2020, Vol.35, No.1

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

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

This study is about the UN Airpower's efforts to support the ground operations and their results during the early stage of the Korean War. In Korea, based on the early attained Air Superiority, the UN Airpower conducted Close Air Support, Air Interdiction and Combat Cargo operations to saved the UN ground forces who were in endangered situation. By doing so, it created a friendly operational environment for the UN ground forces by allowing them to operation without hazard of hostile air attack. On the other hand, The Communist forces, which had superior strength in their numbers, had to operation under severe restrictions enforced by the adversary Airpower. The purpose of this study is to re-evaluate the UN Airpower's roles for the support of the ground forces which is still controversial. For this purpose, it particularly focused on the UN forces' two retreats faced by the Communists' attacks―one by the North Korea's People's Army, and the other by the Chinese People's Liberation Army―conducted during the early part of the war. Based on these examinations, it concludes that, the UN Airpower conducted critical roles in deciding the ground operational situation.

The shift of North Korea’s foreign policy in 2018 was understood as the effectiveness of UN sanctions. This research criticizes the explanation that the change is the result of UN sanctions. Sanction theory generally focused upon its effectiveness but lacks in regarding reaction of the targeted state. The mechanism of interaction between sanction state and targeted state is required to refine theoretical ontology considering responses of targeted state. UN sanction against North Korea has two stages, symbolic and effective one, before and after 2016. UN sanction against North Korea overcome the unilateral, multilateral and third party defects and increased its effectiveness. North Korea, however, reacted against the sanction and utilized the sanction for stabilizing its political regime by completing its nuclear arsenal. North Korea sat on the table with its increased negotiation leverage for the purpose of improving US-North Korea relationship, not just nuclear issues. After all, the sanction itself did not resolve North Korean nuclear problem and North Korea’s nuclear build-up means the failure of sanction. The whole cost of US’s deal has been highly increased After North Korea aggressively reacted against UN sanction.

This paper discusses the concept of Thucydides Trap which signifies structural features of conflict between strong powers, and investigates its implications both in the contemporary Sino-American relations and the past experiences of the 20th century. In particular, it introduces the cases of the Crowe Memorandum for the British-German relations and the Long Telegram of George F. Kennan for the U. S.-Soviet relations as the structural risks in international relations. The paper also reviews the U. S. domestic discussion on the Lippmann Gap between state capability and foreign interventions. The final conclusion focuses on the role of effective statecraft by political leaders of strong states in overcoming structural problems in their foreign policies.