Pyongyang will press its advantage at Trump summit

Significance Eight months on, there is little progress on the key issues discussed at the Singapore summit: there has been no formal end to the Korean War, and the two sides are yet to agree on what ‘denuclearisation’ means in practice. Impacts As part of a deal in Hanoi, Trump may offer sanctions relief that allows inter-Korean initiatives to proceed. Seoul and Tokyo fear a deal that removes the threat to the United States but leaves Pyongyang’s regional capabilities intact. Serious deterioration of relations between Japan and South Korea strengthens Pyongyang’s position. If inter-Korean initiatives fail, the prospects rise of South Korean conservatives recapturing the legislature in next year's election.

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woo Chang Kang ◽  
Ji Yeon Hong

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the extent to which wartime violence against civilians during the Korean War affects people's current attitudes toward South Korea and other involved countries. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that compares the cohorts born before and after the war, we find that direct exposure to wartime violence induces negative perceptions regarding perpetrator countries. As many of the civilian massacres were committed by the South Korean armed forces, prewar cohorts living in violence-ridden areas during the war demonstrate significantly less pride in South Korea today. In contrast, postwar cohorts from those violent areas, who were exposed to intensive anti-communist campaigns and were incentivized to differentiate themselves from the victims, show significantly greater pride in South Korea, and greater hospitality toward the United States than toward North Korea, compared to prewar cohorts in the same areas and to the same cohorts born in non-violent areas.


2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Stanley

Bargaining models of war suggest that war ends after two sides develop an overlapping bargaining space. Domestic mechanisms—domestic governing coalitions, a state's elite foreign policy decisionmaking group, and their role in ending interstate war—are critical in explaining how, when, and why that bargaining space develops. Through preference, information, and entrapment obstacles, wars can become “stuck” and require a change in expectations to produce a war-terminating bargaining space. A major source of such change is a shift in belligerents' governing coalitions. Events in the United States, China, and the Soviet Union during the Korean War illustrate the dynamics of these obstacles and the need for domestic coalition shifts in overcoming them before the conflict could be brought to an end.


2020 ◽  
pp. 241-262
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Kim

This chapter elaborates a transnational literary critical methodology for approaching South Korean depictions of the Korean War that now circulate in the United States in translated form through an analysis of Hwang Sok-yong’s novel The Guest. This magical realist work recounts a massacre that occurred in late 1950 in which roughly thirty-five thousand residents of Sinch’on, located in what is now North Korea, were slaughtered by their friends and neighbors. This chapter situates The Guest in its domestic context, elaborating its critique of both North and South Korean nationalist narratives that tend to avoid holding Koreans themselves accountable for such atrocities, and its complex engagement with the history of Korean Christianity. Even as it does so, however, the novel also implicates Japanese colonialism and Western Christianity in the violence that erupted in Sinch’on. However, this chapter also argues that this novel in its translated form must also be read within the context of its circulation in the United States, which highlights certain aspects of it: the affinities it suggests between working-class Koreans drawn to Marxism and enslaved Africans and its critique of the bystander role adopted by the US military in relation to atrocities committed by its Korean allies.


Author(s):  
Kyunghee Ma

Large-scale intercountry adoption emerged in a humanitarian crisis following the Korean War. With the growing demand in the United States for, and a steady supply of, adoptable South Korean children, as well as the limited government regulations, it has become permanent practice. Over the years, concerns were raised about unethical adoption practices. To address this issue, limited attempts have been made to promote in-country adoption and include birth mothers' perspectives in reformed adoption policies. However, these efforts have failed to bring about significant changes. The purpose of this article is to examine factors that influence intercountry adoption between the United States and South Korea and to discuss the challenges faced by South Korean birth mothers. Practice implications are also elucidated.


Subject South Korea's international relationships. Significance South Korea’s government is celebrating the success of its response to COVID-19, but the country’s four key foreign relationships all face difficulties -- those with the United States, China, Japan and North Korea. No other countries or regions are vital to Seoul, despite vaunted ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ initiatives. Impacts A prolonged deadlock on funding the US military presence in South Korea could push Seoul closer to Beijing. If President Xi Jinping visits South Korea later this year, Washington could easily misread this. Substantial fence-mending with Japan may have to await new leaderships in both countries. South Korean President Moon Jae-in may have tacitly given up on North Korea, which has visibly given up on him.


2021 ◽  
pp. 63-91
Author(s):  
Jacob Darwin Hamblin

Eisenhower’s initiative provided rhetorical tools to others who pursued political or even personal goals in their own countries. The first major efforts to take “Atoms for Peace” seriously were in East Asia, particularly post-occupation Japan and also South Korea, freshly emerging from the Korean War. In both cases the United States would be confronted with its own empty promises, because these countries explicitly asked for American help to build nuclear reactors to power their economic resurgence. Instead, US officials stalled for time and wavered, unsure how—or if—they should genuinely encourage a peaceful nuclear industry outside the United States and Europe.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-140
Author(s):  
Jun Suk Hyun ◽  
William Stueck

U.S. relations with South Korea had a rocky start during U.S. occupation when American planners rated the peninsula low on the list of U.S. strategic priorities. The psychology of the relationship improved in 1948, when the United States helped create the Republic of Korea (rok), and even more after June 1950, when U.S. military intervention prevented North Korea from conquering South Korea. With the July 1953 armistice in the Korean War, the United States reluctantly agreed to a bilateral alliance that eventually became the centerpiece of American defense strategy there. With concerns ongoing about Chinese expansion and Japanese reliability, staunchly anti-Communist South Korea became the most reliable U.S. strategic partner in East Asia. When Pak Chŏnghŭi emerged as a strong leader in the mid-1960s, the United States came to see the rok as a valuable strategic asset in countering Asian communism. With South Korea’s settlement with Japan and commitment of combat forces to Vietnam in 1965 and U.S. acceptance of a Status-of-Forces Agreement with the rok a year later, the bilateral alliance relationship reached a peak after two decades of challenges.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1905
Author(s):  
Sea Jin Kim ◽  
Woo-Kyun Lee ◽  
Jun Young Ahn ◽  
Wona Lee ◽  
Soo Jeong Lee

Global challenges including overpopulation, climate change, and income inequality have increased, and a demand for sustainability has emerged. Decision-making for sustainable development is multifaceted and interlinked, owing to the diverse interests of different stakeholders and political conflicts. Analysing a situation from all social, political, environmental, and economic perspectives is necessary to achieve balanced growth and facilitate sustainable development. South Korea was among the poorest countries following the Korean War; however, it has developed rapidly since 1955. This growth was not limited to economic development alone, and the chronology of South Korean development may serve as a reference for development in other countries. Here, we explore the compressed growth of South Korea using a narrative approach and time-series, comparative, and spatial analyses. Developmental indicators, along with the modern history of South Korea, are introduced to explain the reasons for compressed growth. The development of the mid-latitude region comprising 46 countries in this study, where nearly half of Earth’s population resides, was compared with that of South Korea; results show that the developmental chronology of South Korea can serve as a reference for national development in this region.


2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shida Rastegari Henneberry ◽  
Seong-huyk Hwang

The first difference version of the restricted source-differentiated almost ideal demand system is used to estimate South Korean meat demand. The results of this study indicate that the United States has the most to gain from an increase in the size of the South Korean imported meat market in terms of its beef exports, while South Korea has the most to gain from this expansion in the pork market. Moreover, the results indicate that the United States has a competitive advantage to Australia in the South Korean beef market. Results of this study have implications for U.S. meat exports in this ever-changing policy environment.


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