Korean Peninsula 2018: The calm after the storm (original) (raw)
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Whose Olympics: Pyeongchang or Pyongyang? A Roundtable Discussion on North Korea’s Gesture Politics
2019
Editors are delighted to publish the roundtable discussion which was held in timely manner, and believe that the discussion can facilitate further debates about current gesture politics over North Korea issue at the forefront of current political discussion in Asia Pacific region. At the same time, we hope that this working paper can be used as a meaningful primary source for researchers who are dealing with North Korea subject. This working paper consists of three main parts: introduction or speakers, main panel discussion, and Q&A session conversation. In the following script, we used acronyms for each participant as: Niki Alsford (NA), Virginie Grzelczyk (VG), Rod Wye (RW), Ed Griffith (EG), Maria Ryan (MR). Those who provided questions during the Q&A session of the roundtable have provided signed consent forms as their names are revealed in this working paper. VG: I'm Virginie Grzelczyk. I'm a Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at Aston University. I work mostly on Korea actually, on North Korea, especially about the external relationships that North Korea has developed and is developing. NA: So, Maria? MR: I'm Maria Ryan, I work at Nottingham University, and my work is really on US foreign policy but with a specialism on post-Cold War foreign policy and I've written a little bit about US-North Korea relations from the US perspective. EG: You probably all know me, but my name is Ed Griffith and I am the course leader here for Asia and Pacific Studies. My research mainly focuses on Sino-Japanese relations, but I'm obviously interested in East Asian international relations more generally. Nik has asked me to focus on Japan today because we have someone who is far more experienced than I am to talk about the Chinese perspective. NA: Thank you. Now, we have an apology. We had also invited Dr Winnie King, who is in international relations at Bristol University. Unfortunately she was unable to join us this evening. Roundtable Discussion NA: So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to now hand over to each of our panelists, who will have five minutes to talk about the topic, on 'Whose Olympics, Pyeongchang or Pyongyang?' and a roundtable discussion on North Korea's gesture politics. Now, as you know a lot has happened since the Olympics, so much of that is going to be brought into today's discussion. So I want to start our table here, really, with Rod from Chatham House. Rod, your five minutes please. RW: Right, well, I'm not going to really talk about the Olympics. I'm just going to make a few remarks on the Chinese perspective on the Korean problem as I see it. First of all, the Chinese are hugely irritated by this whole Korean problem. They hate the, sort of, idea that the US has, or professes to have, that it's somehow all China's fault, and that if only China would put a bit of pressure on the North Koreans, then the whole thing would go away. The Chinese see it completely differently; they see it as all the Americans' fault-at its most simple, that if only the Americans would talk sensibly to the North Koreans, then this would all go away. But more widely, China has real interests, real long-term interests, on the Korean peninsula. China wants to be the dominant influence in the Korean peninsula. It wants also, in a much wider strategic perspective, to see the influence of the United States reduced in its own periphery, and the North Korean issue, obviously, is a particular
Korean Peninsula Politics in the Context of North Korean Nuclear Disarmament: A Change of Paradigm
North Korea has pursued a nuclear weapons program, assembled and exported ballistic missiles, sponsored terrorist acts, and posed a continuous threat to the US allies and interests, resulting in the stationing of American forces in South Korea and Japan. Events on the Korean Peninsula, including the questions of denuclearization, peace, and reconciliation, have the potential to endanger the interests of the largest powers in the world. How has an isolated and small state repeatedly influenced much more powerful states, shaped international security, and influenced the choices of the United States and other regional powers? Famine, war, refugee and migration crises all threaten the region's stability, making North Korea's neighbors quite nervous about what could happen should that country collapse. The US appeal at the United Nations for "full enforcement" of sanctions against North Korea underscored the difficulty of attaining real progress on
IN-EAST Working Papers, 2022
What are the characteristics of President Moon Jae-in’s policy toward North Korea, and what lessons can be drawn for the future? More than 70 years have passed since the establishment of the two republics in 1948, during which continuous attempts have been made to achieve reconciliation, peace, and prosperity on the Korean peninsula. Even though the Korean War (1950–53) as well as the last authoritarian government in South Korea (until 1987) belong to the ever more distant past, neither, obviously, have the conflicts between the two Koreas ceased, nor has South Korea found a reasonable and effective way of addressing the conundrum. Against this backdrop of more than half a century of contentious inter-Korean relations, the paper examines the foreign policy (efforts) by the Moon administration (2017–2022) toward North Korea in order to shed light on challenges and opportunities for the future regarding the region of East Asia as well as inter-regional policy implications.