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The purpose of this paper is to examine Japan’s relations with North Korea which have been deadlocked for a long time. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a visit to Pyongyang in September 2002 and held a summit meeting with Chairman Kim Jong-Il, and signed the “Japan-DPRK Pyongyang Declaration”. Since then Japan has made a continuous effort to normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea. It is Japan’s desire to put the abduction issue, the nuclear and security issue, and the normalization issue on the same table and solve all these problems in a comprehensive manner. To North Korea, on the other hand, the normalization issue is the top priority, as they demand a full apology and adequate compensation for Japan’s colonial past. Meanwhile, North Korea’s repeated nuclear testing and launching of missiles over the Sea of Japan has dampened the negotiating process. The Six-Party Talks intended to halt North Korea’s nuclear development are coming to a stalemate. Furthermore, U.S. economic sanctions and North Korea’s efforts to retrieve money once frozen in a Macau bank have complicated the whole situation.This paper will, first, examine differences in priorities in foreign policy between Japan and North Korea. Second, the paper will focus on the reasons why the Six-Party Talks are not making the progress expected toward North Korea’s denuclearization. Third, the conflicting interests and differences among the five countries toward North Korea will be analyzed. Finally, different alternatives regarding the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and North Korea will be considered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A second Korean war will inevitably affect the security of the Russian Far East, and for this reason Russia wants peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. What roles will Russia play for Korean peace and security? This is the central question guiding this research. This paper raises the following questions and seeks to answer them: What is Russia willing and able to do in resolving North Korea’s nuclear crisis?: and what are Russia’s attitudes and policy toward Korean peace and unification? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The placement of North Korea on the Axis of Evil and the articulation of the national security strategy of proactive counterproliferation have only served to heighten tensions in Northeast Asia and to further derail diplomatic efforts to dismantle the North Korean nuclear program begun under the U.S.- North Korea Agreed Framework. The Bush administration has asserted that current the North Korean crisis should be handled on a multilateral basis. However, multilateral seems to mean forcing its partners to accede to a harsh and punitive policy toward North Korea rather than genuine multilateral discussions and consultation. This paper intends to examine the how the Bush administration applies its national security policy toward resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis through the analysis of the two rounds of multilateral six-party talks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One interpretation of the North Korean behavior as to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is to view it as a brinkmanship foreign policy. In this paper, we attempt to explain the brinkmanship foreign policy by North Korea using perception-based prospect theory. In particular, we comparatively analyze their cooperative policies during the later Clinton era and confrontational policies during the period of the early George W. Bush administration. Employing the content analysis method, we analyze Nodong Shinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea. Our analyses show that North Korea utilizes a cooperative policy when they perceive that their security situation is improving, while they engage in brinkmanship policy when they perceive that their security is threatened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism becomes a fatal factor to annihilate global security in danger and the U.S. requires strategic responsibili ty and policy as a global leader which takes charge of international security. Especially, national stage of terrorism c an challenge overall U.S. security policy so that it would cause war to eradicate terrorism like the Afghanistan War a nd the Iraq War. After two wars, the U.S. seriously highlights North Korea's military attacks influencing overall regi onal security in Northeast Asia. Even after the U.S. removed North Korea from the terror list, its military attacks have become more aggressive an d tricky. North Korea indignantly declared "Sacred War" based on its nuclear deterrent against military drills of the U.S. and South Korea after the sinking of South Korean warship, Cheonan. North Korea is likely to expose itself to further attacks. I will discuss two ways in this paper to defeat North Korea's military attacks which will be the Obama Administra tion's heavy duty in 2011. One is direct military policy to abolish North Korea's military terrors. The other is tension policy through variable routes. North Korea has shown two cards of military provocations and dialogue gestures. I will find out the fundamental winning policy to terminate North Korea's military attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's post-Cold War security policy has largely revolved around the question of how to respond North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. As a primary response, Japan has participated in the Six-Party Talks, which have aimed at promoting North Korea's denuclearization and building a peace regime on the Korean peninsula. Japan has had the ability to provide North Korea with strong economic incentives to change its policy stance. However, Japan has failed to use the economic card very effectively. In my paper, I will examine factors behind the failure. Then, I will consider what Japan should do in order to play a more positive role in building a peace regime on the Korean peninsula, with a particular attention to the opportunities and constraints resulting from political changes in the United States and South Korea. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After North Korea conducted what appeared to be a sub-kiloton nuclear test in October 2006, some politicians and pundits were quick to point out that China's limited pressure on North Korea, coupled with South Korea's continued support for the North Korean regime, have sustained and emboldened the outlaw regime. Implicit in this view is the assumption that North Korea's neighbors have different, idiosyncratic national priorities vis-a-vis North Korea, making a joint resolution very difficult to achieve. The image of the East Asian countries "nationalizing" the North Korean issue to the detriment of global security, however, misses the extent to which the North Korean challenge has been reshaping the broader regional security landscape in East Asia. Rather than a venue for defusing the nuclear crisis, the Six Party Talks have become a site of competing logics between the U.S. framing of the North Korean question as a clear-cut global challenge and the East Asian view of it as a complex regional problem whose solution would have repercussions for the regional security order in East Asia. This paper investigates how the North Korean challenge, viewed through the lenses of the regional strategies of the three East Asian countries, has affected the existing regional security order, in particular with respect to alliance politics and security regionalism in the wake of the second North Korean nuclear crisis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New situations in the Korean Peninsular call for a substantial change for Japan’s security policy which still has large constraints in defense activities. Strong reaction has emerged in general public against North Korean nuclear program and kidnapping of Japanese citizens. In the age of rapid progress in technologies and of shrinking of time and geographical distance, the Japanese defense policy should be transformed so as to be able to act with less constrains. Furthermore, Japan must change the notion on the military forces. The situation eventually calls for the revision of the Article 9 of the current constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the policy of engagement of North Korea. It mentions that the policy of chairman of the National Defense Commission Kim Jong Il of handling external pressures distinguishes a lack of consistency. It emphasizes that an approach to involve North Korea into the international framework and to save the country from internal collapse due to the expected de-stabilization on the Korea peninsula should be done to meet the goal of the policy of engagement.

Using a comparative approach to South Korea's engagement policy toward North Korea (the so-called Sunshine policy) in relation to changes in South Korea's international environments focusing on U.S. security policies and practices toward the Korean peninsula, this paper aims to examine the ways in which international environments shaped South Korea's state identity, national interests, and the implementation of the Sunshine policy during the Kim Dae-jung administration from 1998 to 2003. In particular, concentrating on the effects that external environments and state identity had on South Korea's national security, the paper will address the question of how the ideas held by South Korea related to the ideas that made up the regional security culture. In doing so, it also illustrates conventional constructivist arguments on state identity and national interests in the context of South Korea, what Rationalism ignores in International Relations (IR).Here, this paper mainly presents four sets of arguments: two analytical and two theoretical. The first analytical argument is that although the South Korean-U.S. collective actions that have addressed the North Korean problem have begun to erode their alliance identity against North Korea and have encouraged latent Korean nationalism embracing North Korea, in South Korea there was a delicate and stable balance between those two seemingly conflicting identities during the Clinton administration. The second analytical argument is that, due largely to a change in international environments that began with the Bush administration in 2001, South Korea's state identity became deeply contested between 1) the alliance security bond with the U.S. and 2) the nationalist bond with North Korea, and this tension with changed external environments made South Korea difficult to neatly define national interests and also made the Sunshine policy seem to be untenable during the Bush administration's first term.The first theoretical argument is that, in conducting substantive empirical research based on constructivism, it needs to focus on not what exactly states' environments (or norms) might regulate and constitute interests and identities of states but how we might explain the political phenomena or events widely identified as evidence of cultural or institutional environments' (or norms') effects. In fact, differentiating constitutive effects from regulative effects of environments (norms) is a vexing (if not, unnecessary) task, because they often generate both effects at the same time. The second theoretical argument is that conventional constructivism can only capture half of state's identity formation, owing to its strong structuralist tilt to focusing solely on 'collective identity' among states in a given social system. It is thus required that, as Alexander Wendt calls, 'corporate identity' black box should be opened to make better sense of the formation and diffusion of South Korea's state identity relating to national security, interests, and the Sunshine policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Korea, the first and only country that has ever withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has been the main target of the U.S.-led global counterproliferation campaign. Numerous scholarly works and policy analyses have been published with the almost sole objective of answering the question of how best to cope with the North Korean nuclear conundrum. Is a policy of engagement or containment more effective? Is a bilateral or a multilateral approach more conducive to yielding a speedy resolution? Implicit in these types of questions is the assumption that the North Korean nuclear challenge would prompt a similar debate on exploring creative solutions in East Asian countries, presumed to be sharing the same sense of urgency in resolving the nuclear crisis. A careful observation at domestic security debates in China, Japan and South Korea in the aftermath of the so-called "second North Korean nuclear crisis" shows a different picture. Far from seeking an effective formula for solving the nuclear impasse, countries in East Asia engage in domestic security debates that go far beyond the immediate issue of resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. Based on a series of interviews of officials and analysts in East Asia and a survey of regional sources, the paper explores the domestic contexts of China, Japan and South Korea in which the North Korean challenge is being contested and intertwined with other regionally salient issues such as the role of the United States as the linchpin of regional stability, alliance management, and regional rivalries. In doing so, the paper aims to demonstrate the process by which the North Korea factor alters the contours of domestic security dynamics with serious implicaitons for regional security dynamics in East Asia. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Korea is often characterized as a totalitarian state ruled by a single absolute ruler. I argue that this ideal type model approached reality in the past, but as North Korean political institutions evolved this conceptual application has grown obsolete. Scholarly inertia accounts for this conventional wisdom more than evidence. This paper documents how the state’s political institutions have changed since the country’s founding and highlights the formal and informal roles of each major bureaucracy today. The Korean Worker’s Party and the role of ideology have declined, and the National Defense Commission and “military-first politics” have not taken its place as reigning supreme as often argued. Kim Jong Il’s government is highly centralized, but it is less centralized than his father’s. North Korean high politics comprises the interaction of the military, party, and cabinet with significant “oversight” by the security apparatus. The limited autonomy of these groups allows them to be defined as interest groups, and their interaction creates a role for discussing pluralist politics in North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s focus on political survival and emergency management over ideology as a guiding force makes today’s North Korean government more pragmatic than in the past. Bureaucratic winners and losers are defined on an issue basis. In short, interest groups politics â€" in conjunction with Kim Jong Il’s central role â€" help explain political outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July, 2006, North Korea conducted long range missile tests, and three months later, detonated a nuclear device. These incidents alerted Japan to the immediate threat of a nuclear capable North Korea. According to the theory of realism, Japan should militarize and obtain nuclear weapons to deter North Korea from continuing its nuclear program. Will Japan become a nuclear state? This paper examines how Japan reacted to the security crisis, and how Japan may act against military threats in the future. To investigate the current domestic debates on Japanese security issues, this study conducted a survey of the fifty-five Japanese Diet members in August, 2006. The survey analyzed diplomatic tools that Japan utilized against North Korea, and explored the future options of Japanese security policy. The survey findings showed that (1) United Nations resolutions and economic/financial sanctions are the most effective diplomatic efforts against a military threat from North Korea; (2) an uncertainty about the close relationship between China and North Korea; (3) conducting active Japanese foreign policy would be possible in some multilateral frameworks; and (4) the establishment of good relationships with other Asian nations is vital for Japanese national interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the amazing speed and scope of rapprochement between South Korea and China, there have been serious debates among academics and policy-makers about the future of South Korea's security options in the region. While South Korea's relationships with the long-time ally the US has been gradually deteriorating, South Korea has been getting closer with China in every aspect. Whether South Korea will remain "anchored" by the current alliance structure with the US or "drift" toward China is yet to be seen. Given the geopolitical location of the Korean Peninsula and the small size and capability of South Korea, the South Korean government is, and continually will be, in inevitable dilemma between the two giants. While many view this conundrum as a question of South Korea's choice between the two major powers in the region, I argue that this zero-sum approach is not only incorrect but also dangerous in the real world when applied. Although South Korea's hope being a more assertive and independent nation about security affaris surrounding them is not likely fulfilled in any time soon, South Korea does have a strategic choice and ability to be involved in these matters not being sided with either one and give benefits to every party. I will focus on the North Korea's nuclear threat and argue that to solve the problem peacefully, South Korea's role is the most vital. I will develop my argument through data gathered in South Korea including interviews with responsible individuals. Hopefully, this paper, which emphasizes the significant role of South Korea, which is located in the global South with limited resources and opportunities, will narrow the gap between North and South not only in policy areas but also in the theory field as well. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical acrimony between Japan and North Korea has been exacerbated in recent years because both nations have relied on policies that include nuclear deterrence, whether real on contrived, to bolster national security. Complicating this problem is that Japan and North Korea have each presented contradictory positions with regard to nuclear deterrence. While North Korea repeatedly has emphasized its desire for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, it has also recently stressed the need to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent force and claimed that it possesses nuclear weapons. Although Japan continues to stress the importance of ridding the world of nuclear weapons and strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime, it has become very complacent with its position under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Tokyo's concerns about a China threat have been overshadowed by its position that North Korea is a volatile state that poses an immediate danger to Japan. Compounding Pyongyang's perception of Washington's hostility directed at North Korea is the growing threat it perceives from the U.S.-Japanese security alliance and the fear that Tokyo has plans to make Japan a nuclear weapons power. In addition to examining these issues, this paper analyzes ways that Japan and North Korea can move toward developing a non-confrontational relationship, especially one that excludes reliance on nuclear deterrence policies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's North Korea policy throughout the postwar period was dictated by its need to maintain its alliance with the United States to secure its own peace. The U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework did not alter Japan's fundamental policy toward North Korea. The current nuclear crisis and the prospect of a nuclear North Korea is forcing Tokyo to review its approach to Pyongyang. Japan supports the six-party talks as a means to solve the nuclear crisis, but it is increasingly aware that the multilateral framework may not be able to produce an outcome acceptable to both North Korea (the source of Japan's security anxiety) and the United States (the most reliable security ally), as well as to the other regional powers. A nuclear North Korea would spell an end to the Pyongyang Declaration, in which Japan and North Korea stated that normalization of their bilateral relations would contribute to the broader regional peace and stability. It would force Japan to reconsider its security policy in a fundamental way, with far reaching implications for Japan's relations with the other neighboring countries. This paper will discuss Japan's current policy toward the North Korean nuclear crisis and the implications of a nuclear North Korea for Japan's relations with the United States and other neighboring countries. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since early 2003, China has been playing an increasingly more pro-active but equally more frustrating role in seeking a resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. Specifically, Beijing has been instrumental in providing the impetus and venue for the trilateral meeting and later, Six-Party Talks. While the multilateral forum offers good opportunity for China and the United States to cooperate on an issue of common interest, it also imposes on China the unenviable task of reconciling apparently irreconcilable positions between Pyongyang and Washington, with the risk of alienating both in the process. The dilemmas and difficulties China faces and hence its balancing act must be placed in the broader contexts of Beijing's interest in a de-nuclearized Korean Peninsula, in particular in that it averts a possible nuclear domino effect in Northeast Asia; China-DPRK relations, not from an ideological perspective but more from one of securing a strategic buffer; and the growing ties between Beijing and Seoul and China's views of the longer term prospects of a unified Korea and the consequences for China's security. This paper seeks to analyze China's declared policies and its diplomacy, with a viewing to uncovering how and to what extent its pro-active diplomacy and occasional reluctance in involvement both advance and reflect its core strategic interests and larger implications for regional security. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nuclear proliferation is one of the most popular topics among policy makers and international relations scholars. In particular, the rogue states like North Korea, Iran, and Syria are in the core of concerns all around the world. Moammar Kadafi gave u ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Korea has the potential to shake Northeast Asian security realities. But in the end, the cost of bringing North Korea to heel exceeds the benefits gained by doing so. Despite the dangers an operationally nuclear North Korea presents the region, it ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Though the security situation is improving in the Middle East, the US will not easily withdraw its troops. Meanwhile, security environment has rather deteriorated in East Asia. In view of the growing instability in Asia, Japan has revised Defense Policy Outline last December and it has been strengthening the alliance with the U.S.A as the recent DPRI shows. Furthermore, emergence of North Korea as a nuclear power, liquid political state in South Korea and deteriorating relationships with China are stimulating the Japanese public sentiment toward a more security conscious direction. In 1980, the so-called Ohira report asserted that Japan should not be involved too much into the affaires in the Asian Continent. Japan should, the author argues, take more care of geopolitical identities. Actually Japan has developed as a nation of the Rim Pacific Ocean consolidating the alliance with the USA (possibly with Australia). It also has enjoyed prosperous relationship with ASEAN nations and the countries surrounding Indian Ocean as a sea power. Japan should make more use of these assets when it deals with the continental giant. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: The recent security issues of Japan, especially the growing tensions in the East Asia concerning to China and North Korea, have called for a more positive stance for maritime policy. Also the two wars in the Middle East and terrorist/piracy threats in the sea lane request Japan a larger role which cover the Indian Ocean and Malacca Strait and　stimulate the necessity how compile the maritime strategy. It is a strategic choice of Japan?s defense policy to establish the Maritime coalition in Asia among Japan and related nations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]