고르바초프 정부의 한반도 정책 결정과정: 내부적 이견(異見)과 집단간 경쟁구조 연구

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the policy-making process inside the Goribachev government concerning the Korean peninsula and thus i1luminate how Moscows

policy shift toward the Korean peninsula was made during the period. Most studies on Soviet policy toward the Korean peninsula under Gorbachev have concentrated on the policies themselves. treating the Soviet government as a single-unit policy maker. Such a perspective consequent1y paid little attention to the internal context of the decision-making and left unprobed questions of what policy options were proposed by competing groups. how the particular course was taken up over others by the leadership. who drove the policy change and who opposed, and so on. This study is an effort to fill in the vacuum left by the existing studies.

Conclusively, this study finds, there were competing groups inside the Gorbachev government with differing viewpoints and interests with regard to Moscows Korean policy. Having little detailed knowledge of their own on issues relating to the Korean peninsula at the ear1y period. the top leadership. including Gorbachev, had to rely heavily on policy reports from various institutions. They could be categorized roughly into two groups: one that proposed a fundamental shift away from Moscows traditional Korean policy centered on North Korea toward a de-ideologized one with full rapprochement with the South; and the other in favor of continuation of the traditional line with priority consideration given to the North. To the former belong, most notably, specialists of the academic institutions with progressive and pragmatic orientation. This position was shared by K.G.B. which accumulated negative information on North Korea and a serious doubt on its p이tical reliability as a security partner in Northeast Asia. This pro-changegroup were opposed most insistently by the second group preferring the status-quo in Moscows policy toward two Koreas. The Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry were the two most representative components of this second group. In the pro-changeand pro-status-quo division. the party Central Committee departments relevant to the policy seemed largely divided between the pragmatic and the ideological apparatchiks.

It would be an excessive simplification to argue that the outcome of this

internal competition was the sole factor that. influenced Gorbachevs decision to

take the pro-changepolicy lines toward the Korean peninsula. There certainly

were other dimensions as well such as broader international context, economic

imperatives, and so on. But the main argument here is that the specialists in

academic institutions, among others, played the most critical role inside the Soviet

Union, with aid of the K.G.B. and some Central Committee department officials, in

convincing the top leadership at that time into taking the radical redirection of

Moscows Korean policy.