2013, Vol.28, No.1

The Journal of Northeast Asia Research 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.75

pISSN : 2005-4432
https://journal.kci.go.kr/inas

Conflict and diplomatic competition between North and South Korea targeting the third world of the early 1980s, corresponding to the New Cold War was very serious. North and South Korea had foreign partners throughout the third world, and it was a large part of North and South Koreas’ diplomatic powers. It means that a very large proportion of diplomatic activity took place in the third world. To target the third world, North and South Korea wasted diplomatic resources on slander, with no affect on foreign policy during the Cold War. In the North-South Korea diplomatic confrontation, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to protect the superiority of South Korea, and diplomatic efforts were developed to block the Anti-South Korea maneuvers of North Korea carried out by the International Conference of Non-Aligned Nations and the UN. At that time, by hosting large events, North Korea was trying to exert influence in the leading Non-Aligned Movement. In addition, military weapons exports to countries of the third world, began to expand military diplomacy.

In terms of nationalism in Korea, It is based on Korean people’s emotion and sentiment. In the mean time, we also required complete nationalism as the driving force and foundation for political democracy and economic development in order to build a modernized nation state. In particular, as the modernization process was distorted, delayed and fractured due to foreign pillage and intervention. Korean nationalism added to it the additional characteristics of resistant nationalism and reunification nationalism combined and came to have an even more stable ideological identity. In this 21st century, Korea’s nationalism as the ideological foundation of its international strategies should include political content and reflect Korean nationalism’s features and characteristics in a balanced way. First, Korean nationalism should reflect civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism at the same time and achieve them simultaneously as well. Second, Korean nationalism should reflect and achieve the characteristics of reunification nationalism and resistant nationalism. Therefore, Korea’s international strategies based on nationalism should not be the radical insistence of anti-American autonomy or anti-American reunification but the progressive value of national reconciliation. The equivalent Korean-American relationship should coexist with, be compatible with, and accompanied by the conservative value of North Korean modernization and favorable Korean-American relationship at the same time. This is a very expedient solution to narrowing the gap between policy toward North Korea and policy toward the U.S., stop the vicious cycle of North and South Korean and Korean-American relations, and resolve unnecessary South-South conflict.

The purpose of this research is to seek for an efficient reorganization of government’s resettlement support system for the North Korean defectors residing in South Korea and overseas. The current support system revealed its deficiencies within Korea as well as in foreign soils: domestically, the number of North Korean defectors exceeded 20,000 and issues of North Korean defectors’ re-entrance to North Korea and continuous spy incidents remain unsolved; internationally, 50,000 North Korean defectors’ safety in China as well as problems of illegal refugee applications by North Korean defectors in third countries are on the rise. To resolve both domestic and international matters regarding North Korean defectors, the current support system requires a reorganization in its structure. In this research, I argue for a bicameral system for managing North Korean defector matters: The Ministry of Security and Public Administration (MOSPA) to take charge of domestic matters and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to take charge of international matters. Domestically, the Ministry of Unification (MOU) is to transfer its North Korean resettlement support duty to MOSPA, whereas MOFA is to take charge of international matters regarding the defectors according to its competency. Theoretically and practically, this logic well supports the governmental reorganization plan.