This article discusses how South Korea’s “cross-recognition” policy influenced the political structure of Northeast Asia during the 1980’s. The “cross-recognition” means that China and the Soviet Union would recognize South Korea in exchange for the United States and Japan recognizing North Korea. With the recent release of official documents from South Korea, Japan and Russia, etc., it has become possible to analyze this subject in more details.

To answer the question stated above, this article especially focuses on the foreign policies that South Korea tried to implement with Japan, China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and the United States from 1983 to 1987 under the Chun Doo-Hwan Administration.

Many previous studies discussing the transformation of the Cold War structure in Northeast Asia paid to attention to the Northeast Asian history following the Seoul Olympics of 1988. In contrast, this study points out the importance of historical events that occurred from 1983 to 1987. Moreover, after analyzing multilateral relationships among Northeast Asian countries, it highlights that the beginning of the change in the Cold War structure in Northeast Asia can be linked the events in 1986.

South Korea tried to improve relations with China through the Japanese prime minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, from 1983 to 1986. South Korea aimed to establish its position in the international society through the 86’ Asian Games and the 88’ Seoul Olympics. For the success of these athletic meetings, South Korea viewed the participation of China and the Soviet Union necessary. In 1984, therefore, the South Korean government pursued concrete measures towards successful cross-recognition.

First, Chun Doo-Hwan asked Nakasone to serve as an intermediary vis-a-vis China. China made informal contacts with South Korea. In turn, North Korea was threatened by South Korea’s developing relationship with China, thus tried to strengthen its ties with the Soviet Union. Two international dynamics emerged in Northeast Asia consequently. One was the trend toward closer relations among South Korea, Japan, China and the United States. The other was the development of a more intimate relationship between the Soviet Union and North Korea.

However, M. Gorbachev, the then Soviet Union leader, began to implement a new form of diplomacy toward China and South Korea starting from the end of 1985 to the middle of 1986. As a result, North Korea’s isolation in Northeast Asia became more serious by the end of 1987.

In general, when considering the transformation of the Cold War structure in Northeast Asia, one tends to emphasize the role of Gorbachev. However, this study points out that the new Chinese diplomacy, which had begun before Gorbachev’s new diplomacy, also played a similarly important role in the transformation of the structure.

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Amartya Sen advocated the “Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal,” or the Liberal Paradox, in 1970. After this, many scholars, such as R. Nozick, A. Gibbard, and J. Blau, tried to prove that his theory was inaccurate in varied manners. However, there has been no critical counter-argument against Sen’s theory, and so his theory has been called a “theorem.” In Sen’s later work, it is argued that the “impossibility” of a Paretian Liberal actually can be overcome. One such method was pointed out by Sen himself six years later: the Paretian epidemic is possibly solvable if an actor of two ones in a Liberal Paradox situation can behave as if it has the assurance-game preference or other-regarding preference, considering others’ rights and the maximization of social welfare.
Sen also pointed out that two actors in the Liberal Paradox have the same preference orderings of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which indicates that individual rationality and social optimality can contradict one another. When individual rationality was the decisive factor to make a decision in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the actors would not obtain the most rational consequences in attempting to maximize their payoffs. Meanwhile, they can maximize their social utility if other-regarding preferences take precedence.
This article will explore varied implications while applying Sen’s arguments to the First North Korean Crisis, which was an international crisis. Regarding the escalation of tension between the US and North Korea after the end of the Cold War, a contradiction to the Liberal Paradox is found. In the case of the Liberal Paradox, a cycle occurs when two actors who have different preference orderings are confronted totally or partially, and they claim that their preferences should be realized as a social decision regardless of the other’s preferences. While the cycle between the two players can be seen as a deadlock in diplomatic negotiations at the nation-state level, in reality, the US and North Korea showed not only the cycle caused by the crush of the rights legally based on Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but also an escalation of tension beyond the theoretical cycle. That is, in the negotiations, they discussed how to deal with North Korean nuclear development, and they barely avoided a Second Korean War, which would have been the most irrational result.
Why and how did the US and North Korea make the choices to escalate tension, possibly leading them to more irrational consequences than the diplomatic stalemate that would have accorded with Sen’s theory? The answer can be found in a hybrid manner between the Liberal Paradox and psychological approaches that posit rational actors can make irrational choices in the decision-making process when actors recognize circumstances in which they face the risk of losing their expected utility. At the end of this article, three implications of applying the Liberal Paradox to the First North Korean Nuclear Crisis will be pointed out.

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North Korea's foreign policy and its policy toward South Korea obviously wavered after the Cold War. Why did North Korea's policy toward the South seesaw between cooperation and conflict? The purpose of this article is to examine under what conditions North Korea cooperates with South Korea.
Firstly, although during the Cold War North Korea had shown conflictive behavior toward the South, the U. S. and Japan, after the Cold War its policy distinctively shifted to cooperation. For balance of power on Korean peninsula in this period, South Korea was remarkably superior to the North. Was balance of power the causal element of North Korea's cooperation? An investigation of the article demonstrates that objective balance of power did not draw on the North's cooperative behavior. Change of South Korea's policy toward the North and cleavage in the South's domestic politics affected the North's policy, while the North reviewed its definition of “nation” and “nationalism” which could be seen as subjective element of the North's behavior toward the South.
Secondly, North Korea's policy, in turn, shifted to conflict after its declaration of withdrawal from NPT. Strictly speaking, around its declaration of withdrawal North Korea explored cooperation with the South in contrast to confrontation against the U. S., but, as soon as the U. S. -North talk launched, the North intensified cooperation with the U. S. in reverse to conflict against the South. How can such a distortion of North Korea's policy be coherent? An examination of the article shows that South Korea's policy was reversed to a hard-line in terms of “legitimacy” of state, subsequently the North's policy also returned to conflictive and exclusive one. And here also balance of power did not necessarily affect the North's policy into cooperation as well as above-observation. Rather, above-mentioned subjective element produced the North's exclusive behavior against the South, which was regarded, according to a North Korean peculiar view, as “treacherous” or “a puppet of the American Imperialism”.
Thirdly, there have been talks and agreements between North and South Korea, such as the North-South Joint Statement in July 1972, mutual visit of divided families in the mid 1980's, the basic Agreements between the South and the North in December 1991, and the North-South Summit Meeting in June 2000. A comparative analysis indicates the following: North Korea's policy and behavior in 1970's and the mid-1980's could not be seen cooperative in spite of some talks and agreements, because there had been prevailing view of “legitimacy” of state and “liberation of The South” with North Korea. After the Cold War, it was verified that North Korea's behavior and policy changed with the South's policy and their domestic politics, and more than anything-else, the North' cooperation with the South was conditioned under whether of appeasing “legitimacy” of state.

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