Neutralization: An All-Weather Paradigm for Korean Reunification

Abstract

oday, despite the end of the cold war, the Korean peninsula remains its last T active frontier, and the prospect of reunification is as bleak and uncertain as before. It has been over fifty years since the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union first divided the Korean peninsula into two mutually antagonistic states, each claiming to be the sole legitimate representative of the entire Korean people. The war of 1950-53 between the two Koreas broke out in the midst of national struggle for reunification but ended in stalemate. The war devastated the country and ultimately involved, to varying degrees, four external powers (the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan). National reunification has been a permanent struggle between the two Koreas ever since the division of the country in 1945. Elsewhere, dramatic and profound changes in the domestic and international political scenes are taking place, but the fundamental problems of Korean reunification today remain essentially the same as the ones that divided the country in the first place. In the most general terms, they relate to a single, seemingly insoluble problem: how and by whom (the North or the South) the reunited Korean state should be ruled. So far, the two Koreas have been unable to agree on this issue, and the division of the country continues with mutual hostility and distrust. Another problem is the neighboring powers, all of which have vested security and economic interests in the peninsula, thus complicating the reunification prospect. During the cold war, Korea was hostage to the overarching conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union; today, the conflict is between the United States and China. These external powers are more interested in each other than