Kore as a Clashpoint of Civilizations

How can we overcome the divide in Korea and in East Asia without succumbing to apocalyptic fatalism? Reflections based on a civilization paradigm can perhaps bring sharper focus for this question the divide maps onto the civilizational fault lines imposed on this region. In Huntington`s schema, the Korean peninsula would seem to be stretched across two civilizational fault lines: the Sino-Japanese confrontational fault line and the Western-Sinic civilizational fault line. As Huntington`s geological metaphor implies, like the earth`s tectonic plates, civilizations grind against each other over long durations, gradually increasing the intercivilizational pressures that periodically break into appallingly destructive, fault-line wars. These intercivilizational pressures might be heightened by unilateral actions of great powers aiming to replace the concept of pax International by the concept of Pax Imperium. Although the two Koreas lie separated by these fault lines, perhaps we should alter Huntington`s metaphor and think less in terms of geology and more in terms of engineering. This might be the new geopolitics that South Korean government is thinking about.