While peace between North and South Korea would be welcome indeed, I cannot help but wonder if Putin

[DetlefK]

1. Now you're approaching Putin-derangement syndrome.

China is the far bigger player in NK.

It will be interesting to see how China reacts to the korean peace-talks.

If SK and NK become one country, a few decades from now, SK won't be willing to give up things like free media and free elections. That means, a unified Korea will also have those and will be a natural ally of the US.

That means instead of poor violent troublemaker North-Korea, China will now have a democratic, free Korea on its southern border.
And Russia will also not like that at all, because Korea shares a tiny border with Russia and then Russia would have a US-allied country directly on the border. Avoiding such a scenario is why Russia went to such great lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining the West.