South Korea's Foreign Policy and Future Security: Implications of the Nuclear Standoff

Abstract

North Korea's nuclear program. The three-stage agreement will enable North Korea to acquire light-water nuclear reactors (LWRs) and free oil in return for its freezing and dismantling of existing reactors and storage of spent nuclear fuel outside North Korea. Official U.S.-DPRK relations will gradually be established so long as North Korea fulfills its obligations. North Korea has promised to accept full international access to its existing nuclear facilities, presumably including two previously off-limits military waste sites, and be in full compliance with safeguards, upon completion of the LWR project. Whether or not North Korea produced sufficient weapon-grade plutonium to manufacture atomic bombs may then finally be known. North Korea is also supposed to resume direct talks with South Korea, which has largely been bypassed in the course of U.S.-DPRK negotiations. The international impasse over a possible North Korean bomb extended over about a year and a half, amidst rapid alternations of diplomacy and threats. Negotiations to implement the Agreed Framework continue at this writing. This article examines the origins and consequences of the events preceding the agreement for South Korean foreign policy and inter-Korean relations. Even if the U.S.-DPRK accord moves forward - the LWRs are provided, the DPRK is determined to be in full compliance with its safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Pyongyang's nuclear program is judged not to have diverted plutonium to manufacture atomic bombs - the nuclear standoff has taken a toll on South Korea's unification plans and efforts to establish new directions in foreign policy. Still, as this article attempts to show, the outcome of the nuclear standoff may also present opportunities for additional tension-reducing steps