earticle

영어

This article examines the question of how the emerging security dilemma on the Korean Peninsula can be moderated in order to lower the risk of conflict between North Korea and the US-South Korea alliance as they enter into a long-term nuclear deterrence relationship. To address this, the paper proceeds in the following way. The following section II explains why North Korea is extremely unlikely to denuclearize and thus the security dilemma between North Korea and the US-South Korea alliance is likely to continue and become more acute within the context of a long-term deterrence relationship. Section III discusses a range of possibilities that might be employed to attempt to check the security dilemma and reduce the chance of the intentional or inadvertent breakout of conflict (and reduce the danger of escalation if conflict breakout does occur). Section IV concludes with reflections on how the empirical situation of the Korean Peninsula security dilemma—which is asymmetric, insofar as the US-South Korea alliance is far more powerful than North Korea—might affect its dynamics differently than would be expected in a more orthodox security dilemma featuring a conflict dyad of more symmetric power relations.