Development and security in international aid to North Korea: commonalities and differences among the European Union, the United States and South Korea: The Pacific Review: Vol 30, No 5

Development and security in international aid to North Korea: commonalities and differences among the European Union, the United States and South Korea: The Pacific Review: Vol 30, No 5




The Pacific Review
Volume 30, 2017 - Issue 5

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Articles
Development and security in international aid to North Korea: commonalities and differences among the European Union, the United States and South Korea
Suyoun Jang &Jae-Jung Suh
Pages 729-749 | Published online: 07 Mar 2017

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https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2017.1294614


ABSTRACT


In this paper, we contend that the nexus of security and development lies in the crux of challenges confronting human security and aid failure in North Korea. 

We first review academic and policy discourses concerning the security-development nexus. We then analyse how the nexus works out its logic in North Korea by exploring how insecurity and underdevelopment have fed into each other, producing a vicious cycle that complicates efforts to address human security in North Korea. 

In the third and main section, we examine the ways in which South Korea, the USA and the EU provided for assistance to North Korea from 1995 to 2012 at national and international policy levels. We analyse their approaches to international aid and identify differences and commonalities in them so as to better understand how aid giving exacerbates or mitigates the insecurity/underdevelopment and then impacts on the development-security nexus. 

We finally conclude with a consideration of various strategies to help overcome the dual challenges of underdevelopment and insecurity that besiege North Korea.
KEYWORDS: Human security, national security, development, humanitarian assistance, development assistance, North Korea


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Suyoun Jang
Suyoun Jang is a researcher with Peace and Development Programme, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Signalistgatan 9, SE-169 70 Sola, Sweden. Her current research is on SDG indicators and development policies towards conflict-affected fragile states. Her recent publications include ‘Development in Dangerous Places’ in SIPRI Yearbook 2016 and ‘Measuring Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in the New SDG Framework’, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development(2016, co-author).

Jae-Jung Suh
Jae-Jung Suh is a professor at Department of Politics and International Studies, International Christian University (ICU), 3-10-2, Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, 181-8585, Japan. 

He has served as Associate Professor and Director of Korea Studies at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University and Assistant Professor in Department of Government at Cornell University as well as on the Presidential Commission on Policy Planning (Republic of Korea). An expert on the USA–Korea relations, US policy toward Asia, international relations of East Asia, international security, and IR theory, he is currently working on regional orders in East Asia, human security, and North Korea. He has authored and edited numerous journal articles and books, including Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances (2007), Truth and Reconciliation in the Republic of Korea: Between the Present and Future of the Korean Wars (2012) and Origins of North Korea's Juche: Colonialism, War, and Development (2012).