朝鮮半島冷戦の展開

グローバル冷戦との「乖離」、同盟内政治との連携

抄録

Why has the Korean Cold War never ended despite the end of the global Cold War? US– Soviet confrontation implanted division and war in the Korean peninsula after World War II. We can easily envisage that the end of the global Cold War should have given a ‘peace dividend’ to Korea. Since the end of the global Cold War, however, the military tensions in the Korean peninsula have been aggravated due to the nuclear crisis even though North–South rapprochement has to some extent been achieved. This article tries to answer this question by focusing on the divergences between the dynamics of the global and Korean Cold Wars, and the linkages of inter-alliance politics with between-alliance conflicts.
Early in the 1970s, there was détente in East Asia in the wake of the US military withdrawal from Vietnam, the Nixon Doctrine and the consequent withdrawal of US divisions from Korea, and US–China rapprochement. Influenced by these upheavals, both Korean leaders decided to hold talks and agreed to the July 4 South–North Joint Communiqué in 1972. Inter-Korean talks, however, lasted only for one year and inter-Korean détente could not be consolidated. Korean leaders initiated these talks not only to follow the détente among the big powers but also to prevent their political regimes from being destabilized. They decided to install more authoritarian rule by constitutional revisions as if they had conspired.
When we take the possible destabilization of the US–ROK alliance into consideration, however, we can find another explanation. That is, inter-Korean talks were also initiated in order to engage the big powers. South Korea tried to persuade the Unites States not to destabilize the US–ROK alliance because it had to compete with a tough North Korean regime and such destabilization might be fatally unfavorable for South Korea.
In the 1960s, inter-alliance politics had an important impact on inter-Korean relations. In the 1950s, North Korea had been in a more favorable situation in terms of competition with South Korea. After 1960, however, South Korea succeeded in overtaking North Korea. South Korea was able to achieve economic development by gaining enough resources from Japan through the normalization of ROK–Japan relations in 1965. North Korea, caught up in the midst of the Sino-Soviet confrontation, could not gain enough resources, even though this period did give it a breathing space to increase its autonomy from the big powers.
Since the end of the global Cold War, while appealing the importance of Korean nationalism to South Korea, North Korea basically persisted in getting a guarantee of the regime survival from United States by taking advantage of nuclear development as a bargaining card. That is why the Korean Cold War has never ended despite the end of the global Cold War.