2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Impact of North Korean Socialist System's Retardation of Adaptive Process on the External Policy -With Special Reference to the Nuclear Diplomacy
| Project/Area Number |
16510189
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Area studies
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| Research Institution | Hiroshima City University |
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Principal Investigator |
SUNG CHULL Kim Hiroshima City University, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Associate Professor, 付置研究所, 助教授 (10372872)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2006
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| Keywords | retardation of adaptive process / systemic dissonance / North Korea / nuclear diplomacy / military-first politics / Kim Jong Il |
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| Research Abstract |
North Korea's nuclear diplomacy is a result of systemic dissonance and external dilemmas plaguing a system that was on the verge of opening up in its own way. The internal differentiation has yielded unofficial spheres and resulted in dissonance in the operation of the system as a whole. Given this situation, North Korea made desperate efforts to recover the ever-crippling economy, efforts which were summed up by the adoption of the new economic measures in July 2002 and afterwards. However, with the detour diplomacy (through Japan and South Korea) to approach the United States being abortive, North Korea has engaged in the nuclear game since then.
North Korea's provocative diplomacy, which culminated with the nuclear test on October 9, 2006, aims at negotiations with the United States, the primary enemy. The United States' nuclear presence on the Korean peninsula and its repeated threats of a possible use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War period ignited North Korea's motive to dev
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elop nuclear programs. But a full understanding of North Korea's path to nuclear statehood and the corresponding nuclear diplomacy requires an analysis of the critical junctures in the 1990s: the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the famine in North Korea. In coping with these junctures, national survival became the most urgent matter, and in turn, this situation gave birth to the military-first politics. Owing to the experience of both a war with the United States and the military buildup afterwards, it might be natural for North Korea to underscore the significance of the military while adapting to the harsh situation. The military-first politics now came to contextualize domestic and external policies. North Korea's nuclear weapons development and the nuclear test is a culmination of this outcome.
North Korea's provocative policy is an existential deterrence that originated from its response to repeated losses in the diplomatic game. Psychological analyses of rational choice have shown that such perceived losses compel the actor to settle on a risk-taking choice instead of a risk-averse one. Likewise, the perception of apparent failure in the adaptive process, occurred in the midst of system-wide dissonance, led North Korea to resort to a kind of double-or-nothing policy. At the same time, considering Kim Jong Il's leadership character, that is, his meticulous concern with every aspect of domestic and external policies, it must be true that nuclear game was his policy choice. To analogize a politician's leadership to a computer operator is appropriate in this context. Kim, as an operator of various types of computer programs, was the prime decision-maker. And yet, Kim's decision had to depend on both the hardware and the undetected operations occurring deeper in the background, over which Kim exerted his personal influence to effect a transformation but from which constraints would now surface to impede the availability of immediate choices. Less
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Research Products
(14 results)
