South Korean-Soviet Relations: Contemporary Issues and Prospects

Abstract

Relations between South Korea and the Soviet Union improved dramatically in 1990-91 as demonstrated by the three summit meetings of Presidents Roh Tae Woo and Mikhail Gorbachev in less than ten months-San Francisco in June 1990, Moscow in December, and Cheju Island in April 1991. This article examines the evolution of these relations in terms of Moscow's reassessment of its policy toward Asia and North and South Korea, and Seoul's implementation of its Nordpolitik toward China and the Soviet Union. In so doing, it analyzes some contemporary issues of, and prospects for South Korean-Soviet relations. With the end of the Cold War, the USSR's Asia policy is gradually shifting from military to economic interests. As a result, the Soviet Union is regarding South Korea as a test case of its thinking toward Asia in general and Japan in particular. Gorbachev first signaled a willingness to normalize relations with China in his Vladivostok speech in July 1986 and which he reiterated in his Krasnoyarsk speech in September 1988. In a summit with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing in May 1989, he was able to put an end to the long-standing Sino-Soviet dispute and open a new era of reconciliation. Despite the issue of the Northern Territories, Gorbachev also sought to elicit Japan's economic cooperation. To do so, however, he first had to make a breakthrough in Soviet relations with South Korea so that it could serve as an impetus to improving Soviet-Japanese relations. The USSR's policy in Asia aims at two ends: first, to reduce security threats posed by such powers as the U.S., China, and Japan, and second, to integrate the Soviet Far East into the international economic relations of the Pacific. To the former end, Moscow has been scaling down its military deployment in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Mongolia, Siberia, and the West Pa-