Divided Korea

This book offers a distinctive perspective on peace processes by comparatively analysing two cases which have rarely been studied in tandem, Ireland and Korea. The volume examines and compares Ireland and Korea as two peace/conflict areas. Despite their differences, both places are marked by a number of overlaid states of division: a political border in a geographical unit (an island and a peninsula); an antagonistic relationship within the population of those territories; an international relationship recovering from past asymmetry and colonialism; and divisions within the main groupings over how to address these relationships. Written by academics and practitioners from Europe and East Asia, and guided by the concepts of peacebuilding and reconciliation, the chapters assess peace efforts at all levels, from the elite to grassroot organisations. Topics discussed include: historical parallels; modern debates over the legacy of the past; contemporary constitutional and security issues; civil society peacebuilding in relation to faith, sport, and women’s activism; and the role of economic assistance. The book brings Ireland and Korea into a rich dialogue which highlights the successes and shortcomings of both peace processes This book will be of interest to students of Peace and Conflict Studies, Irish Politics, Korean Politics, and International Relations.

What history, pop culture, and diaspora can teach us about North and South Korea today. Korea is one of the last divided countries in the world. Twins born of the Cold War, one is vilified as an isolated, impoverished, time-warped state with an abysmal human rights record and a reclusive leader who perennially threatens global security with his clandestine nuclear weapons program. The other is lauded as a thriving democratic and capitalist state with the thirteenth largest economy in the world and a model for developing countries to emulate. In The Koreas, Theodore Jun Yoo provides a compelling gateway to understanding the divergent developments of contemporary North and South Korea. In contrast to standard histories, Yoo examines the unique qualities of the Korean diaspora experience, challenging the master narratives of national culture, homogeneity, belongingness, and identity. This book draws from the latest research to present a decidedly demythologized history, with chapters focusing on feature stories that capture the key issues of the day as they affect popular culture and everyday life. The Koreas will be indispensable to any historian, armchair or otherwise, in need of a discerning and reliable guide to the region.

Following its liberation from Japanese colonialism, at the end of WWII, Korea was divided into two separate nations. Because the Korean nation enjoyed a long dynastic history, its postwar partition was particularly traumatic. The ensuing Cold War years spawned the Korean War and subsequent decades of strained inter-Korean relations and tensions in the region surrounding the peninsula. This volume provides readers who are unfamiliar with Korea's heritage insight into how Korea became a divided nation engulfed in international geopolitical tensions, providing expert analysis of this rendered nation's background, modern circumstances, and future prospects. The Korean peninsula in Northeast Asia is home to a country that was divided at the end of the Second World War after its liberation from Japanese colonialism. Because the Korean nation enjoyed a long dynastic history, its postwar partition was particularly traumatic. The ensuing Cold War years soon spawned a very hot Korean War and subsequent decades of strained inter-Korean relations and tensions in the region surrounding the peninsula. This volume provides readers who are unfamiliar with Korea's heritage with insight into how Korea became a divided nation engulfed in international geopolitical tensions, providing expert analysis of this rendered nation's background, modern circumstances, and future prospects. After a survey of Korea's geographic setting and historic legacy, Olsen details the circumstances of Korea's liberation and subsequent division. Drawing on that background, he analyzes the evolution of both South Korea and North Korea as separate states, surveying the politics, economics, and foreign policy of each. What are the key issues for each state from an international perspective? What are the prospects for reuniting the two into one nation? What challenges would a united Korea be likely to face? Olsen determines that stability in Korea is essential to future peace in the region. He concludes that a successful move toward unification is the best way to resolve issues connected to North Korea's nuclear agenda.

This book provides scholars and students examining Korea's place in modern world politics with an invaluable resource for understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the ongoing crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Why is Korea still divided into two nations? How does the decades-old tension between North Korea and South Korea affect all of Asia as well as influence several of the world's major powers, including Japan, the People's Republic of China, Russia, and the United States? This book provides answers to these questions and more, presenting readers with descriptions of historical developments in Korea's past and supplying the necessary context for understanding why the Korean Peninsula remains split at the 38th parallel. Two comprehensive opening chapters present a broad overview of events in Korea's history from ancient times through the start of World War II. The subsequent chapters cover Korea's role in the Cold War, describing the Soviet-American sponsorship of two Koreas, the Korean War, Soviet and Chinese support for North Korea, the U.S. alliance with South Korea, South Korea's long struggle to achieve democracy, the Kim dynasty in North Korea, and moments of tension and cooperation between North and South Korea. Written in a clear, direct, and accessible style, the book will be valuable to high school, undergraduate, and graduate-level students.

In 2002, North Korea precipitated a major international crisis when it revealed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program and announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Earlier in the year, George W. Bush had declared North Korea part of the "axis of evil," and soon afterward his administration listed the country as a potential target of a preemptive nuclear strike. Pyongyang's angry reaction ensured the complete deterioration of relations on the Korean peninsula, where only two years before the leaders of North and South Korea had come together in a historic summit meeting. Few international conflicts are as volatile, protracted, or seemingly insoluble as the one in Korea, where mutual mistrust, hostile Cold War attitudes, and the possibility of a North Korean economic collapse threaten the security of the entire region. For Roland Bleiker, this persistently recurring pattern suggests profound structural problems within and between the two Koreas that have not been acknowledged until now. Expanding the discussion beyond geopolitics and ideology, Bleiker places peninsular tensions in the context of an ongoing struggle over competing forms of Korean identity. Divided Korea examines both domestic and international attitudes toward Korean identity, the legacy of war, and the possibilities for-and anxieties about-unification. Divided Korea challenges the prevailing logic of confrontation and deterrence, embarking on a fundamental reassessment of both the roots of the conflict and the means to achieve a more stable political environment and, ultimately, peace. In order to realize a lasting solution, Bleiker concludes, the two Koreas and the international community must first show a willingness to accept difference and contemplate forgiveness as part of a broader reconciliation process. Roland Bleiker is professor of international relations at the University of Queensland. From 1986 to 1988 he served as chief of office for the Swiss delegation to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in Panmunjom.

In the West, interest about Korea is often limited to its unnatural division and the peculiar regime in the North of the Peninsula. However, its culture is rich, its history a thousand years-old, its land populous, and its economy spectacularly growing. How is it possible that such a country, a key figure in the recent history of Asia would only call to mind advanced technology or nuclear threat? This book is drawn from the personal experiences of the author, who lived in South Korea and experienced it two different times, in 2000 and 2010, and had the possibility of going back in 2017. In all his time there, he tasted all the characteristics, the contradictions, merits and defects of this halved and impenetrable country.

This book discusses the reasons and significance of arbitrary borders, past and present, and the impact on international affairs.

Winner of the 2019 Scott Bill Memorial Prize for Outstanding First Book in Peace History Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide explores the history and tells the story of the emotionally charged meetings that took place among family members who, after having lost all contact for over fifty years on opposite sides of the Korean divide, were temporarily reunited in a series of events beginning in 2000. During an unprecedented period of reconciliation between North and South Korea, those nationally televised reunions would prove to be the largest meetings held theretofore among civilians from the two states since the inter-Korean border was sealed following the end of active hostilities in 1953. Drawing on field research during the reunions as they happened, oral histories with family members who participated, interviews among government officials involved in the events’ negotiation and planning, and observations of breakthrough developments at the turn of the millennium, this book narrates a grounded history of these pivotal events. The book further explores the implications of such intimate family encounters for the larger political and cultural processes of moving from a disposition of enmity to one of recognition and engagement through attempts at achieving sustained reconciliation amid the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.