PSI and the South Korean position

책 소개

The PSI, a new policy initiative to win the war against Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), was announced by President Bush while he toured Europe in May 2003. This idea was presented on May 31, 2003, in Krakow, Poland, as an international cooperative measure to prevent the worldwide proliferation of WMDs including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It was sensed here and there that the PSI was not a mere political offensive but a policy of eliminating WMDs with concrete objectives and a willingness that would be applied. On June 3, 2003, within a week of President Bush’s declaration, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton testified concretizing the concept of the PSI at a House Foreign Relations Committee Hearing. On June 12, eleven countries including the United States held their first secret meeting in Madrid in order to implement the concept of the PSI into the policies of each country. In September 2003, the first exercise of maritime seizure on the high seas was implemented in Australian waters with England, the United States, Japan and Australian navies participating. Thereafter, additional exercises were held in the Mediterranean and Arabian waters. The number of participating states in the PSI is ever growing. The reason why the PSI has become important is North Korea. North Korea has been developing WMDs including nuclear weapons, exporting missiles to the Middle East and earning considerable amounts of foreign currency revenue. These actions fundamentally defy the basic goals of the PSI, the prevention of the expansion of WMDs. Even though the PSI does not specifically designate certain states as targets for application, there is no denial that North Korea is the de facto main target for the PSI considering its basic intentions and goals. The fact that North Korea is at the center of concern regarding the international non-proliferation of WMDs also indicates that the PSI is actually an important initiative that can exert great influence on peace on the Korean peninsula as well as inter-Korean relations. For example, among the essential measures in implementing the PSI there is the ability to interdict on land, sea and air transportation. We can easily imagine a case in which a PSI participant may stop and search a cargo vessel from a North Korean port suspected to have loaded WMDs. During the process, there is always the possibility of an armed clash between military forces of a PSI member country participating in the interdiction operation and a resisting North Korean vessel. Concerns that this might lead to war contributed to the spread of negative perceptions of the PSI in South Korea. The PSI has a series of combative measures that correlate with illegal activities suspected of the North Korean regime including human rights abuses, narcotics trade and counterfeiting. In other words, the PSI’s activities appear to have a correlation with addressing North Korean problems. Despite adverse criticism in terms of international law over the interdiction to stop and search vessels of certain nations on the high seas, the PSI is rapidly becoming an international norm backed up by wholehearted international support mainly due to rapid changes in the international security order. The changes have proceeded in two different dimensions: one is the growing awareness of the proliferation of WMDs, especially nuclear weapons during the post-Cold War era; the other is growing worries over the possibility of terrorism employing WMDs, particularly after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. The fact that the prevention of WMD proliferation is the greatest security issue in the world today along with the fact that North Korea can be found at the center of the problem shows that the PSI intersects both inter-Korean relations and broader international concerns; as such, it has become a critical diplomatic, security and unification issue for South Korea. This fact also points to t…

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