Answer the following question: Information:  - A sovereign state is, in international law, a nonphysical juridical entity that is represented by one centralised government that has sovereignty over a geographic area. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, one government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood that a sovereign state is neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state.  - The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. It extends southwards for about from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east, and the Yellow Sea (West Sea) to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the first two bodies of water.  - The Korea Strait is a sea passage between Japan and South Korea, connecting the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan in the northwest Pacific Ocean. The strait is split by the Tsushima Island into the western channel and the Tsushima Strait (eastern channel).  - East Asia is the eastern subregion of the Asian continent, which can be defined in either geographical or ethno-cultural terms. Geographically and geopolitically, it includes China, Hong Kong, and Macao; Mongolia and Taiwan; North and South Korea; and Japan; it covers about , or about 28% of the Asian continent, about twice the area of Europe.  - Koreans (alternatively , see names of Korea) are an ethnic group native to the whole Korean Peninsula and southeastern Manchuria. Koreans mainly live in the two Korean nation states, South Korea and North Korea (collectively referred to simply as Korea), but are also an officially recognized minority in China, Japan, Russia, Uzbekistan and a number of other former Soviet Union states. Over the course of the 20th century, significant Korean communities have emerged in Australia, United States, Canada and, to a lesser extent, other nations with primarily immigrant background. As of 2013, there were an estimated 7.4 million ethnic Korean expatriates around the world.  - An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities, such as common ancestral, language, social, cultural or national experiences. Unlike other social groups (wealth, age, hobbies), ethnicity is often an inherited status based on the society in which one lives. In some cases, it can be adopted if a person moves into another society. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, and physical appearance.  - China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia. With a population of over 1.381 billion, it is the world's most populous country. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China, and its capital is Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau), and claims sovereignty over Taiwan. The country's major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia, and has been characterized as a potential superpower.  - There are various names of Korea in use today, derived from ancient kingdoms and dynasties. The modern English name Korea is an exonym derived from the Goryeo period and is used by both North Korea and South Korea in international contexts. In the Korean language, the two Koreas use different terms to refer to the nominally unified nation: Chosn in North Korea, and Hanguk in South Korea.  - Russia (from the  Rus'), also officially known as the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. At , Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 140 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern, about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara.  - Manchuria is a modern name, first created by Japanese, given to a large geographic region in Northeast Asia. Depending on the context, Manchuria can either refer to a region that falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or a larger region divided between China and Russia. The region that falls entirely within modern China is now usually referred to as Northeast China in China, although "Manchuria" is widely used outside of China to denote the geographical and historical region. This region is the traditional homeland of the Xianbei, Khitan, and Jurchen (later called Manchu) peoples, who built several states historically, although no term for "Manchuria" exists in the Manchu language, which originally referred to the area as the "Three Eastern Provinces".  - Hermit kingdom is a term applied to any country , organization or society which willfully walls itself off , either metaphorically or physically , from the rest of the world . The Joseon dynasty of Korea was frequently described as a hermit kingdom during the latter part of the dynasty . The term is still commonplace throughout Korea and is often used by Koreans themselves to describe pre-modern Korea . Today , the term is often applied to North Korea in news media , and in 2009 was used by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton . Other countries , like Bhutan and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen , have also been described as hermit kingdoms due to their government 's reluctance to engage in dialogue with the outside world . The early African civilization of Axum , now known as Ethiopia , was identified by the Europeans as the `` hermit kingdom '' . The first documented use of `` hermit kingdom '' to refer to Korea is in the title of William Elliot Griffis ' 1882 book Corea : The Hermit Nation , well before the division of Korea .  - The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR " ) was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. A union of multiple subnational republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The Soviet Union was a one-party federation, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital.  - South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a sovereign state in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.  - North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK ), is a country in East Asia, in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang is both the nation's capital as well as its largest city. To the north and northwest the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok (known as the Yalu in China) and Tumen rivers. The country is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two.  - A nation state is a type of state that joins the political entity of a state to the cultural entity of a nation, from which it aims to derive its political legitimacy to rule and potentially its status as a sovereign state. A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity, whilst a nation is a cultural and ethnic one. The term "nation state" implies that the two coincide, in that a state has chosen to adopt and endorse a specific cultural group as associated with it.  - Korea is a historical state in East Asia, since 1945 divided into two distinct sovereign states: North Korea (officially the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea") and South Korea (officially the "Republic of Korea"). Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by China to the northwest and Russia to the northeast. It is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the East Sea.  - Japan ("Nippon" or "Nihon" ; formally "" or "Nihon-koku", means "State of Japan") is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, It is lying off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland (east of China, Korea, Russia) and stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and near Taiwan in the southwest.     After reading the paragraphs above, we are interested in knowing the entity with which 'hermit kingdom' exhibits the relationship of 'subclass of'. Find the answer from the choices below.  Choices: - age  - area  - background  - capital  - category  - channel  - city  - coast  - country  - course  - cultural heritage  - english  - ethnic group  - federation  - geographic region  - government  - island  - japanese  - korean  - language  - mythology  - name  - nation  - party  - people  - person  - population  - republic  - russian  - saint  - society  - sovereign state  - state  - status  - strait  - stretching  - subregion  - term  - territory  - water  - western  - yellow
Answer:
sovereign state