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North Korea is consistently identified as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. However, the issue of human rights in North Korea is a complex one, intertwined with issues like life in the North Korean police state, inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, access to information in the North, and international cooperation, to name a few. There are likewise multiple actors involved, including the two Korean governments, the United States, the United Nations, South Korea NGOs, and global human rights organizations. While North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the security threat it poses have occupied the center stage and eclipsed other issues in recent years, human rights remain important to U.S. policy. The contributors to The North Korean Conundrum explore how dealing with the issue of human rights is shaped and affected by the political issues with which it is so entwined. Sections discuss the role of the United Nations; how North Koreans’ limited access to information is part of the problem, and how this is changing; the relationship between human rights and denuclearization; and North Korean human rights in comparative perspective.
This book examines the impact of Australian public opinion towards defence and foreign policy from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. For most of this period, the public showed little interest in defence and security policy and possessed limited knowledge about the strategic options available. The principal post-war exception to this pattern is, of course, the Vietnam War, when political divisions over Australia’s support for the U.S.-led action eventually resulted in the withdrawal of troops in 1972. The period since 2001 has seen a fundamental change both in the public’s views of defence and foreign affairs, and in how these issues are debated by political elites. This has c...
Since the end of the Cold War, South Korea has taken on a greater role in global affairs. Ramon Pacheco Pardo provides a groundbreaking analysis of South Korea’s foreign policy from its transition to democracy in the late 1980s through the present day, arguing that the country’s approach to the world constitutes a grand strategy. This book examines the key factors and goals that shape South Korea’s long-term strategy, with analysis that brings together its diplomatic, military, economic, and soft-power components. Pacheco Pardo shows that South Korea’s fundamental aim has been to move beyond its past as a “shrimp among whales” and instead attain autonomy and freedom of action. He...
Moral Authoritarianism offers a new perspective on the three modern Korean states—the Japanese colonial state, South Korea, and North Korea—by studying neighborhood associations during the four war decades (1930s–1960s). The existing historiography perceives the three states in relation to imperialism and to the Cold War, thus emphasizing their differences by political changes. By shifting the focus from national policy to local society, this book instead reveals their deep similarities. Neighborhood associations dated back to the premodern Chosŏn period (1392–1910), when they were used to assist local governance. They faded in significance until the colonial government established ...
Current territorial disputes between the Northeast Asian countries have stimulated a resurgence of bellicose nationalism, and threaten to upset recent efforts to achieve regional cooperation and economic integration in East Asia. Alongside this, debates over pre-1945 Japanese wartime atrocities, aggravated by still unresolved territorial disputes between Japan and its neighbours have triggered diplomatic conflicts in Japanese-South Korean relations, virulent anti-Japanese protests in China, and a dramatic increase of right-wing nationalism in Japan. Many have perceived these phenomena as inevitable corollaries, inasmuch as they regard the Northeast Asian countries as historically homogeneous...
North Korean Review is the first academic journal in North America or Europe to focus exclusively on North Korea. The purpose of NKR is to provide readers with an improved understanding of the country's complexities and the threat it presents to global stability. International and interdisciplinary, NKR is a refereed journal published twice a year. Topics include culture, history, economics, business, religion, politics and international relations, among others.
For decades after World War II, Japan chose to focus on soft power and economic diplomacy alongside a close alliance with the United States, eschewing a potential leadership role in regional and global security. Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since the rise of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan's military capabilities have resurged. In this analysis of Japan's changing military policy, Andrew L. Oros shows how a gradual awakening to new security challenges has culminated in the multifaceted "security renaissance" of the past decade. Despite openness to new approaches, however, three historical legacies—contested memories of the Pacific War and Imperial Japan, postwar anti-mili...
Rights advocacy has become a prominent facet of South Korea's increasingly transnational motion picture output, and today films about political prisoners, undocumented workers, and people with disabilities attract mainstream attention. Movie Minorities offers the first English-language study of Korean cinema's role in helping to galvanize activist social movements across these and other identity-based categories.
For close to sixty years, the United States has maintained alliances with Japan and South Korea that have included a nuclear umbrella, guaranteeing their security as part of a strategy of extended deterrence. Yet questions about the credibility of deterrence commitments have always been an issue, especially when nuclear weapons are concerned. Would the United States truly be willing to use these weapons to defend an ally? In this book, Terence Roehrig provides a detailed and comprehensive look at the nuclear umbrella in northeast Asia in the broader context of deterrence theory and U.S. strategy. He examines the role of the nuclear umbrella in Japanese and South Korean defense planning and s...
This volume explores the emergence, evolution, and politics of North Korean human rights activism and its relevance for international policy.