The Northeast Asian Security Setting
Author: Sheldon W. Simon
We may now be experiencing one of those relatively rare periods in world affairs when the structure of the international system does not dominate foreign policies. While the old cold war alliances have not completely disappeared from U.S. security policy, their ability to determine reflexively America’s foreign relations on issues from Bosnia in Europe to the Spratly islands in the Pacific has greatly atrophied. For other states, too, domestic
considerations and nearby regional concerns take precedence over alliances with remote great powers whose reliability is problematic in this new era.
(Pages 1-26)
Changing U.S.-Korean Security Relations
Author: Edward E. Olsen
We may now be experiencing one of those relatively rare periods in world affairs when the structure of the international system does not dominate foreign policies. While the old cold war alliances have not completely disappeared from U.S. security policy, their ability to determine reflexively America’s foreign relations on issues from Bosnia in Europe to the Spratly islands in the Pacific has greatly atrophied. For other states, too, domestic considerations and nearby regional concerns take precedence over alliances with remote great powers whose reliability is problematic in this new era. To better understand this unfamiliar international security environment, analysts should concentrate on internally generated alternative national visions of security which, in the aggregate, are creating a new, innovative structure of international politics.
(Pages 27 – 48)
The Viability of U.S. Security Strategy Toward the Korean Peninsula
Authors: William J. Taylor, Jr. and Abraham Kim
The end of the cold war resulted in a mixed bag of challenges in the Northeast Asia region. The Soviet threat is gone, but the danger of regional instability is not. Lingering conflicts, old rivalries, and security challenges pose an uncertain future for the Asia-Pacific. The U.S. military presence still remains an important stabilizer in the region. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Perry stated: “It is [the U.S. military] presence that the countries of the [Asia-Pacific] region consider a critical variable in the East Asia security equation…. [and] the most important factor in guaranteeing stability and peace.”
(Pages 49 – 76)
North Korea and the United Nations
Author: Samuel Soonki Kim
On 17 September 1991, the first day of its (46th) annual session, the United Nations General Assembly admitted the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) as the 160th and 161st member states.1 This historical turnabout was made possible by what had already happened in the Security Council five weeks earlier. Indeed, the 3001st meeting of the Security Council on 8 August 1991 may well be remembered as one of the remarkable events or nonevents in the annals of global high politics in the world organization. Since 1947 the Korean question, in a great variety of contentious manifestations, has proved to be one of the most intractable problems constantly intruding upon wider East-West geopolitical and ideological rivalries in and out of the world organization.
(Pages 77 – 110)
North Korea’s Approaches to the United States and Japan
Author: Byung Chul (B.C.) Koh
North Korea’s approach to the United States is arguably one of the few success stories emanating from Pyongyang. While the story is still unfolding, what has transpired thus far has clearly benefited North Korea in both tangible and intangible ways. By contrast, North Korea’s approach to Japan has produced but meager results thus far. Potentially, however, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) stands to profit immensely should its quest for diplomatic normalization with Japan bear fruit.
(Pages 111 – 130)
Japan’s Policy Toward the Two Koreas in the Post-Cold War Era
Author: Hong Nack Kim
During the cold war era, Japan’s Korea policy was geared to the preservation of the status quo on the Korean peninsula by way of supporting the Republic of Korea (ROK) both politically and economically, while refusing to recognize the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). However, Japan’s foreign policy in general and its Korea policy in particular had to make some significant adjustments in the aftermath of the collapse of the
Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, which ended the cold war in Europe, and a train of rapid developments on and around the Korean peninsula in the post-cold war era.
(Pages 131 – 158)
U.S. Policies Toward the Two Koreas
Author: Larry Niksch
The South Korean government has announced that it would affect a delay in the inauguration of construction of light-water reactors in North Korea (DPRK). Seoul acted in response to North Korea’s submarine-borne infiltration of military personnel into South Korea (ROK) and what appears to be North Korea’s complicity in the assassination of an ROK diplomat in Vladivostok, Russia. The delay probably will be temporary. By the spring of 1997, a formula likely will be found that will allow construction to begin; and implementation of this important part of the October 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework will proceed.
(Pages 159 – 172)
Chinese and U.S. Relations with South Korea
Author: Robert Sutter
There has been considerable discussion in Washington, Beijing and Seoul in recent years about an emerging competition between the United States and China for influence in the Korean peninsula in general and in South
Korea in particular. Some in China have voiced concern over alleged U.S. efforts to hold back and “contain” China’s rising power and influence in East Asia. They have been impressed by the recent “gains” in U.S. influence with North Korea. Indeed, from their perspectives, the North Koreans have moved away from their traditionally antagonistic stance toward the United States to a foreign policy approach that appears to give top priority to reaching an arrangement with Washington that would allow for the continued survival of the North Korean regime, or at least a so-called “soft landing” for the increasingly troubled government.
(Pages 173 – 192)
China’s Post-Cold War Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula
Author: Thomas W. Robinson
The period beginning with the Tiananmen Incident of June 1989 initiated the third period of Chinese foreign policy. The first coincided with the rule of Mao Zedong, 1949-1976, and the second extended, after a brief interregnum, from Deng Xiaoping’s return to power in 1978 to the Beijing disturbances of 1989. While each period naturally exhibited its own special characteristics, all shared a set of three domestic and three international categories of determinants. To understand those of the post-Tiananmen period, one must inspect, for comparative purposes, those of the first two eras as well.
(Pages 193 – 214)
Soviet and Russian Relations with the Two Koreas
Author: Jane Shapiro Zacek
This essay considers Soviet and then Russian relations with North and South Korea since 1988, which was a watershed year for Soviet policy toward northeast Asia. By that time, the Soviet leadership had reassessed basic ideological and security interests as well as the country’s growing domestic economic needs. While the Communist Party was still in power and Mikhail Gorbachev was still General Secretary of the Central
Committee (a position he had assumed upon the death of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985), Marxist-Leninist ideology was playing an ever-decreasing role in Party politics and policymaking.
(Pages 215 – 230)
Unification Policies and Strategies of North and South Korea
Author: Young Whan Kihl
The unification policies of North and South Korea have changed little from the days of the cold war era in both official lines and basic premise. The “new dètente” between the two Koreas, which was to follow from the planned summitry between South Korean President Kim Young Sam and North Korean President Kim Il Sung, was the casualty of the latter’s sudden death in July 1994. Since then, instead of working toward peace, the frigid cold war atmosphere has returned to the Korean peninsula.
(Pages 231 – 244)
