Amazon.com: Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation (Barrows Lectures) (9780816645572): Roland Bleiker: Books

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Amazon.com: Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation (Barrows Lectures) (9780816645572): Roland Bleiker: Books

In 2002, North Korea precipitated a major international crisis when it revealed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program and announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Earlier in the year, George W. Bush had declared North Korea part of the “axis of evil,” and soon afterward his administration listed the country as a potential target of a preemptive nuclear strike. Pyongyang’s angry reaction ensured the complete deterioration of relations on the Korean peninsula, where only two years before the leaders of North and South Korea had come together in a historic summit meeting.
Few international conflicts are as volatile, protracted, or seemingly insoluble as the one in Korea, where mutual mistrust, hostile Cold War attitudes, and the possibility of a North Korean economic collapse threaten the security of the entire region. For Roland Bleiker, this persistently recurring pattern suggests profound structural problems within and between the two Koreas that have not been acknowledged until now. Expanding the discussion beyond geopolitics and ideology, Bleiker places peninsular tensions in the context of an ongoing struggle over competing forms of Korean identity. Divided Korea examines both domestic and international attitudes toward Korean identity, the legacy of war, and the possibilities for-and anxieties about-unification.

Divided Korea challenges the prevailing logic of confrontation and deterrence, embarking on a fundamental reassessment of both the roots of the conflict and the means to achieve a more stable political environment and, ultimately, peace. In order to realize a lasting solution, Bleiker concludes, the two Koreas and the international community must first show a willingness to accept difference and contemplate forgiveness as part of a broader reconciliation process.

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Roland Bleiker is professor of international relations at the University of Queensland. From 1986 to 1988 he served as chief of office for the Swiss delegation to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in Panmunjom.

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September/October 2005 Issue
Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation; Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea
by Roland Bleiker, Jasper Becker
Reviewed by Lucian W. Pye

In This Review





Two books on North Korea could not be more different. Bleiker, formerly chief of the Swiss delegation to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, passionately argues that the prevailing approach of confronting and deterring North Korea will not work. Pyongyang should be treated with respect instead of constantly denounced in offensive terms. He would accordingly have the parties scrap their militarism and turn instead to reconciliation by building "ethics of dialogue and ethics of difference." Needless to say, this search for neutrality means that Bleiker must pull his punches when criticizing North Korea. He is less hesitant in faulting Washington. But since Bleiker completed his manuscript, Pyongyang has declared itself a nuclear state and resisted a return to the six-party negotiations -- developments that make Bleiker's appeal for engagement even less convincing.

Becker, a journalist who has long covered Asia, has a very different view of North Korea -- as an evil slave state ruled by a terrorist bent on becoming a nuclear warlord. In his introduction, Becker spells out in frightening detail the horrors of a war that could result from "failing to rein in a rogue leader who might possess and be willing to use [the country's] nuclear capabilities." He considers it criminal to ignore the terrible suffering the Kim dynasty has forced onto the Korean people. It is still premature to say with certainty what will and what will not work in bringing about a change in North Korea's approach to the outside world. But so far the government there has exploited the concessions offered by others to heighten both its demands and its threats -- a record well documented in Becker's book.