Managing Change On The Korean Peninsula

This report, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, was done by an Independent Task Force on Managing Change on the Korean Peninsula. Noting that the new Republic of Korea government has taken steps to open North Korea to broader contacts with the outside world while asserting that it will brook no military aggression from the North, the Task Force recommends a parallel and supportive approach for U.S. policy.

This Council Special Report ... focuses on how to manage one of the central unknowns: the prospect of a change in North Korea's leadership. The report examines three scenarios: managed succession, in which the top post transitions smoothly; contested succession, in which government officials or factions fight for power after Kim's demise; and failed succession, in which a new government cannot cement its legitimacy, possibly leading to North Korea's collapse.

During the 1990s the Korean economy was regarded as a possible "role model" to be followed by other newly industrializing economies, but the "Asian Crisis" of 1997 destroyed this image. Past practices, challenges and responses are explored in this collection by an international group of authors.

As perennial famine and material shortages call into question the tenability of North Korea's military-authoritarian government, the international community has struggled to reconcile contradictory humanitarian, economic, and political goals in formulating foreign policy and aid responses to the secretive Pyongyang regime. In a historical analysis drawing heavily on primary sources, Lee attacks the problem at its root: the assumption of policy-makers that Pyongyang's belligerence and intractability is an attempt to secure autonomy and national legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Rather, Lee argues, close review of the available evidence demonstrates convincingly that forced reunification with South Korea is the only discernible goal of the Pyongyang government, and that the key strategy of the reunification program is a war of attrition against the U.S. military presence in the South. Lee begins with a summary history, and moves on to examine the formation of the North Korean communist state in the wake of World War II. The implementation of state programs in the 1950s and 1960s follows, including the drive towards industrialization, the emergence of the Juche ideology, and collectivization of agriculture. Remaining chapters focus on the recent history of North Korea, and offer concluding analysis and remarks.

This book analyses four major long-standing and intractable conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region (the Korean Peninsula; the Taiwan Strait; the South China Sea (Spratly Islands); and India-Pakistan), and aims to identify the mechanisms used to manage these conflicts. International Conflict in the Asia-Pacific brings together in one volume four major international conflicts that have shaped the region, and studies how they evolved and how best to manage them. The book seeks to find a pattern common to the four conflicts and their management as well as taking note of variations among them, hereby aiming to establish what might be called the 'Asia-Pacific way of managing intractable conflicts'. This book will of much interest to students of international conflict management, Asian politics, security studies and IR in general. Jacob Bercovitch is Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Widely regarded as one of the most influential scholars in the field of international conflict resolution, he is author of more than 15 books and numerous articles. Mikio Oishi is a Visiting Fellow with the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS), University of Otago and a Research Fellow with Political Science Programme of University of Canterbury.

Explores Korean foreign direct investment, putting forward a theoretical framework to explain why the Korean conglomerates felt compelled to invest in western, central and eastern Europe.