If the United States' main strategic policy priority on the Korean peninsula has been preventing the North Korea from developing a nuclear capability, US policy has failed manifestly. How did we get ...here? What is it about the ideas that lie behind the creation of US policy towards North Korea that seem to rule out, time and time again, the possibility that casting aside preconditions and engaging in serious attempts at dialogue with North Korea might once more be worth a try, with the stakes so high? In this article, I argue that a social logic of risk led to a very specific construction of the North Korean threat in US foreign policymaking under Obama, which constrained the options policymakers believed to be open to them.
North Korean defectors advocating over the cause of North Korean human rights have started to assert themselves on the South Korean political scene. Their activities have attracted controversy in ...South Korea where much of the population holds it as axiomatic that unification is a future reality and subsequently place great faith in inter-Korean dialogue and economic assistance measures to achieve this goal. The activities of North Korean defectors, advocating for a more pro-active stance by Seoul over the issue of North Korean human rights, fly in the face of these widely held beliefs regarding the desirable trajectory of inter-Korean relations. Defector groups, nonetheless, have continued to proliferate. Recent moves by these organizations, to expand their realm of influence beyond advocacy and into activities such as broadcasting and leadership training, indicates the growing confidence of defector organisations. Adapted from the source document.
North Korean defectors advocating over the cause of North Korean human rights have started to assert themselves on the South Korean political scene. Their activities have attracted controversy in ...South Korea where much of the population holds it as axiomatic that unification is a future reality and subsequently place great faith in inter-Korean dialogue and economic assistance measures to achieve this goal. The activities of North Korean defectors, advocating for a more pro-active stance by Seoul over the issue of North Korean human rights, fly in the face of these widely held beliefs regarding the desirable trajectory of inter-Korean relations. Defector groups, nonetheless, have continued to proliferate. Recent moves by these organizations, to expand their realm of influence beyond advocacy and into activities such as broadcasting and leadership training, indicates the growing confidence of defector organisations Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque de Sciences Po
Divided Korea Danielle Chubb
Australian journal of international affairs,
02/2007, Volume:
61, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Divided Korea: Toward a culture of reconciliation, by Roland Bleiker, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005, pp. xix + 179, US$27.95, ISBN 0 8166 4556 6.
The pursuit of justice is at the very core of inter-Korean relations. South Koreans have long understood relations with their northern neighbor to involve far more than a simple security stand-off ...between two warring states. In a very real sense, the political is often the personal in Korea. Debates over inter-Korean relations must be understood in this context: there is a deep sense of responsibility and obligation that permeates the discursive realm, and policy arguments are rarely made in purely pragmatic terms. The goal of unification has for decades existed at the heart of all South Korean debate over how
