North Korea

Is war dead?

Or is it just not the first best option anymore and we'll pretend that further sanctions and favorable trade agreements with South Korea will solve the problem of continuous North Korean belligerence and hostility.

It seemed like the only practical thing to do from a FP perspective was to get China off of DPRK's side. If they start parking tanks and planes on the NORTHERN border to North Korea (the Yaloo River), they'd probably shape up a lot faster than the US or ROK parking tanks by Seoul, which the destruction of which by artillery or even nuclear bomb is really the main reason not to have a war. Unfortunately, given the succession issue within the DPRK and any likely Chinese influence in selecting a successor, there doesn't seem to be a way to separate between the two in the near future.

So you're left with a status quo that is favorable to everyone but the people of North Korea simply because the costs of shifting that status quo involve a dangerous military engagement (that the North would easily lose without Chinese intervention, deemed as far more unlikely than in the 1950s, when it was stated explicitly), followed by an expensive integration program that won't begin to pay for itself for many years as both the North and South would have to be largely rebuilt (and the North, mostly just built at all) and have to integrate and grow their economy from relative positions that are much, much smaller than those of the largely successful German reintegration program of the 90s, and involve flows of refugees that are potentially unwanted (by China or the RoK), and involve the integration of a peninsula on China's border under a traditionally American ally, possibly with some American troops and equipment still stationed in the region (as we, for some reason, still have in Germany).