scholarly journals New approaches to North Korean politics after reunification: The search for a common Korean identity

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginie Grzelczyk

Whilst most of the literature focusing on the Korean peninsula has concentrated on how to achieve unification through confidence-building measures, dialogues, negotiation and diplomacy, little attention has been paid to how a unified Korean identity, a core component of any potential reunification scheme could develop and be sustained. The paper addresses this gap by: (1) defining what national identity is, and how Korean identities have been formed, (2) outlining how both South and North Korea have understood and used the concept of national identity, (3) suggesting possible grounds on which the two Koreas could build a new, common national identity.

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-188
Author(s):  
Gabor Sebo

The article examines the classic Korean folklore fable, 춘향전 (春香傳), Ch’unhyangjŏn (The Fragrance of Spring), The Tale of Ch’unhyang, through the lens of three different successful movie adaptations produced in North and South Korea. Respectively, Yu Wŏn-chun and Yun Ryong-gyu portrayed The Tale of Ch’unhyang (1980) in its modest “Juche realist” North Korean film style, whereas Im Kwŏn-t’aek depicted his work, Ch’unhyang (2000), in a contemporary liberally and daringly revised version, while the romantic portrayal produced in North Korea by the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok, in Love, Love, My Love (1984), is performed from a human-oriented and entertaining perspective filled with musical ingredients and brave images of love. The study aims to demonstrate how the story is diversely interpreted through the two divided film cultures by highlighting differences between collectivism and individualism, noting also that all three interpretations emerge from similar roots of cultural and national identity.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-Sue Lee

North Korea conducted 2nd nuclear test on May 25, 2009. It made a vicious circle and continued military tension on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea regime got a question on the effectiveness of the six party talks and ‘security-economy exchange model’. In addition, the North Korea probably disappointed about the North Korea issue has been excluded from the Obama administration's policy position. So the dialogue or relationship recovery with the United States and North Korea through six-party talks or bilateral talks will be difficult for the time being. This paper examines the EU policy on North Korea. Based on the results, analyzes the EU is likely to act as a balancer on the Korean Peninsula. Through the procedure of deepening and expanding the economic and political unification, the EU utilizes their cooperative policies towards North Korea as an ideal opportunity to realize their internal value and to confirm the commonness within the EU members. The acceleration of the EU's unification, however, began to focus on human rights, and this made their official relationship worse. Yet, the EU is continuously providing food as wells as humanitarian and technological support to North Korea regardless of the ongoing nuclear and human rights issues in North Korea. Also, the number of multinational corporations investing in North Korea for the purpose of preoccupying resources and key industries at an individual nation's level has been increasing. The European Union has unique structure which should follow the way of solving the problem of member states like subsidiary principle. It appears to conflict between normative power of the European Union and strategic interests on member states. This paper examines if the European Union is useful tool to complement Korea-US cooperation in the near future.


Author(s):  
A. Fenenko

During the last twenty years Washington has used the “counter-proliferation strategy” in Korean Peninsula. The Americans demanded that North Korea eliminate its nuclear arsenals and plutonium production facilities under the watchful eye of the “five powers’ commission” or the IAEA. Pyongyang's recent military provocation may now raise the specter of the United States or even South Korea delivering non-nuclear strikes against its nuclear facilities. That would give the USA an opportunity to raise the question of whether certain regimes should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons or even to develop nuclear fuel cycle capacity. The last crises demonstrated that under certain circumstances North Korea could also initiate a military conflict in East Asia.


2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-184
Author(s):  
ShinHyung Seong

Peace matters in various ways in this globalized world, and the Korean Peninsula has been a critical situation in this matter, especially in the current climate. This article delves into Rev. Ik-whan Moon, a leader of the reunification movement, in South Korea in order to deal with the issue of peace. This article examines him in three parts: the enjoyable tenets of his life and social action, the theological meaning of his activism, and the new horizon of social activism through his new vision of the Kingdom of God. Rev. Moon began his social action at 59, but he dedicated his life to society as he wrote many poems, playing a part in the Korean reunification movement. His activism is based on his theology of the oppressed ( min-joong) and the Kingdom of God. Lastly, he created a historical momentum for the Korean reunification movement by visiting North Korea in 1989, in that he opened a new hope that South Korean civilians and North Korean civilians could meet each other. It was a non-obedience movement because no civilians could visit North Korea due to the National Security Law. Rev. Moon's actions towards Korean reunification give us great wisdom for peace in this contemporary violent world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 09 (04) ◽  
pp. 16-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan LI

China had historically considered North Korea as a strategic asset and provided substantial aid to it. After North Korea conducted nuclear test in 2006, China has begun to regard North Korea as a strategic liability and supported UN sanctions against it. This policy, however, is limited by China’s practical concern about peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and its strategic concern about a US policy of containment against China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 293-311
Author(s):  
Sang-Jin Han

This dialogue addresses the global risk that broke out of the North Korean development of nuclear weapons and missiles. It starts from the brutal consequences of the national division for Korea and asks why North Korea has been so preoccupied with nuclear projects as has been found to be the case since the 1990s, and how much and why Kim Jung-un today differs from his father in terms of his future, and where the fundamental limit lies in Moon Jae-In’s as well as Trump’s approaches to Korean denuclearization and peace. The highlight of this dialogue is to explain the intrinsic difficulties for Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un in finding a reasonable solution to their respective demands for denuclearization and regime security, and explore the likely future of the Korean Peninsula from the vantage point of Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy and metamorphosis.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myunghyun Noh

<p>In most seismic studies, we prefer the earthquake catalog that covers a larger region and/or a longer period. We usually combine two or more catalogs to achieve this goal. When combining catalogs, however, care must be taken because their completeness is not identical so that unexpected flaws may be caused.</p><p>We tested the effect of combining inhomogeneous catalogs using the catalog of Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). In fact, KMA provides a single catalog containing the earthquakes occurred in and around the whole Korean Peninsula. Like the other seismic networks, however, the configuration of the KMA seismic network is not uniform over its target monitoring region, so is the earthquake detection capability. The network is denser in the land than in the off-shore. Moreover, there are no seismic information available from North Korea. Based on these, we divided the KMA catalog into three sub-catalogs; SL, NL, and AO catalogs. The SL catalog contains the earthquakes occurred in the land of South Korea while the NL catalog contains those in the land of North Korea. The AO catalog contains all earthquakes occurred in the off-shore surrounding the peninsula.</p><p>The completeness of a catalog is expressed in terms of m<sub>c</sub>, the minimum magnitude above which no earthquakes are missing. We used the Chi-square algorithm by Noh (2017) to estimate the m<sub>c</sub>. It turned out, as expected, that the m<sub>c</sub> of the SL is the smallest among the three. Those of NL and AO are comparable. The m<sub>c</sub> of the catalog combining the SL and AO is larger than those of individual catalogs before combining. The m<sub>c</sub> is largest when combining all the three. If one needs more complete catalog, he or she had better divide the catalog into smaller ones based on the spatiotemporal detectability of the seismic network. Or, one may combine several catalogs to cover a larger region or a longer period at the expense of catalog completeness.</p>


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