North Korean Threat Research Articles

Fire and Fury: North Korean Threats and South Korean Adolescent Health

Fire and Fury: North Korean Threats and South Korean Adolescent Health

Impact of North Korean Threats on Housing Prices in South Korea: A Research Note

Impact of North Korean Threats on Housing Prices in South Korea: A Research Note

Unpacking Conflict Process on the Korean Peninsula with Political and Seasonal Distribution

Under what conditions does a North Korean threat escalate to the actual use of force? To address this question, we delve into the underlying causal mechanism that shapes the entire conflict process on the Korean Peninsula. Dismissing the presumption that repeated disputes are independent of one another and that factors exhibit a monotonic effect across conflict stages, we direct our focus towards the comprehensive conflict process encompassing North Korea's provocation onset and escalation. Our approach involves the systematic collection of monthly data, which we analyze using appropriate statistical models to account for the selection effect. The empirical investigation not only corroborates our theoretical proposition but also uncovers several key factors that exhibit a non‐monotonic effect across various stages of conflict. The results indicate that North Korea's domestic factors and those within South Korea influence the onset of conflict, while the escalation stage is shaped by factors within the United States. Furthermore, our findings highlight the effect of seasonality, indicating an increased frequency of conflict onset and escalation during the summer season.

Interpreting Japan’s Security Interests in the Korean Peninsula

This paper aims to interpret Japan's security interests in the Korean Peninsula using a qualitative research method and realism theory as the conceptual framework. During its empire periods, Japan was known for controlling several areas in Northeast Asia including Korea. Various inhumane treatment was carried out by Japan to the inhabitants of the Korean Peninsula for 35 years (1910-1945). But that treatment stopped after Japan's defeat in World War II in 1945. Korea, which was divided into two at that time, still hated Japan. But that hatred can be overcome by South Korea but not by North Korea. Some of the actions that endanger Japan were finally carried out by North Korea. Given that North Korea had lost the country that helped it, namely the Soviet Union, Pyongyang increased its behaviour that threatened Japan's security, such as using nuclear threats or launching ICBM over Japan’s air territory. Therefore, Japan must implement security policies that can counter North Korea’s threat. Such policies are postwar processing, security, economics, national sovereignty, and the safety of Japanese lives. This paper suggests that Japan must be able to defend itself from North Korean threats. Once safe, Japan can develop its economic interests. Then Japan can live and thrive and at the same time “expand” its leverage to the country that threatens it.

기초자치단체 비상대비조직 개선방안 연구

In the event of a crisis, an emergency preparedness organization that oversees and coordinates emergency preparedness tasks from basic local governments to the central government plays a very important role. However, related laws and regulations are mainly composed of exhibitions, and emergency preparedness personnel often serve as disaster, safety management, and civil defense, and lack of expertise due to the perception that they are non-preferred positions and frequent job transfers. By expanding the scope of emergency preparedness work in peacetime in preparation for diversifying North Korean threats and national crises and emergencies, the effective operation of emergency preparedness organizations should be guaranteed. The person in charge of emergency preparedness of basic local governments should be reorganized, and professionalism should be improved through regular job training. In addition, it is necessary to ensure conditions for integrated crisis management during wartime and peacetime by revising laws and regulations such as the Emergency Preparedness Resource Management Act and the Integrated Defense Act.

Recalibrating South Korea's role and regional network in the Indo‐Pacific: An analysis from a network‐centered approach

AbstractDespite China, Russia, and North Korea's attempts to change the status quo in East Asia, South Korea has remained disconnected from the network of regional countries working together to cope with these revisionists. This article adopts a network‐centered approach to reveal how South Korea's regional network has narrowly focused on the bilateral ROK–US alliance to counter the North Korean threat. Although South Korea has expanded its role from junior partner to balancer and has often forged regional networks to respond to the changing balance of power, South Korea has ultimately utilized this role and network as leverage against North Korea to improve inter‐Korean relations. Now, the Yoon Suk‐yeol administration is attempting to reconfigure both its self‐identified role, describing itself as a “global pivotal state,” and its regional strategy in the Indo‐Pacific beyond the Korean Peninsula to align itself with the United States and other like‐minded countries.

Security Threats and Investment: North Korean Threats and the South Korean Stock Market

Do external security threats shy away from foreign investors? While classical political economy theories focusing on property rights protection posit that security threats undercut financial inflows, recent empirical studies report rather mixed evidence. We add to this body of research by investigating the effect of North Korean military provocation on financial inflows in South Korean stock markets. We contend that (i) foreign investors favor conservative over liberal governments, and (ii) investors have learned over time that North Korean threats lead to electoral gains for the conservative party. Our time series analysis of the monthly Korean stock market data in the post‐liberalization period (2000–2018) reveals that North Korean threats led to increases in capital inflows if these threats were made under liberal governments or in the period before parliamentary elections.

The Implementation of South Korea’s Military Technology Reform in The Perspective of Techno-nationalism

Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) requires fundamental reforms on its 3 main pillars, namely military technology, doctrine, and organizational reform. South Korea is one of the states that has taken steps to initiate the RMA through defense reform policies. South Korea have initiated its own version of RMA by prioritizing the revolution of military technology rather than any other aspects. This article aims to explain why South Korea prioritizes its military modernization through the development of its domestic defense industry. This research applies the concept of military techno-nationalism impulse with a qualitative approach and literature review method to collect data from official documents, websites of the government, journals, and scientific reports. The results of the research indicate that South Korea's choice to prioritize the development of its domestic defense industry is not merely pushed by the urgency to decrease its dependencies toward the United States, but also by the desire to pursue for strategic power to face the North Korean threat as well as other states around the region that full of antagonism atmosphere, to obtain broader economic benefits through the spin-off effect of industrialization, and to gain international prestige as one of the largest arms exporter as well as standing equal with other regional players.

“Decisive Political Means”: International Security Cooperation and the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games

Abstract The International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected Seoul, South Korea, as the host of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1981. Due to the acrimonious history between the two nations, in particular North Korea’s bombing of a South Korean civilian airplane in 1987, fear existed that North Korea might attack the games. In response to the North Korean threat, the IOC, national governments, and national Olympic committees worked together to provide security for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. As relations between the United States and Soviet Union slowly improved, protecting the Olympics factored into arms-control discussions between the two rivals. Simultaneously, despite a long-held aversion to politics interfering with sport, the situation forced the IOC to manipulate political ties to ensure a safe Olympic Games. This system of international security cooperation had a lasting impact on Olympic security.

New North Korean threats

The Lazarus Group – a state-backed hacking operation based in North Korea and also known as Hidden Cobra and Zinc – has evolved new forms of malware, primarily aimed at spying and network intrusion, including a new form of a remote access trojan (RAT) designed to work on Apple Macintosh machines.

Japan – U.S. Relations under the Abe Doctrine: Shifting Policy in East Asia Regional Stability

Reelection of Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister provides a favorable climate for both Donald Trump’s first presidential visit to Japan and an improvement of Chinese-Japanese-U.S. bilateral relations. In the 22 October 2017 ballot, Abe’s dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito, secured a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral legislature. The coalition already holds a supermajority, required for amending the constitution, in the upper house. It justified Abe for calling the national elections a year earlier than needed to secure a public mandate for addressing the growing North Korean threat and to validate popular support for deepening national economic reforms, which have had recent success in boosting Japan’s growth rate and the stock market. Still the outcome gave Abe a mandate for his policies. However, his stewardship was unclear as several other factors contributed to LDP’s overwhelming victory. At the structural level, Japan’s first past the post-electoral system tends to amplify electoral wins in comparison to proportional representation systems. Abe’s foreign and security policies highly charged with ideological revisionism contain the potential to shift Japan onto a new international trajectory in East Asia. Its degree of articulation and energy makes for a doctrine capable of displacing the Yoshida Doctrine that has been Japan’s dominant grand strategy in the post-war period. Abe will remain pragmatic and not challenge the status quo. However, Abe has already begun to introduce radical policies that appear to transform national security, US-Japan alliance ties and relations with China and East Asia. The Abe Doctrine is dynamic but high risk. Abe’s revisionism contains fundamental contradictions that may ultimately limit national effectiveness.

Medical tourism in Korea – recent phenomena, emerging markets, potential threats, and challenge factors: a review

ABSTRACTThe primary aim of this study is to provide comprehensive implications for medical tourism in Korea. Through qualitative review analysis, opportunity factors have been revealed including emerging low-cost carriers in the world and Korea; the widely recognized Korean wave; the increasing market for cosmetic surgery; and potential markets in China and the Middle East. Challenges have been indicated including overcharging by clinics and illegal brokers; the collaboration between Western and Korean medicine; a lack of scientific proof for Korean medicine; Korea's cold winter climate; the North Korean threat; unclear market targeting; and the diverse medical market development in Korea.

Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat by Seung Hyok Lee

Reviewed by: Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat by Seung Hyok Lee Celeste L. Arrington (bio) Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat. By Seung Hyok Lee. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2016. x, 182 pages. $50.00, cloth; $50.00, E-book. Seung Hyok Lee's succinct and readable book, Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat, analyzes the significant consequences of the abductions issue for Japan's foreign and security policy. The issue has been emotionally charged and has trumped many other concerns vis-è-vis North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK) since September 2002, when Kim Jong-il admitted that agents of his government had abducted Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. Lee demonstrates the impact of public furor over this affront to Japanese national sovereignty by addressing a clear and focused puzzle: why was Japan's response to North Korea's 2006 missile launches more robust than it had been to the North's 1998 missile test, which actually overflew the Japanese archipelago? His explanation emphasizes how hardening public attitudes toward North Korea, particularly because of the abductions admission, pushed Tokyo to adopt more assertive policies toward North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK) in 2006 and implement its first unilateral sanctions since World War II. The research design choice to compare the Japanese government's responses to two similarly menacing DPRK missile launches is laudable. Focusing on this comparison enables Lee to limit the number of factors affecting the government's divergent responses. It also results in a neat before-after presentation, which he elaborates over the course of four chronological chapters. Chapter 2 takes the reader up though 2000 and outlines how diverse and diffuse public views on North Korea resulted in limited pressure for robust government response to the 1998 Taepodong-1 launch. The chapter remains brief by ignoring the diverse groups in Japan with an interest in Japan-DPRK relations: the families of ethnic Koreans "repatriated" to the DPRK in the 1960s and 1970s, repatriates' Japanese spouses stuck in North Korea (Nihonjinzuma), and business groups.1 Chapter 3 traces important changes in the context, as the DPRK sent "suspicious ships" (fushinsen) into Japanese waters and the populist Koizumi Jun'ichirō became prime minister in Japan. Chapter 4 documents the explosion of the abductions [End Page 173] issue, which rapidly snuffed out historic achievements enumerated in the Pyongyang Declaration signed during the September 2002 summit meeting of Koizumi and Kim Jong-il. Chapter 5 presents the core argument that societal anger led the Japanese government to impose unilateral sanctions on the DPRK within hours of it launching some seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, on July 5, 2006. Not only had DPRK provocations become more brazen and publicized, Lee argues, but Japanese societal discourse related to North Korea had grown negative, and Japanese government actors embraced and leveraged societal anger (p. 23). The conclusion offers a helpful dissection of the challenges of pursuing a "resolution" of the abductions issue (pp. 122–24). Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat draws on an impressive array of Japanese-language sources, including editorials in the Asahi and Yomiuri newspapers, books, academic articles, articles in several periodicals, and public opinion polls (summarized on pp. 10–12). As Japan's largest newspapers and leading magazines, these sources make sense and offer right- and left-of-center perspectives. It is not clear, however, how Lee uses the editorials and analytic pieces from monthly magazines. At numerous points, the editorials seem to be sources for facts (for example, in discussing the fushinsen on pp. 30–31, Japan-DPRK negotiations on p. 37, and sanctions bills on p. 98). Moreover, since Lee only sometimes directly quotes such media sources (for example, pp. 53–54, 64–65, 104), the reader can do little but trust Lee's interpretations. Questions remain: does his corpus include all editorials (on North Korea, for instance) in the 1998 to 2006 timeframe? If not, how were the editorials selected? Considering the book's brevity, Lee could have analyzed the sources in greater detail and drawn...

How to Interpret the Security Situation in East Asia: Four New Books to Assist Our Understanding - Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy. By Amy Catalinac. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xvii, 248 pp. ISBN: 9781107120495 (cloth, also available in paper and as e-book). - The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security

How to Interpret the Security Situation in East Asia: Four New Books to Assist Our Understanding - Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy. By Amy Catalinac. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xvii, 248 pp. ISBN: 9781107120495 (cloth, also available in paper and as e-book). - The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security

최종 게임 - 미국의 전략적 선택과북한의 위협에 관한 소고

최종 게임 - 미국의 전략적 선택과북한의 위협에 관한 소고

Cold War North Korea and United States naval intelligence

On 23 January 1968, the North Korean Navy attacked and captured the USS Pueblo, a United States naval intelligence collection ship in international waters off the coast of North Korea. The USS Pueblo was one of a group of AGER ships created to provide intelligence from the Sea of Japan during the Cold War. This article discusses the growing hostilities of North Korea during the Cold War and uses recently declassified documents to illustrate the naval intelligence efforts of the United States to monitor the North Korean threat.

Deterring North Korea with Non-Nuclear High-Tech Weapons: Building a “3K+” Strategy and Its Applications

The Republic of Korea (ROK) Ministry of National Defense (MND) should support and guarantee the process of peaceful and diplomatic denuclearization by providing a perfect deterrence posture that can cope with any contingencies, while being especially cautious so as not to ignite political tensions. For that purpose, strengthening the ROK’s own deterrence capability against the North Korean military threat is becoming more and more important. This is especially true because the North Korean ICBM capability, which is assessed to be completed in a short time, is believed to be able to pose the so-called “decoupling situation” on the Peninsula, by an increasing number of people. Although it is not certain the decoupling may really happen even if the North does finally achieve ICBM capability, this is a problem that cannot be ignored, since more and more people are worrying about it. Several non-nuclear high-tech weapon systems and masterful tactics to apply them in the Korean situation raise the possibility of dramatically strengthening the overall deterrence posture against North Korean threat without any additional nuclear measures. From now on, the ROK MND should formulate a new version of the ROK’s own deterrence strategy against the North, the “3K+” which tries to utilize the new possibilities provided by several conventional high-tech weapons, together with the pre-existing 3K systems (Kill Chain, KAMD, and KMPR). The new strategy should be built more systematically to overwhelm any possible North Korean military ambitions in advance, defeating any and all military capabilities that the North is expected to strive for in the future. As Sun Tzu taught, the highest strategy can frustrate the enemy into surrendering, even without a fight.

The NORTH KOREA’S GAUNTLET, INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE NEW SANCTIONS IMPOSED BY THE SECURITY COUNCIL

The Security Council’s reaction to the nuclear tests conducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) in 2016 through Resolutions 2270 and 2321 have significantly changed the picture of UN sanctions regime against this country and created the most comprehensive, legally-binding, sanctions program imposed against a State since Iraq in the 1990s. While raising questions on their lawfulness under international law, the DPRK’s military actions have repeatedly challenged the international community. At the moment of finalising the present article, the situation seems more precarious than ever: despite the severity and comprehensiveness of the sanctions regime, the DPKR’s launches of ballistic missiles hit the headlines again, and its military aggressiveness does not appear reversed. The article examines this regime against the background of the Council’s past practice and the international rules on non-proliferation, also by discussing legal issues related to the different actions by Pyongyang. Ultimately, it seeks to assess the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests vis-à-vis relevant international law and to determine the main limitations of the new set of binding obligations placed upon Member States to thwart the “North Korean threat”. For, in order to succeed, sanctions must be capable of coercing their targets into adjusting the particular course of behaviour that, according to the Security Council, poses a threat to international peace and security, the article concludes that the new sanctions regime is still affected by weaknesses that impair its effectiveness.

A nuclear North Korea and the limitations of US security perspectives

ABSTRACTIf the United States’ main strategic policy priority on the Korean peninsula has been preventing the North Korea from developing a nuclear capability, US policy has failed manifestly. How did we get here? What is it about the ideas that lie behind the creation of US policy towards North Korea that seem to rule out, time and time again, the possibility that casting aside preconditions and engaging in serious attempts at dialogue with North Korea might once more be worth a try, with the stakes so high? In this article, I argue that a social logic of risk led to a very specific construction of the North Korean threat in US foreign policymaking under Obama, which constrained the options policymakers believed to be open to them.

A Dangerous Cat-and-Mouse Game: The North Korean Nuclear Proliferation and the UN Security Council

The Security Council’s reaction to the nuclear tests conducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) on 6 January and 9 September 2016 and its ballistic missile launch of 7 February 2016 through Resolutions 2270 and 2321 have significantly changed the picture of UN sanctions regime against North Korea and created the most comprehensive, legally-binding, sanctions program imposed against a State since Iraq in the 1990s. While raising questions on their international status, the DPRK’s military provocations have repeatedly challenged the international community. At the moment of finalising the present article, the situation seems more precarious than ever: despite the severity and comprehensiveness of the sanctions regime, the DPKR’s launches of ballistic missiles hit the headlines again and its military aggressiveness does not appear reversed. The article examines this regime against the background of the Council’s past practice and the international rules on non-proliferation, also by discussing legal issues related to the different Pyongyang’s provocations. Ultimately, it seeks to assess the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests vis-a-vis relevant international law and to determine the main limitations of the new set of binding obligations placed upon Member States to thwart the ‘North Korean threat’. For, in the final analysis, to succeed sanctions must be capable of coercing their targets into adjusting the particular course of behaviour the Security Council has determined poses a threat to international peace and security, it is submitted that the new sanctions regime is still affected by weaknesses that impair its effectiveness.