for a “cutting-edge, on-site education program on