동북아질서의 변동과 한반도

Abstract

This article examines the inter-relationship between the future of Northeast Asian security order and the prospect of Korean reunification, both of which are at flux. First, while scholars have debated the future of international system in general and the one in Northeast Asia in particular, they have hardly arrived at any consensus or conclusion, leaving its future to wild guesses. Second, Korean peninsula has been and will remain one of the most dangerous flash points mainly due to uncertainty and/or unpredictability of North Korea"s situation and policy. Based on the theoretical literature, this paper envisions four possible future orders in the region and examines their key characteristics: (a) a neo-Cold War bipolar system; (b) a classical balance of power system; (c) a system of concert of great powers; and (d) a multilateral system of cooperative security. Also based on the existing literature on the scenarios of the Korean Peninsula, this article identifies four possible scenarios: (a) abrupt collapse of North Korea and absorption by the South; (b) "muddling-through" and eventual collapse by North Korea, (c) limited reform and opening and eventual collapse by the North, and (d) armed conflict leading to North Korea"s defeat. Then, each scenarios are evaluated in terms of four key features, namely, (a) their timing, (b) likelihood, (c) economic/material cost, and (d) the level of violence involved. Finally, four future systems and four scenarios are cross examined to see (1) how future system will affect unification processes, and (2) how reunification process will affect the future security order in the region. The analysis yields two general observations. First, if the region goes through a systemic change along the line many Realist scholars project, i.e., that of power politics, it will bear generally negative effects so as to decrease the likelihood and increase the cost. An exception is the multilateral system of cooperative security, whose effect on the prospect and process of reunification will be rather positive. Second, it is likely that a catastrophic change in the Peninsula may precede, and precipitate the systemic change in the region in a direction to a more conflictual and confrontational one in the region. A shared recognition among major powers of such a possibility is needed to prevent such a development, and to manage dynamism in the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful way.