the perpetuated hostility in the inter-korean rivalry: a theory of...

The Perpetuated Hostility in the Inter-Korean Rivalry 239

* The first author’s contribution to the paper is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea

(Grant No., 2016S1A3A2924409).

** Chung-Ang University; E-mail: [email protected]

*** Yonsei University; E-mail: [email protected]

KOREA OBSERVER, Vol. 49, No. 2, Summer 2018, pp.239-268

© 2018 by INSTITUTE OF KOREAN STUDIES.

https://doi.org/10.29152/KOIKS.2018.49.2.239

The Perpetuated Hostility in the Inter-Korean Rivalry:

A Theory of Multilevel Veto Players and the Persistence

of South-North Korean Rivalry, 1954-2007*

Chaekwang You**, Kiho Hahn***

The paper begins with the simple questions of why and how South-North Korean

rivalry or inter-Korean rivalry has persisted for decades. To answer these questions,

I develop a theory of multilevel veto players and test the hypotheses drawn from

the theory for the case of the hostile relations between South and North Korea from

1954 to 2007. Central to the theory is that maintenance of the rivalry is the result

of rival leaders’ efforts to maximize either the national interests of their country or

their own personal interest—staying in power—subject both to the external constraint

of great power intervention and to the internal constraint of challenges by hardline

veto groups. By applying this theory to the case of the inter-Korean rivalry from

1954-2007, the paper finds that the leaders of South and North Korea have maintained

their hostile relations over the past five decades because they believe that maintaining

the relations will help them either maximize their nation’s security interest or increase

their chances of remaining in power, subject to the constraints. Specifically, the

constraints have prevented the rival leaders from resolving the issues in dispute on

the battlefield or at a negotiation table, making the inter-Korean rivalry persist across

time. The findings offer a contribution to an enhanced understanding of the maintenance

process in international rivalries, most notably the inter-Korean rivalry.

KeyWords: South Korea, North Korea, the United States, the Soviet Union, China,

rivalry maintenance, security ties, hardline veto players

240 Chaekwang You, Kiho Hahn

I. Puzzle

The South-North Korean rivalry has long been characterized by the most militarized

and contentious relationship in the history of contemporary international rivalries.1 Not

only have the two rivals experienced one of the bloodiest wars in the post-WWII setting,

they also have continued to engage in numerous small wars and low-intensity conflicts

across time. Worse, there is no sign of improved relationship between the two Koreas

in the near future.

Scholars of international politics and Korean politics offer competing explanations

of why the two Koreas have maintained this costly rival relationship for decades.

Focusing on the 1950 Korean War, some argue that the mistrust and animosity generated

by the war are major causes of the rivalry’s endurance and that the rivalry will persist

unless the two Koreas overcome the war’s legacy (Cumings 2005). It also has been

argued that the North Korean leaders’ extremely belligerent attitude, which originates

from their obsession with regime survival, has led to the consolidation of the rivalry

between the two Koreas (Cha 2012; Khil and Kim 2006). Scholars working in the

realist tradition stress that the security dilemma between North Korea and South Korea

(or the US) has led to the North’s hawkish foreign policy, which in turn results in

the South’s realpolitik response, leading to the persistence of the militarized competition

between the two Koreas (Kang 2003; Kim 2011). According to Harrison (1997), the

great power patrons like the US, China, and Russia (previously as the Soviet Union)

also are often considered as contributing to the persistence of the inter-Korean rivalry

(IKR).

Although quite helpful, however, these studies have examined the impact of such

diverse factors as the 1950 Korean War, the North’s paranoia for regime survival, the

security dilemma, and the influence of neighboring great powers on the endurance of

the IKR separately.2 Accordingly, a compelling and comprehensive model of how the

1. The paper’s definition of international rivalries is built upon Klein, Goertz, and Diehl’s (2006) renewed concept

of international rivalries. According to them, an international rivalry refers to a “dyad between the two same

states characterized by: 1) repeated hostile interaction, 2) high levels of militarized disputes over an extended

period of time, and 3) the interrelation of issues in disputes.” For the details of Klein et al.’s reconceptualization

of international rivalry, see James P. Klein, Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl. 2006. “The New Rivalry Dataset:

Procedure and Patterns.” Journal of Peace Research Vol 43 (3) (May): 332-340.

2. The term “inter-Korean rivalry” (IKR) is borrowed from Kim’s historical sketch of the entrenched hostility

between South and North Korea. See Samuel S. Kim. 2011. “The Rivalry Between the Two Koreas.”

in Asian Rivalries, edited by Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson, 145. Stanford: Stanford University

Press.


factors combine to yield the decades-long, costly IKR has yet to be theorized. Moreover,

most studies of the North-South rivalry remain silent about the impact of domestic

political conditions either in the North or in the South on the endurance of the IKR.

Noting this weakness, the paper proposes a novel theory of the maintenance of

the international rivalries. By interweaving the key insights from rational choice

approach and theory of veto players, it develops a “theory of multiple veto players”

for rivalry maintenance and demonstrates the utility of the theory by applying it to

the case of the maintenance of the IKR, 1954-2007.

Central to the theory is that leaders of rivalries must maintain their hostile relations

across time because they believe that maintaining the relations will help them maximize

either the security interests of their countries or their personal interest—remaining in

power—subject to the external constraint of great power patrons’ intervention and to

the internal constraint of challenges from hardline veto players at home. Both constraints,

the theory maintains, prevent the rival leaders from having a motivated interest in

resolving the issues in dispute either on the battlefield or at a negotiation table, making

the rivalries persist across time.

The paper is constructed as follows: the first section provides a detailed review

of existing studies of the endurance of hostile South-North Korean relations, with an

emphasis on both the strengths and weaknesses they have displayed. The second section

presents a novel and comprehensive theoretical framework—a theory of multilevel veto

players —and derives a set of hypotheses from the theory. The third section offers

an in-depth and crucial case study on the maintenance process in the IKR from 1954

to 2007 and presents the empirical results, which largely confirm the hypotheses. The

paper concludes by highlighting both an avenue for future research and policy-relevant

implications.

II. Debate on Durability of the IKR

Scholars of international politics and Korean politics have striven to offer

explanations of why South and North Korea have continued to compete militarily against

each other. Focusing on the initial shock, the 1950 Korean War, Bruce Cumings argues

that the mistrust and animosity created by the war are the major causes of the

maintenance of the IKR. Specifically, he asserts that “the true tragedy is that the War

solved nothing: only the status quo ante was restored, only an armistice held the peace.

Today the tensions and the problems remain” (Cumings 2005, 298). From Cumings’s


standpoint, therefore, the two Koreas’ failure to solve the issues in dispute in the war

is a direct cause of the decades-long persistence of the IKR.

Centering on the extremely belligerent preferences of the North’s top leadership,

Victor Cha (2012) argues that the hostile relations between the two Koreas have persisted

for decades partly because of the leadership’s consistent strategy of regime survival

and partly because of the South and US’s inconsistent, often contradictory engagement

policies, which have widely oscillated between military confrontation and diplomatic

compromise. Thus, Cha predicts that the IKR will persist unless the North experiences

a major change in its totalitarian governance structure and unless the South and its

ally the US abandon a policy of compromising with the North.

Contrary to Cha’s argument, David Kang emphasizes the security dilemma between

North Korea, South Korea, and the United States. Regarding causes of the IKR’s

persistence, therefore, Kang maintains that, given the prevalence of the security dilemma

in the Korean peninsula, the IKR persists for two major reasons: 1) the United States

refuses to give security guarantees to North Korea until it proves it has dismantled

its weapons program, and 2) the North refuses to disarm until it has security guarantees

from the United States. Hence, he claims, stalemate or rivalry maintenance is a natural

outcome (Kang 2003, 43).

Selig S. Harrison pays greater attention to the role of the US in the persistence

of the IKR, claiming that the indefinite continuation of the American military presence

in Korea is at the heart of the persistence of the hostility between South and North

Korea (Harrison 2002, 347). According to him, the US has made the IKR persist for

many decades, resting upon a questionable set of assumptions: 1) US disengagement

would create a power vacuum; 2) China, Japan, and Russia would move into this

vacuum, competing for dominance; and finally, 3) a reunified Korea without US

protection would seek a military alliance with one of its neighbors. Without any

meaningful change in the assumptions, therefore, Harrison claims that the continuation

of the IKR is inevitable.

Samuel Kim’s (2011) study is one of the few in which the theory of international

rivalries is directly applied to an analysis of causes of durability of the IKR. According

to Kim, the IKR is a militarized competition between two divided, incomplete

nation-states, which has long displayed the features of zero-sum and often violent

fratricidal politics of national identity mobilization (Kim 2011, 145). As to the causes

of the maintenance of the rivalry, Kim argues that it has persisted over an extended

period because the two Koreas have constantly failed to end a “legitimacy-cum-identity

war.” He also adds that Korea’s unique place in the geopolitical sphere where four


great powers—the US, China, Russia, and Japan—have competed with one another

to increase their influence, has contributed to the perpetuation of inter-Korean hostility.

Although quite helpful, however, these studies have examined the impact of such

diverse factors as the 1950 Korean War, North Korean leaders’ paranoia for regime

survival, the security dilemma between the two Koreas, the continuation of US military

presence, and irreconcilable identities on the endurance of the IKR separately.

Accordingly, how these diverse factors combine to yield decades-old costly IKR has

yet to be theorized. Moreover, the impact of the two Koreas’ domestic politics on the

maintenance of the IKR has received little attention. Noting these weaknesses, the

following section develops a novel and comprehensive theoretical framework in which

domestic political factors as well as external factors are subtly combined with the rival

leaders’ concern both for national interest and personal interest to explain the persistence

of the IKR.

III. Analytical Framework: A Theory of Multilevel Veto Players

In this section, we present a theoretical framework of the rivalry maintenance, which

can be described as a theory of multilevel veto players, by interweaving the insights

from the theory of rational choice and of veto players. The theory of multilevel veto

players consists of two parts: 1) rational political leaders having multiple goals and

2) multiple levels of veto players, meaning both external and internal veto players.

Above all, the theory posits that rival leaders have two broad goals. First, they

seek to promote the security interests of their country (Huth 1998; Huth and Allee

2001). Second, they seek to maximize their personal interests, primarily staying in power

(BDM 1994). With two such goals in mind, rival leaders try to maximize their interests

subject to both external and internal constraint.

Regarding the constraints rival leaders may encounter, the theory focuses on the

constraints from both external and internal veto players. To identify the veto players,

we draw on George Tsebelis’s theory of veto players. In his pioneering work on veto

player, Tsebelis defines veto players as “partisan actors whose agreement is needed

to alter existing policies” (Tsebelis 2002, 31). Major veto players at the national level

are the executive body (the president and prime minister) and ruling and opposition

parties in the lower and upper houses in a legislative body. According to him, a change

in the status quo of a policy requires a unanimous decision of all veto players. Grounded

in this idea, Tsebelis demonstrates that the probability of making policy changes


decreases as the number of veto players increases and as their preference diverges.

Policy adherence to the status quo thus becomes more likely as the number of veto

players increases and their preferences diverge (Tsebelis 2002, 19-37).

We apply and expand the concept of veto players for the explanation of the

maintenance of international rivalries. Specifically, we make the assertion that there

are two types of veto players—external and internal—that might be involved in the

maintenance process of international rivalries. At the external level, the theory asserts

that great power patrons, which might be involved in rivalries through security ties,

serve as key veto players who will prevent rival leaders from resolving the issues in

dispute on the battlefield. The ties between great powers and the states engaged in

rivalries help rival leaders both develop and consolidate mutually hostile regimes by

facilitating the provision of military and economic aid from the powers to the regimes

(Thompson and Colaresi 2011; Bacheli 2001; Kapur 2005). Such aid, however, often

encourages the leaders in rivalries to have inflated hopes for military success and to

be rushed into military conflicts against each other.

When the leaders are engulfed in military conflicts against each other, however,

the great power patrons, who are often obliged to intervene in the conflicts due to

the security ties, are likely to prevent rival leaders from escalating the conflicts to a

full-scale war. Keenly aware of the prohibitively expensive costs from intervention in

head-to-head military confrontation between rivals, the patrons are likely to press rival

leaders not to escalate the conflicts partly by threatening to use their military force

and partly by hinting at withdrawing military and political support for the rival leaders

(You 2016; Oberdorfer 1997; Bacheli 1991). Knowing that their country’s national

security interests and their personal interest of remaining in power will be significantly

compromised if the patrons’ military action and pressure are set in motion, rival leaders

are likely both to end the conflicts in stalemate and to return to the previous status

quo without achieving their stated military goals. In this way, external veto players—the

great power patrons—will make rivalries persist through the failure of battlefield

solutions

The failure of battlefield solutions often generates the so-called sobering effect, which

may encourage rival leaders to bring the issues under contention to the negotiation

table (Contas 1991, 141).3 Faced with attempted negotiation to end rivalries, however,

3. The “sobering effect” refers to the moment in which two rivals come to realize a real danger of all-out

war after escalating their small-scale military conflict. The effect often leads rival leaders to seek negotiated

solutions rather than military ones. For greater discussion on the effect, see Dimitri Constas, eds. 1991.

The Greek-Turkish Conflict in the 1990s: Domestic and External Influences. New York: St. Martin Press:


various hardline veto players, such as conservative ruling and opposition parties,

militaries, and various antagonistic societal actors, often step in. Armed with hawkish

threat perceptions and preferences, these hardline veto players structure domestic

political conditions such that rival leaders may be prevented from building consensus

on how to resolve the issues under contention at the negotiation table.

Specifically, the theory contends, hardline veto players at home constrain their

leaders from compromising with foreign enemies at the negotiation table in several

ways. First, hardline veto players within government, who might predominate in rivalries

against the backdrop of decades-long hostile relations, make it extremely difficult for

rival leaders to set the negotiated termination of rivalries as the primary policy agenda.

Although the rival leaders may agree to negotiate ways to resolve rivalries, the veto

players may compound the negotiation by narrowing down the range of diplomatic

bargaining. Finally, the veto groups will prevent the leaders from implementing the

measures by hinting at removing the rival leaders from power if they over-cooperate

with foreign rivals (Huth 1998; Hensel 1999; Colaresi 2004). Knowing that further

diplomatic movement may threaten their tenure at home, therefore, the rival leaders

abandon their efforts to resolve disputed issues at the negotiation table, thereby making

rivalries persist through the failure to negotiate solutions.

Taken together, the theory of multilevel veto players postulates that rivalry

maintenance is the result of rival leaders’ efforts to attain two broad goals: 1) promoting

the national security interest of their country and 2) maximizing their personal interests

(staying in power), subject to both external and internal constraints. At the external

level, the great powers having security ties to both parties in a rivalry may prevent

rival leaders from resolving their contentious issues on the battlefield by hinting at

military intervention and at withdrawing military and political support. At the

domestic/internal level, the hardline veto players block the leaders from resolving their

issues at the bargaining table by hinting at political punishment. Knowing these external

and internal constraints might not only undermine the national security of their countries,

but also risk their domestic political survival, rival leaders often delay or discard both

battlefield and negotiated solutions and return to the previous status quo, thereby making

rivalries persist across time. These arguments lead to the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1. External veto players or great power patrons prevent rival leaders

having multiple goals from resolving the issues under contention on

the battlefield, thereby making rivalries persist across time.

134.


Hypothesis 2. Internal veto players, notably hardline veto players, inhibit rival

leaders with the goal of remaining in power from resolving the issues

under contention at the negotiation table, thereby making rivalries

persist across time.

IV. Case Study: The Persistence of the IKR, 1954-2007

To test the hypotheses drawn from this theory of multilevel veto players, I used

the method of hypothesis-testing crucial case study. The method has been utilized widely

by various studies in political science because of its potential strength in testing

theoretically driven hypotheses against a crucial case (Eckstein 1975). A case is crucial

if the facts of that case are central to either the disconfirmation or confirmation of

a theory (Gerring 2007; Levy 2008). Following this logic, the maintenance of the

South-North Korean rivalry, 1954-2007, is treated as a crucial or illustrative case, which

can be used to confirm a new theory—a theory of multilevel veto players.

As previously discussed, existing studies on the IKR have shown little interest in

the identification of a causal mechanism by which the two divided Koreas are forced

to maintain costly and deadly rivalrous relations across time. The legacy of the 1950

Korean War, North Korean leaders’ paranoia for regime survival, the security dilemma

between the two Koreas, the continuation of the American military presence, irreconcilable

identities, and the geopolitical curse have been examined separately as possible causes

of the endurance of the IKR. However, the studies have rarely examined how the

variables are inextricably intertwined to produce the persistence of the IKR.

Therefore, the paper develops a novel and parsimonious theoretical framework called

theory of multilevel veto players, in which the variables such as great power intervention,

challenge of domestic hardline groups, and leaders’ concerns for both national and

personal interests are subtly combined to explain the persistence of international rivalries.

The case study on the maintenance of the IKR, 1954-2007, is conducted to confirm

the theory.

The IKR case substantially confirms the validity of the theory of multilevel veto

players by proving that the causal chains that the theory generates are present. The

framework identifies two causal mechanisms of rivalry maintenance: 1) an international

rivalry is likely to persist if rival leaders having the goal of maximizing both national

interest of their country and their personal interest (staying in power) experience great

power intervention in their military conflicts, and 2) an international rivalry is likely


to persist if the leaders having the goals face challenges from hardline veto players

who oppose a negotiated termination of the rivalry. If these causal mechanisms are

present in the IKR, a theory of multilevel veto players will be confirmed. The results

show that the mechanisms are very clearly manifested in the case of the IKR, 1954-2007,

and that the case substantially confirms the theory.

V. Origin of the IKR

The origin of the IKR cannot be explained without reference to the 1950 Korean

War. While the two Koreas had already shown some inter-communal hostility since

their independence from Japan in 1948, it was only after the Korean War that they

displayed the essential features of an international rivalry. The 1950 Korean War was

one of the bloodiest wars since WWII. Although the figures are uncertain, a widely

accepted estimate of Korean War casualties is that 900,000 Chinese and 520,000 North

Korean soldiers were killed or wounded, as were about 400,000 UN Command troops,

nearly two-thirds of them South Koreans. US casualties included 36,000 dead (Oberdorfer

1997, 9-10). After the 1953 cease-fire agreement that officially ended the years-long

bloody battle on both the South Korean and North Korean sides, the two Koreas fell

into a trap of international rivalry in which the vicious cycle of military confrontation

and fragile peace proceeds indefinitely.

The disastrous outcome of the war played a pivotal role in the rise and consolidation

of South-North Korean rivalry. Above all, the war encouraged the leaders and public

in the two Koreas to develop extremely hostile enemy images of each other and created

the regimes in which they could institutionalize hostility in almost every aspect of the

two Koreas’ societies. Anti-communist regimes in the South such as those of Rhee

Seung-man, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan, for example, systematically

demonized the North’s regime and claimed that the whole legitimacy over the entire

Korean peninsula belongs to only the South (Kim 2011). The situation in the North

was not much different from that in South Korea. Grounded in the battlefield savagery

of the war, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung not only depicted the South as a great

enemy, but also pursued the policy of revolutionizing the South if the situation was

ripe (Cha 2012).

Believing on both sides that its rival’s next military invasion was only a matter

of time, the two rivals rapidly strengthened their militaries and sought to pursue a

policy of mutual denial. Consequently, the two Koreas began to engage in a fierce


arms race, which often resulted in numerous military confrontations just short of war.

At both the military and psychological levels, therefore, the two Koreas began to display

an archetypical feature of an international rivalry—an entrenched hostility.

VI. Security Ties and IKR Maintenance Through Failures

of Battlefield Solutions

The 1950 Korean War structured external security conditions on the Korean peninsula

such that the two Koreas might continue their mutually antagonistic relationships across

time in two major ways. First, it encouraged the leaders of the two Koreas to link

the security fate of their countries to great power patrons to ensure a continued military

confrontation against each other. Through security pacts with the patrons, the two Koreas

were given a chance to improve their military capabilities on both the quantitative and

qualitative dimensions and prompted to be involved in numerous military conflicts in

the belief of a decisive victory. Second, the patrons, notably the US, has stepped into

military conflicts between the two Koreas to avoid the escalation of the conflicts into

a full-fledged war and to prevent them from resolving their disputed issues on the

battlefield, thereby promoting the persistence of the IKR.

A. Security Ties, Restored Power Parity, and Military Conflicts in the IKR

Since the formulation of the security pacts with the two Koreas, great power patrons

have served as key external veto players who exert a strong influence on the maintenance

of the highly contentious relations between them. The United States, which became

a major security patron for South Korea by signing a mutual defense treaty in 1953,

for instance, offered approximately $356 million in aid in 1958, almost three times

South Korea’s total budget of $143 million. The South also relied heavily on the United

States for the acquisition of weapons, equipment, and logistics (Moon and Lee 2009).

In 1970, the US Congress also approved an extra $100 million military aid package

to South Korea with the commitment that the US would continue to help South Korea

modernize its military capabilities (Oberdorfer 1997).

The North also secured military and economic support from China and the Soviet

Union by signing the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship treaty

and the DPRK-Soviet Union Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual

Assistance, both in 1961. It is still quite vague how much military aid China gave


Figure 1. Changes in Two Koreas’ Military Expenditure, 1960-2004

05000

10000

15000

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000year

ROKmilexp DPRKmilexp

† ROKmilexp refers to the levels of South Korea’s military expenditure, while

DPRKmilexp refers to the levels of North Korea’s military expenditure.

†† Both the South and North’s military expenditures are expressed in millions of

current-year US dollars.

††† Source: Correlates of War (COW)’s Military Expenditure Data (v. 5.0)

to the North from 1960 through 1970, but some historical sources show that China

directly transferred fighter jets like MIG-15s, MIG-17s, and Shenyang F-4s, along with

36 submarines to the North and helped it create six fighter regiments and one infantry

division throughout the 1960s (Cassidy 1980). The Soviet Union and China also served

as fraternal countries, which significantly contributed to North Korea’s reconstruction.

According to documents from the USSR Trade Ministry, exactly one-third of

reconstruction aid to the North came from the USSR and 29.4 percent from China

(Armstrong 2005).

Such a profligate flow of military and economic aid from the security patrons to

the two Koreas allowed the leaders on both sides to achieve a near parity in their

military prowess. The two Koreas’ rough military balance, which had persisted for nearly

two and a half decades, began to collapse in the late-1980s. Figure 1 illustrates how

the military balance between the two Koreas has changed across time.

As displayed in Figure 1, the two Koreas had maintained relatively rough military

parity until the late 1980s. During the period of 1960-1988, therefore, the mutual hostility

between the two rivals hit the highest point. The near parity in military capabilities

allowed the two Koreas to engage in a fierce militarized competition over various issues


Year MID Names

1964 DMZ Clashes

1965 DMZ Clashes

1966 DMZ Clashes

1967 DMZ Clashes

1968 A 31-member commando team infiltrated the Blue House.

1969 Six North Korean soldiers infiltrated Huksan and Chumunjin.

1970 Three North Korean infiltrators were shot to death at Kumchon.

1974 North Korean patrol vessels sank two South Korean fishing boats. A first North Korea dig was found.

1975 Two North Korean infiltrators were intercepted at Kochang.

1976 The Tree Trimming Incident occurred.

1978 A third North Korean infiltration tunnel dug under DMX was discovered. A team of three North Korean armed agents killed four South Korean citizens.

1979 Three North Korean agents were intercepted while trying to infiltrate the DMZ.

1980 Three North Koreans tried to infiltrate the South across the estuary of Han River. Three North Korean agents were shot dead off the southern coast of Kyungsang Namdo.

1981 Three North Korean agents were shot to death in the upper stream of Imjin River.

1982 Two North Korean infiltrators were spotted on the east coast.

1983 The North bombed the Martyr's Mausoleum in Rangoon, Myanmar.

1984 A North Korean agent killed two residents of Taegu, South Korea.

1985 A North Korean spy ship was sunk by the South Korean navy off the coast of Pusan.

1986 A bomb blast at Kimpo International Airport in Seoul killed five and wounded over 30.

1987 Two North Korean terrorists bombed a Korean Airline Boeing 707.

1990 The fourth North Korean infiltration tunnel dug under the DMZ was discovered.

1992 Three North Koreans in South Korean uniform were shot dead at Cholwon, Kwangwondo.

1995 A North Korean patrol boat fired on a South Korean fishing vessel, killing three South Korean fishermen.

1996 Twenty-six North Korean military personnel landed on the east coast from the submarine. Twenty-five North Korean infiltrators were shot to death.

1997 Five North Korean soldiers opened fire at South Korean positions after crossing the Military Demarcation Line in the Cholwon sector. Three North Korean patrol boats opened fire at South Korean patrol boats.

1998 A North Korean midget submarine was seized after it was spotted entangled in South Korean fishing nets off the South Korean town of Sokcho. North Korea test-fired a new three-stage taepodong-1 missile.

1999 Several North Korean ships provoked a nine-day naval confrontation off South Korea's western coast in the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

2001 A North Korean patrol boast crossed the NLL.

2002 A gun battle erupted between the two Koreas' naval ships in the Yellow Sea.

2003 North Korea test-fired a short-range anti-ship missile into the East Sea.

Source: Correlates of War MID data set (v. 4.0); Nanto 2003 “North Korea: Chronology of Provocations 1950-2003.”

Table 1. MIDs Between the Two Koreas, 1964-2003


such as security, political legitimacy, and national identity.

With inflated hope of military success from the aid given by the great power patrons,

North Korean leaders believed that the North’s enhanced military standing changed

the security environment in the Korean peninsula to overwhelm the South in key strategic

posts such as the DMZ and the Yellow Sea and East Sea. Believing that initiating

and winning the conflicts against the South would help him not only maximize the

North’s security interest, but also his domestic interest of remaining in power, Kim

Il-sung engineered numerous militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) against the South

(Kim 2011). Facing the North’s military provocations, however, the South’s leaders,

including Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, did not back down. Knowing the

negative consequences of the North-initiated MIDs on the nation’s security interest and

their power base at home, these authoritarian South Korean leaders confronted the

North’s provocations with strong military resolve. Table 1 presents a summary of all

major MIDs between the two Koreas during the period of 1964-2003.

As illustrated in Table 1, the two Koreas experienced MIDs in nearly every year

from 1954 onwards. Except for the military disputes that remained purely threats, all

other MIDs have been associated with actual use of military force for either offensive

or defensive purpose. What is more interesting, however, is that an overwhelming

majority of the conflicts—approximately 67 percent of all MIDs—occurred when the

two rivals maintained a rough parity in their military capabilities. At the center of the

MIDs was an unwarranted belief on each side that the aggressor would achieve a short

and decisive victory against the other on the battlefield, relying on the nation’s enhanced

military standing its great power patrons helped create.

Each of the MIDs added a new layer of hostility to the existing one, which has

led to further consolidation of the rivalrous relationship between the two Koreas across

time. Provoked and angered by military attacks from each other, the leaders of the

IKR have become willing to socialize both the elites and public to believe that the

two Koreas would not coexist peacefully and that the hostility between the rivals should

be coped with militarily at the last moment.

B. Fatal MIDs, US Interventions, and Failure of Military Solutions During

the Cold War

Rivals often try to end their hostile relations on the battlefield while they persist

across time (Thompson 2011). However, it is important to notice that not all militarized

disputes between rivals lead to actual termination of rivalries. Out of the disputes, it


is the fatal militarized dispute that brings the leaders of rivalries closer to ending their

hostilities on the battlefield. In the fatal MIDs, the leaders of rivalries militarily confront

each other with military resolve of almost the same strength, often escalating the disputes

into a major military clash. In the case of the IKR, the two rivals have experienced

approximately 30 MIDs during the period 1960-2003. However, only six of the MIDs

(approximately 20 percent) were “fatal” in the sense that the two Korean leaders were

dragged into a near-war situation.

However, it should be noted that in those fatal MIDs, the two warring parties—the

South and the North—have systematically been prevented from resolving their issues

in dispute by fighting, thereby maintaining their hostile relations. The major reason

for this is because the two rivals’ great power patrons, notably the United States, the

South’s security patron, has intervened in nearly every fatal MID and pressed the leaders

of the two Koreas not to escalate the MIDs into a full-scale war. Worried that the

escalation of the MIDs would lead to the outbreak of a second Korean War, in which

its intervention would automatically be required, the US pushed South and North Korean

leaders into the adoption of self-restraint by hinting of military retaliation on the North

and of political and military sanctions on the South. The leaders, who were concerned

about the negative effect of the US intervention on the national interest of their countries

and on their political survival, therefore, curtailed or even discarded their efforts to

cope militarily with each other, helping the IKR persist.

The first fatal MID in the IKR was the North’s infiltration into the Blue House,

a residence of South Korean President Park Chung-hee on January 12, 1968. The military

clashes the infiltration stimulated brought the two Koreas to the brink of a full-fledged

war for the first time since the 1950 Korean War. Built on the confidence that military

assistance by China and the Soviet Union created within the North’s government, Kim

Il-sung dispatched a 31-man commando team to assassinate South Korean president

Park Chung-hee and to overthrow his military regime. The military clashes between

the commandos and Korean military officials led to the killings of 30 North Korean

infiltrators and of several South Korean civilians and members of the Korean National

Police (Cha 2012, 55).

Surviving the North’s commando attack, the hawkish Park Chung-hee immediately

ordered the South Korean army to prepare for a massive military retaliation against

North Korea. Accordingly, another war between the two Koreas was a very real

possibility. Considering Park’s plan costly as well as risky, however, the Johnson

administration forced the South to stop its retaliation plan. Cyrus Vance, the former

US vice president who was dispatched into Seoul as a special envoy of President


Johnson, for instance, made it clear to President Park that “the South should not launch

its independent military attack against the North” (Kwak 2003). Fearing that the

retaliation would lead to US withdrawal of its military and political support for his

military regime, President Park finally gave up the retaliation plan. Because there was

not a decisive battle resulting in the declaration of a winner and a loser, the two countries

relapsed into the restive state of the IKR, despite the North’s 1968 attack.

Another fatal military conflict between the two Koreas, dubbed the “Tree Trimming

Incident,” occurred in 1976. On the morning of August 18, 1976, South Korean

workmen, accompanied by a 10-man American and South Korean security team, were

trying to trim the boughs of a big tree that obstructed the view between two guard

posts manned by US and ROK forces within the Joint Security Area. Considering the

trimming a violation of the 1953 armistice, the North’s military officials demanded

that the trimming stop and killed US Captain Arthur Bonifas and Lieutenant Mark

Barrett (Koh 1977). The South Korean Army was on high alert and ordered to prepare

for a major retaliatory attack on the North.

Facing the rapidly emerging chance of war between the two Koreas, however, US

President Gerald Ford stepped quickly into the incident and vehemently opposed the

South’s reprisal. Ford especially emphasized that “in the case of Korea to gamble with

an overkill might broaden very quickly into a full military conflict” (Oberdorfer 1997,

79). Keenly aware that military retaliation without US consent would worsen the South’s

security interest by creating tension in the US-ROK military alliance, President Park

finally agreed with the US to launch only a limited military operation, called “Operation

Paul Bunyan,” in which the two allies removed the tree (Oberdorfer 1997). Accordingly,

the two Korean War rivals were prevented again from resolving the hostility from the

incident through open conflict.

The pattern of military conflict between South and North Korea changed from direct

military provocations and infiltrations to indirect military encounters, as exemplified

by the North’s terrorist attacks on the South that began in early 1980. While the North

continued to display its extreme belligerence toward the South, it began to exploit

terrorist tactics as a major tool for overthrowing the South’s regime. During the state

visit of President Chun Doo-hwan to Rangoon, Burma, for instance, North Korean

soldiers detonated a powerful bomb. In the thunderous explosion, thirteen members

of the South Korean cabinet and an ambassador to Myanmar were killed (Yoon 2003).

Anger and animosity toward the North poured out from all levels in the South.

Accordingly, South’s Korean commanders in Chun’s government proposed that the

South Korean air force bomb the North in retaliation.


However, the South’s plans to launch a counterattack on the North were delayed

several times and eventually abandoned due to strong US pressure on Chun’s government.

In a visit to President Chun, Richard Walker, the US ambassador to the ROK, made

a strong argument against retaliation by citing US President Reagan’s call for the South’s

self-restraint, even though he said that “North Korea was behind the attack” (Oberdorfer

1997, 143). Believing that military retaliation against the US would have resulted in

the Reagan administration’s withdrawal of political support for his regime, which was

severely suffering from a lack of democratic legitimacy, President Chun had to cancel

all planned counterattacks against the North. Consequently, the two Koreas were

deprived of yet another chance to wrestle with each other on the battlefield.

C. Continued Combat, US Interference, and Failed MIDs in the Post-Cold

War

North and South Korea continued their fierce, militarized competition during the

1990s. Among other incidents was the “Gangneung submarine infiltration of 1996,”

which brought the two rivals again to the brink of all-out war. On September 18, 1996,

North Korea covertly dispatched a spy submarine around the coast of Gangneung, though

it became stranded in the East Sea around Gangneung and was discovered by South

Korean civilians (Oberdorfer 1997, 387-388). The incident led to a deadly military

showdown between the North’s infiltrators and South Korean Special Forces at the

Chil-Sung Mountain in Kangwon province. Nearly 25 North Korean infiltrators were

killed in the fighting, while the South suffered 12 casualties, including army personnel

and civilians.

The North’s submarine intrusion provoked South Korean President Kim Young-sam

into declaring that “ROK forces had selected twelve strategic targets in the North for

air, naval, and ground retaliation” (Oberdorfer 1997). Shocked by the South’s extremely

belligerent stance, the US accelerated its diplomatic effort to push Kim’s government

into the adoption of self-restraint. During the summit of the Asia Pacific Economic

Cooperation forum in Manila on November 24, for instance, President Clinton asserted

that “South Korean forces would not initiate military action against the North without

American consent” (Oberdorfer 1997, 392). At the same time, Clinton officials pressed

the North hard to issue a statement of deep regret. Knowing that a military attack

in retaliation would undermine the South’s national interest by complicating the

four-party peace talks process about the North’s nuclear crisis, Kim’s government

accepted the statement and cancelled the planned counterattacks against the North.


The two rivals became engulfed again in a series of deadly military confrontations

throughout the 2000s. During this period, the rivals were the closest to a real war

than ever before because they directly collided with each other in the Yellow Sea,

using heavy machine guns and cannons. On June 10, a dozen North Korea crab-fishing

boats, escorted by six North Korean patrol boats, were confronted by South Korean

patrol boats, which interpreted the boats’ move as crossing the NLL. The South’s patrol

boats pushed the North’s vessels to get back across the NLL. Provoked by the South’s

blunt push to the NLL, a North patrol boat fired a shot toward a South patrol boat,

which was answered by a hail of fire from the South’s vessels, leading to a 14-minute

gun battle on the Yellow Sea (Oberdorfer 1997, 423).

Alarmed by the battle and worried about the risk of it escalating into major naval

warfare, however, the US quickly intervened by dispatching its naval force to the area

and pressed South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to stop hunting down the North’s

vessels (Van Dyke et al. 2003, 145). Knowing that further military operation against

the North would lead to ROK-US alliance friction and that it would encourage the

US to withdraw its support for his reconciliation policy toward the North, therefore,

President Kim displayed remarkable self-restraint in the use of counter-military force,

thereby ending the first Yeonpyeong naval battle.

The first naval clash between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea sowed the seeds

for the second naval battle in 2002. Believing that the naval battle of June 1999 was

a shameful defeat, the North launched a pre-emptive military strike on the South’s

patrol boats while the South’s attention was on the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup. Along

the NLL near Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, a North Korean patrol boat opened

fire with its 85-mm gun and scored a direct hit on one of the South Korean patrol

boats, resulting in the deaths of six South Koreans, serious injury to nine South Korean

sailors, and the sinking of the South Korean frigate (Oberdorfer 1997, 424-425).

Responding to the North’s fire, other South Korean patrol boats used their 40-mm and

20-mm guns against the North Korean boats. About ten minutes later, two more patrol

boats and two corvettes reinforced the South Korean vessels and severely damaged

one of the North Korean craft (Van Dyke et al. 2003, 146).

The second naval battle near the Yeonpyeoung islands made the possibility of a

second Korean war real; however, the US gave a speedy and vigilant response to the

battle, preventing the two antagonists from crossing the red line. The US-led UN

Command proposed military talks in which the two Koreas were able to discuss ways

to end the clash (Van Dyke, et al. 2003, 146-147). The US also urged both the South

and the North to show self-restraint in the battle and to not escalate it into a major


military clash. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who was desperate to obtain

continued US support for his Sunshine policy, was also ready to accept the US proposal

of self-restraint. Accordingly, the South endured some damage from the battle and

returned to its previous posture, which led to the North’s self-restraint as well. Thus,

the IKR had to persist despite the two deadly naval clashes in the Yellow Sea. Table

2 presents a list of all fatal MIDs between the two Koreas, the presence/absence of

intervention by the great power patrons, and outcomes of the disputes from 1954 to

2007.

Year Name of Fatal MIDs Great Power Intervenor Outcome†

1968 Blue House Attack United States Stalemate

1976 Tree Trimming Incident United States Stalemate

1983 Rangoon Bombing United States Stalemate

1996 Gangneung Infiltration United States Stalemate

1999 1st Yeonpyeong Naval Battle United States Stalemate

2002 2nd Yeonpyeong Naval Battle United States Stalemate

Source: Correlates of War MID data set (v. 4.0); Nanto, et al. 2003; Oberdorfer 1997

†The definition of a stalemate is derived from Goertz, et al (2005). A stalemate is considered to occur when

neither of two warring parties or combatants achieves a decisive military victory on the battleground.

Table 2. Fatal MIDs, Great Power Interventions, and Outcomes of the MIDs

As shown in Table 2, it is not surprising that a stalemate has always resulted when

the two Koreas fought against each other and that the IKR has persisted despite the

battles. The major reason why the MIDs between the two Koreas resulted in stalemate

is that the US has stepped in at nearly every MID between the two Koreas and prevented

either of the two sides from prevailing on the battlefield. Fearing that the disputes

might escalate into the Second Korean War, which would require its participation, the

US has tirelessly intervened in the MIDs between the two Koreas and prevented them

from crossing the line into all-out war partly by hinting at massive military retaliation

against the North and partly by hinting at withdrawing its military and political support

from the South. Knowing the repercussions of US intervention in the security interest

of their countries and their standing at home, the leaders of the two Koreas have been

forced to display self-restraint in the disputes even though neither achieved a decisive

victory, thereby fostering the persistence of the IKR across time.


VII. Failure of Negotiated Solutions and Persistence of the IKR

The 1950 Korean War structured domestic political conditions in the two Koreas

such that the hardline leaders and their officials have installed and consolidated mutually

antagonistic regimes against each other and maintained quite contentious relations over

time. The hawkish regimes on both sides—the governments of Rhee Seung-man, Park

Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan in the South and Kim Il-sung and Kim Jung-il in

the North—provided a fertile ground for hardline elites, including militaries, to thrive

within their governments and to pursue a policy of mutual denial and head-to-head

confrontation.

The hardline leaders and the officials of the two Koreas began to adopt a quite

antagonistic policy against each other in a reciprocal manner. The reasons they stuck

to the policy were two-fold. First, the leaders pursued the policy because they believed

it might serve the security interests of their countries. Experiencing a moment of national

collapse during the Korean War, the leaders of the two Koreas came to realize that

military preparation with the highest alert and continued contentious policy would make

their countries safe as well as protected. Second, the leaders of South and North Korea

found that they would lengthen their tenure if they sold the policy of mutual denial

to their domestic audiences. Given that the vivid memory of antipathy and enmity during

the war remained in the public’s mind, they knew that the policy would help shore

up their legitimacy at home.

A. Strongmen, Peace Initiatives, and Failed Negotiations During the Cold

War

From 1954 onwards, South Korean President Rhee Seung-man and Park Chung-hee

skillfully used the public’s fear of encountering another military attack from the North

partly to fortify the South’s military standing and partly to tighten their grip on power.

By overstating the threats from the North, both authoritarian leaders convinced the

South’s public to believe that another attack was imminent and the only way to achieve

reunification was to cope with the North militarily (Cumings 2005, 318). Accordingly,

the hardening of the antipathy and feud against the North, an initiator of the Korean

War, was inevitable.

The situation in the North was not much different from that of the South. With

the end of the Korean War, Kim Il-sung brainwashed the North Korean people to believe

that he was a national hero who achieved a near-margin victory against the US, the


most powerful Western imperial power, in the Korean War. By linking such a

self-perceived victory to his personal character and capability, Chairman Kim did not

hesitate to rally popular support by invoking threats from the South. In addition, Kim

Il-sung purged his political opponents like Park Chang-ok and Choi Chang-ik, creating

a highly centralized system that accorded him unlimited power and generating a

formidable cult of personality (Oberdorfer 1997, 10-11). Built upon the system and

cult, Kim systematically demonized the South, thereby creating little but hostility toward

the South.

The persistence of mutually hostile regimes in the two Koreas helped the so-called

hardline veto players—political elites having preference over the use of military

force—prevail in their societies throughout the 1960s and 1970s. However, introduction

and empowerment of the hardline veto players on both sides made it extremely difficult

for the two Koreas to end decades-long hostile relations at the bargaining table in two

major ways. First, the hardliners became less willing across time to set the issue of

the inter-Korean rapprochement as a major foreign policy agenda and more willing

to adopt the policy of mutual denial. A wide range of foreign and security policies

designed to isolate the other side, such as Park’s regime’s policy of applying the

Hallstein principle to the North and Kim Il-sung’s policy of tightening the relationship

with the Soviet and East European Communist Bloc, were adopted and systematically

implemented by the hardliners (Chung 2006; Armstrong 2005).

Second, the leaders of the two Koreas, although agreeing to set the inter-Korean

rapprochement as a foreign policy agenda, intentionally shied away from the commitment

to rapprochement because of their concern for remaining in power. The best example

of this is the South-North Korean Joint Statement of July 4, 1972. A radical power

shift in the international system—the 1972 Sino-US rapprochement—opened a window

of opportunity for the two Korean leaders to sincerely discuss reunification in the Korean

Peninsula by resolving all issues under contention via negotiation. By declaring the

Statement, the leaders agreed to attain inter-Korean rapprochement in three ways: 1)

unification achieved through independent efforts made by the two Koreas, 2) unification

achieved through peaceful means, and 3) national unity sought by transcending

differences in ideologies and systems (Kim 2011, 152).

However, it did not take long to realize that the 1972 Joint Statement was just

an attempt for the leaders to use it to tighten their grip on power. Kim Il-sung, for

instance, used the Statement as a card to induce the withdrawal of US troops and to

link it to the fortification of his power base at home (Oberdorfer 1997). In a similar

vein, the South’s President Park Chung-hee saw the Statement as an opportunity to


strengthen his control of South Korean society. When the implementation of the

Statement was stalled, Park did not hesitate to use the faltered implementation as an

excuse for justifying his effort to create an anti-communist authoritarian regime called

the Yusin (Kim 2011). Therefore, the first negotiation for the inter-Korean rapprochement

collapsed, continuing the IKR through the failure of the Statement.

President Park’s hardline policy toward the North was inherited largely by his

successor, General Chun Doo-hwan, who came to office through a surprise military

coup after Park was assassinated by his loyal officer. The reemergence of such hardliners

in the South, combined with Kim’s ongoing tight control of the North, significantly

contributed to the persistence of the IKR in two ways from 1980 to 1987. First, both

Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Il-sung had not displayed a genuine intent to improve the

two Koreas’ relationship. Accordingly, the issue of the inter-Korean rapprochement was

rarely brought to the bargaining table. Second, a wide range of diplomatic contacts

and talks, which were held during the 1980s, were focused on functional and humanitarian

issues such as provision of aid for natural disasters and the reunion of separated families,

which had hardly affected the rapprochement of the IKR (Kim 2011).

B. The Post-Cold War, Soaring Optimism, and Failed Agreement in the 1990s

The leaders of the two Koreas faced another critical moment for improving their

relationship by nearly all aspects when the Soviet Union and its satellite communist

regimes abruptly collapsed in the late 1980s. This systemic shock, dubbed the end of

the Cold-War, created a hope in the Korean peninsula that the entrenched hostility

between the two rivals, which was considered an extension of US-Soviet rivalry, would

be compromised and overcome, thereby prompting the North’s behavioral challenge.

Against the backdrop of such monumental change in the international security

landscape, South Korea’s first elected President, Roh Tae-woo, began to pursue a policy

called Nordpolitik toward the former communist countries like the Soviet Union,

Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. Not only did Roh and his officials

restore diplomatic relationships with these former communist countries, they also used

them to induce a change in the North’s foreign policy. Accordingly, Roh’s officials

offered a series of peace proposals to Kim Il-sung who was fearing that his nation

could be completely disconnected from the international community in which its former

communist allies had gone. Kim Il-sung finally agreed to participate in the negotiation.

The negotiation led to by far the most important document adopted by the two Koreas

since the Joint Statement of July 4, 1972.


In the “Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation

Between the South and the North,” initialed on December 13, 1991, the two Koreas

came closer than ever before to accepting each other’s regime as a legitimate government

with a right to exist (Oberdorfer1997). In the Agreement, both sides agreed to: 1) mutual

recognition of each other’s system and an end to vilification and subversion of each

other; 2) mutual efforts to transform the present state of armistice into a solid state

of peace; 3) nonuse of force against each other, implementation of confidence-building

measures, and large-scale arms reductions; and 4) economic, cultural, and scientific

exchange.4

However, the milieu of compromise and cooperation, which the 1991 Agreement

stimulated on both sides, did not last long. Having felt that the North made too many

concessions to the South in the Agreement, DPRK military officials vetoed the gradual

implementation of the Agreement (Oberdorfer 1997, 264). The nuclear issue discussed

in the meetings also posed a daunting challenge to the implementation of the Agreement

on both sides. In the Agreement, the two Koreas signed a pledge to not test, manufacture,

produce, or possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. But such

a pledge led to military officials’ resistance based on the belief that the Agreement

was all on the part of South Korea, not the North. As a result, Kim Jung-il systematically

moved away from the Agreement and returned to his previous anti-ROK posture

(Oberdorfer 1997).

The challenge to the Agreement also rose to the surface in the South. Capitalizing

on the suspicion of the North’s nuclear pledge, hawkish politicians of the Minjung faction

in the ruling Minja party were allied with a flurry of anti-communist groups to delay

the implementation of the Agreement. Worried that the challenge from the faction would

lead to a decline in his approval rating, President Roh became more passive in the

fulfillment of the Agreement. Eventually, the Agreement lost its final momentum when

the North declared its withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty, which resulted in

the outbreak of the 1993 nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula (Kim 2006, 60).

C. Empowered Doves, Hawks’ Resistance, and the Failure to Reconcile

in the 2000s

It was only after two reformist presidents in the South came to office that the two

4. The full text of the 1991 Agreement is available online at http://nkinfo.unikorea.go.kr/nkp/term/viewKnwldgDi

cary.do?pageIndex=4&dicaryId=161&searchCnd=0&searchWrd (accessed on Nov. 23, 2016).


Koreas were approached again through diplomatic channels to discuss ways to end

their costly rivalrous relationships. Kim Dae-jung and Roh Mu-hyun, who had a dovish

preference towards the North, were elected as the president of South Korea in 1997

and in 2003, respectively. When these two reformists took office, many dovish elites,

who had given up their dovish preference toward the North, made huge inroads into

the South’s domestic politics. Dae-jung and Mu-hyun filled key governmental posts,

notably the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Korea Unification, with the elites who

were ready to join their effort to diplomatically engage the North (Han 2002).

Specifically, the influx of reformist and dovish presidents and their officials structured

the South’s domestic political condition in a way that a policy of rapprochement through

negotiations could be devised and implemented. Immediately after arriving in office,

for instance, President Kim Dae-jung placed the highest priority on rapprochement with

the North. Instead of supersizing the threat from the North, President Kim, a staunch

believer in Korea unification by peaceful means, took a bold diplomatic initiative called

the “Sunshine” policy toward North Korea. At the center of the policy was the idea

that South Korea should seek to lead North Korea down a path toward peace, reform,

and openness through reconciliation, interaction, and cooperation with the South (Moon

2012; Cha 2012). Drawing upon this liberal idea, Kim made his historic visit to

Pyongyang on June 13-15, 2000.

After completing rounds of talks about the ways to build lasting peace in the Korean

peninsula, President Kim Dae-jung and Chairman Kim Jung-il announced the famous

“2000 Joint Declaration of Peace and Cooperation in the Korean Peninsula,” in which

nearly every disputed issue between the two Koreas was scheduled to be resolved

through peaceful negotiations (Moon 2012, 21). The Declaration included: 1) an

agreement to achieve reunification independently and through the joint efforts of the

Korean people, 2) an acknowledgement that there was a common element in the South’s

proposal for a confederation and the North’s proposal for a loose form of federation,

3) an agreement to promptly resolve humanitarian issues, 4) an agreement to consolidate

mutual trust by prompting economic cooperation, and 5) an agreement to hold dialogue

between relevant authorities in the near future to implement the above agreements.5

However, the 2000 Joint Declaration failed to gain momentum during the

implementation phase. Among others, it was the dogged challenge from hawkish political

forces in the South that unraveled President Kim’s peace initiative toward the North.

5. A full description of the declaration is available online at http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/resources/

collections/peace_agreements/n_skorea06152000.pdf (accessed on Nov. 29, 2016).


Armed with rather antagonistic rhetoric and preferences toward the North, the Hannarah

Party, a major conservative opposition party, and anti-communist societal actors accused

the Kim government of over-cooperating with the North. By problematizing the legitimacy

of the Declaration, these hardline groups made their strong case that unconditional giving

of aid and lack of a reciprocal move from the North would only serve the North’s

interest (Moon 2012). Having expected that further pursuit of his Sunshine policy would

undermine his political standing at home by empowering these hawks, therefore,

President Kim shied away from his earlier commitment to the Declaration when the

North refused to reciprocate the South’s proposals. The IKR thus persisted once again

through the failure of the negotiated solution, the 2000 Joint Declaration.

President Roh Mu-hyun, who came to office right after President Kim Dae-Jung,

made a determined effort to achieve the desired legacy of President Kim and struggled

to bring the relationship between the two Koreas again to a path toward a negotiated

termination of hostility or rapprochement. What made Roh’s policy distinguishable from

Kim Dae-Jung’s Sunshine policy, however, is that he tried to make the process toward

the rapprochement “institutionalized as well as transparent” (Moon 2012). Knowing

that the backdoor deals and unilateral cash payments by the South during the 2000

Inter-Korean Summit presented an enormous political hurdle to President Kim by

empowering anti-North Korean forces, Roh informed both public and conservative elites

that his journey to Pyongyang was driven purely by his and his officials’ concern for

constructing peace in the Korean peninsula through the adoption of concrete action

plans (Moon 2012).

During his visit to the North from October 2nd

through the 4th, President Roh and

his officials made significant progress with their North Korean counterparts toward an

improved relationship between the two Koreas. In the “Joint Declaration on the Peace

and Prosperity in the Korean Peninsula of October 4, 2007,” President Roh and

Chairman Kim agreed with three principles, which would guide future inter-Korean

relations. Those were: 1) building durable peace in the Korean Peninsula, 2) fostering

mutual prosperity, and 3) achieving reconciliation, exchange, and unification.6

Like his predecessor Kim Dae-jung, however, President Roh faced massive political

challenges from hawkish veto groups within South Korean society when he attempted

to implement the items to which both sides agreed in the Declaration. Stressing that

President Roh’s policy of the rapprochement would only feed the North, the Hannarah

6. For an explanation of the details on the 2007 10.4 Joint Declaration, visit http://nkinfo.unikorea.go.kr/nkp/term/

viewKnwldgDicary.do?pageIndex=1&dicaryId=72.


Year Name of Diplomatic Initiative

Hardline Veto Players Outcome

1972 July 4th Declaration Workers’ Party of Korea in the North/Republican Party in the South

Failure of Implementation

1991 Agreement on Reconciliation & Nonaggression

Military Officials in the WPK of the North/Minjung Faction in the South's Ruling Minja Party


2000 Joint Declaration on Peace & Cooperation

WPK in the North/Hannarah Party in the South


2007 Joint Declaration on Peace & Prosperity

Hannarah Party in the South Failure of Implementation

Source: Moon 2012, 61-70; Han 2002, 37-41; Oberdorfer 1997, 23-26.

Table 3. Failed Negotiations and IKR Maintenance, 1954-2007

Party and many other anti-North Korean societal actors coalesced into an anti-North

Korea camp and started portraying Roh’s effort as premature and counterproductive

(Moon 2012). The hardline veto groups’ challenges were especially focused on three

issues. First, they pointed out that the 2007 Summit completely failed to bring the

issues of humanitarian crisis in the North to the negotiation table (Moon 2012, 63).

The accusation that the South would be involved in unconditional giving of aid was

also reiterated. Some of the hardline opponents contended that President Roh just

appeased his counterpart Kim Jung-Il by not linking inter-Korean rapprochement to

the North’s 2006 nuclear provocation. Such a challenge from the hardline camp

provoked President Roh’s fear that the presidential candidate of his party would not

be elected in the upcoming presidential election, so he was self-restrained in moving

the policy of reconciliation and rapprochement forward. Thus, the IKR still remained,

due to the failure of the 2007 Joint Declaration. Table 2 presents a list of all Korean

diplomatic initiatives to end the IKR through negotiation, the presence/absence of the

intervention of hardline veto players on either side, and the outcomes of the initiatives.

As listed in Table 2, it is not surprising that the two Koreas’ diplomatic efforts

to resolve the differences on all fronts have been sporadic as well as rare. While

maintaining their hostile relations for more than 50 years, the leaders have attempted

four different agreements to achieve IKR rapprochement. However, the agreements have

unraveled primarily because the leaders were systematically prevented from implementing

them by the hardline veto players at home. These veto players have whipped the

sentiment either at the elite or public level into such a frenzy that the confrontational

relations between the two Koreas could be overcome only by realpolitik tools. Keenly

aware of the negative impact of the implementation on their political standing at home,

the leaders on both sides have systematically shied away from their stated commitments


to carrying out the agreements, thereby forcing the IKR to persist through the continual

failure of negotiated solutions.

VIII. Conclusion

Our research began with the simple question of why do international rivalries persist

across time? To answer the question, I developed a novel theory of multiple veto players

to account for rivalry maintenance and test the hypotheses drawn from the theory on

the case of the IKR from 1954-2007. Central to the theory is that the maintenance

of international rivalries is the result of rival leaders’ efforts to maximize the national

interest of their countries and their personal interest of staying in power, subject to

both external and internal constraints.

The major contribution of this paper to extant scholarship on the maintenance of

international rivalries is two-fold. First, I developed a more nuanced but comprehensive

theoretical framework for understanding the rivalry maintenance process by paying

balanced attention to both external and internal factors that had been examined

separately. These two factors are carefully intertwined to explain why the rival leaders

seeking both national and personal interests decide to maintain a costly rivalry over

time. Second, I demonstrated the utility of the theory by conducting an in-depth historical

examination of the persistence of the IKR from 1954 to 2007.

Specifically, the results show that Korean leaders who have been concerned about

national interests of their countries and about their personal interests have been forced

to maintain the IKR through the failures of both military and diplomatic solutions,

largely because of both an external constraint—US military intervention—and an internal

constraint—resistance from hardline veto players.

Despite such interesting findings, however, this research is only the initial step toward

the complete understanding of the dynamics of the IKR maintenance. Since my research

primarily focuses on the role of the US and the South’s hardline veto players, it gives

relatively scant attention to the impact of China and the North’s hardliners on the

maintenance of the IKR. This is primarily because of the lack of credible data on China

and North Korea. Therefore, future research must examine how China and North Korea’s

hardliners contribute to consolidation of the hostility between the two Koreas through

careful archival research. It also should be noted that the paper utilizes a single case

study—the IKR from 1954-2007—to prove the relevance of the theory of multilevel

veto players. To increase the external validity of the theory, therefore, future studies


need to test it against a larger number of rivalry-maintenance cases.

While much work remains to be completed, there are clear lessons to be drawn

from this research. In the context of an entrenched rivalry like the IKR, the leaders

seeking to end the rivalry need to develop a strategy that will be comprehensive enough

to overcome both external and internal constraints simultaneously. The strategy designed

to overcome only one of the two constraints will be destined to fail. Given the decreasing

utility of war as a solution to rivalries, the only remaining option may be the negotiated

termination of rivalries. Thus, the leaders seeking rivalry termination should devise a

strategy that will encourage their great power patrons to be honest and impartial brokers

and push their hardline veto players into joining a stable coalition for a rapprochement.

Without the strategy, rivals will be constantly caught in the vicious cycle of

confrontation-negotiation-confrontation.

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Received 29 May 2017

Received in revised form 6 December 2017

Accepted 10 February 2018

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