Kuala Lampur, March 4 -- The Korean Peninsula has entered a new and more rigid phase of division. Whatever illusions lingered from the summitry of 2018 have now evaporated.

The signals emanating from Pyongyang - especially at the recent Party Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea - are unmistakable: North and South Korea are set to remain apart, not merely politically but ideologically and strategically.

The separation is no longer a temporary political disagreement awaiting reconciliation. It is a hardened geopolitical reality.

At the heart of this shift lies the calculus of regime survival. For Pyongyang, the world is not divided between friends and enemies.

It is divided between regimes that survive and regimes that are decapitat...