Cooperative denuclearization of North Korea

책 소개

North Korean Nuclear Crisis Military Confrontation between North and South Korea The military forces of the two Koreas confronting each other was the central and pivotal factor that caused the Korean War in 1950 and which has continued subsequent military, political, and psychological hostilities for more than half a century. Although North Korea currently does not enjoy a military edge as much as it did in the 1960s and 1970s and even if South Korea is reluctant to call the North its “main enemy,” the underlining strategic situation has made little change. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) still invest a significant portion of their national wealth on military preparedness. In particular, the North enjoys incomparable advantages in the area of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). North Korea’s asymmetric military capabilities?WMD, delivery means and a special force?pose a significant threat to South Korea. In particular, according to General Bell, Commander of the United Nations’ Command on the Korean peninsula, “the most pressing concern of these threats is North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.” Dismantling weapons of mass destruction and the related capabilities of North Korea is a core precondition for peace and prosperity in Korea and it will be a starting point of a genuine unification process. So far, various efforts to curb North Korean military threat have not been successful. There have been virtually no systematic efforts for that purpose on a regional basis. For example, meetings of CSCAP (Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific) and NEACD (Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue) at the track II level have had years of discussions on how to adopt some modest confidence building measures without tangible agreements. There is no formal channel among the governments in the region to work on negotiating regional arms control measures that could contain the North Korean threat. On a bilateral basis, North and South Korea have held occasional talks on confidence building and arms control, the most flourishing of which was what happened in the early 1990s. In 1991, Seoul and Pyongyang signed the so-called, Basic Agreement, a comprehensive framework to manage the two sides’ relations peacefully. In the military part of the Agreement, the two sides agreed to adhere to the principle of non-aggression and to carry out arms control negotiations. Although North Korean interest in this Agreement has dissipated, South Korea has never lost its aspiration of reviving the Agreement and in particular, the military part. The South’s attempts to do so, however, have been blocked by the North’s reluctance and as a consequence, the Agreement is becoming an antique.

리뷰 남기기

로그인하면 리뷰를 남길 수 있어요.

리뷰 0개