Preventing Refugee Crisis: A Challenge to Human Security

Abstract

This article intends to address human security matters as a major research and policy agenda in South Korea by examining the problems of post-Cold War refugee crises in the Third World. While fully acknowledging the importance of continued works on traditional security issues in Korea, Korean researchers and policy-makers should now become actively involved in addressing human security and other unconventional dimensions of security. To begin with, the analysis of ethnopolitical conflicts within a sovereign state has to be done in order to specify conditions that cause forced migration. A better understanding of the underlying dynamics would enable us to prepare possible responses to prevent refugee-producing conflicts. Secondly, while environmental change often causes forced migration, only those who have left their countries for political reasons qualify for refugee status. As a result North Korean famine victims who fled to China are now trapped by political and legal constraints which were set for the sake of ensuring the security of sovereign states before people’s security. Finally, voices should be raised for redefining security, and expanding the range of traditional state-focused security to include intrastate security and the security of citizens within a state.