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US-North Korean Relations and the Peace System in the Korean Peninsula: A Historical Inquiry

Please find below the abstract and bio for the talk at SOAS on Friday.

Friday, November 27th, 5pm, room G50 (main building)
Prof. Wookhee Shin, Seoul National University / SOAS
US-North Korean Relations and the Peace System in the Korean Peninsula: A Historical Inquiry

Abstract
This seminar will deal with six cases of US-North Korean talks or proposals for talk in 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999 historically, and explore policy implications for the present. Main questions for the analysis are 1) Under what conditions and intentions was contact made? 2) What were the reasons stagnating the negotiations? 3) What was the role of South Korea’s policy towards the United States and North Korea?. Key variables in the analysis include the principle of the party concerned, US forces in South Korea, threat perception, prediction of North Korean regime collapse, unclear problem, and the China factor.

Wookhee Shin
He is a professor of international relations at Seoul National University, Korea, and he is presently a visiting scholar at the Center of Korean Studies, SOAS. Professor Shin got his Ph. D in political science from Yale University, USA in 1992. His main areas of research are international relations theory, foreign policy, and East Asian international relations. His publication includes Dynamics of Patron-Client Relations, “The Political Economy of Security: South Korea in the Cold War System”, and “Alliance in Transition: South Korean-US Security Relations, 1968-1972”.