It was probably North Korea behind the sinking of the South Korean ship. But we still need to respond with a hand and not a fist.
Cheonan: Retaliate with Diplomacy
read more
South Korea
Allied to Race? The U.S.-Korea Alliance and Arms Race
The Republic of Korea has rapidly increased its defense budget in recent years. Last year’s spending of 26.6 trillion won represents a twofold increase from ten years ago. Now the Ministry of National Defense projects an annual average increase of 7.6 percent to 53.3 trillion won by 2020, another doubling over the next decade. South Korea, notably, raised its defense spending at a higher rate than North Korea at a time when Seoul was taking a more conciliatory policy of engagement. While the Roh Moo-hyun administration increased defense spending ostensibly in response to its policy goal to build a more autonomous military, the U.S.-Korea alliance motivated and shaped South Korea’s military transformation. This article examines the degree to which external threats, domestic interests, and the alliance have affected the South’s military spending and transformation.
Revolution in Japan
Japan has been a one-party oligarchy for a very long time. This may not be a polite thing to say about a democracy and a U.S. ally. But Japan has been ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the last 54 years, except for a few nanoseconds after the Cold War when the ruling party temporarily lost its grip on power. Because of this stifling consensus among a small political elite, “Japanese democracy” has an oxymoronic connotation and Japanese politics has been one of the most boring topics in the world.
Japan-ROK Relations on the Rocks
Japan and South Korea are allies. That means they are constrained from going to war with one another. Despite a long history of conflict — including Japan’s colonization of Korea during the first half of the 20th century — the two countries have had to make nice as part of their anti-communist alliance with the United States. For the better part of the Cold War, the two countries suppressed, or were forced to suppress, their mutual antagonisms.
Playing the Hawk With North Korea
SEOUL – If the Obama administration needed a rogue nation to demonstrate its foreign policy resolve, Central Casting couldn’t have supplied a better candidate than North Korea. The government in Pyongyang routinely promises to unleash destruction of biblical proportions on its enemies. It has pulled out of international agreements, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has sentenced two U.S. journalists to 12 years of hard labor on the charge of violating its borders. And after conducting two nuclear tests, it now declares itself a nuclear power.
Dealing with North Korea’s Tests
North Korea has conducted its second nuclear test. The big question now is whether the world’s response will recognize the unique features of this most recent intensification of the crisis, and so effectively answer Pyongyang’s latest challenge to global nuclear stability and the embryonic disarmament renaissance.
The Obama-Lee Summit: Dangerous Consensus?
The pundits and publics breathed a sigh of relief after the recent summit: President Barack Obama and President Lee Myung-bak get along.
Outsourcing North Korea Policy
The United States has basically thrown up its hands in the current crisis with North Korea. Washington has mounted an aggressive campaign at the UN to further isolate the world’s noisiest nuclear aspirant. But no one thinks that UN actions will have much effort.
Korean Tragedies
Future historians will view the Bush administration’s assertion of unilateral U.S. power and authority as the last gasp of the American empire. The imperial overstretch that historian Paul Kennedy diagnosed near the end of the Cold War is finally hitting us: the banking crisis, the recession, the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ever-increasing Pentagon budget.
The New Korean Cold War
(Editor’s Note: This article will also appear in The Asia-Pacific Journal.)