The increasingly dangerous stand-off on the Korean Peninsula is not an intractable dilemma. Here is a plan that could be accepted both within and outside the peninsula.

Just before his seventieth birthday, Michael Schluter felt an irresistible inner conviction that he should devote the next stage of his life to reconciliation and peace in the Korean Peninsula. Having been involved with setting up many organizations, he knew that the task of “organizing” anything in relation to this was going to be the biggest challenge of his life.

The experience of his previous peace initiatives (South Africa, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Ukraine) told him, of course, nothing about East Asia – and none had been as challenging and complex as the tasks to which he was committing himself to now. The USA, China, Japan, and Russia all have a direct interest.

What he did have going for him was 40 years focused on bridging the ideological gap between capitalism and socialism. Now he has discussed every imaginable aspect of the situation in Korea with politicians, diplomats, and experts from 14 different fields. His interlocutors have hailed from North Korea and South Korea, from the USA, China, Russia, Japan, Mongolia, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. And this is the plan. Thorough, detailed, realistic, and achievable.