Strategic Regions in 21st Century Power Politics - Zones of Consensus and Zones of Conflict

South Korea, the Six Party Talks, and Relations with the Major Powers

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As the Lee Administration and the then new Obama Administration
improved relations and increasingly coordinated their military actions,
tensions on the peninsula grew. While the Obama Administration no
longer promoted the kind of neo-liberal rhetoric of the Bush
Administration, it also was not as liberal idealist in its relations with the
North as the Clinton Administration. Under Clinton, Secretary of State
Madeline Albright had visited the North and established personal
communications with Kim Jong Il himself.^26 No such attempts were made
in President Obama’s first term, though the Obama Administration has
offered aid and dialogue, most recently with a possible food aid deal in
exchange for the North’s cooperation with disarmament goals.^27 In
general, when looking at the evolution of US-South Korean and US-North
Korean relations, Samuel S. Kim argues:

Of all three variants of realism, a neoclassical realist theory of foreign

policy, which emphasizes the role of leadership change, seems to be the

best fit for explaining the changing foreign policy behaviors of the two

Koreas and the Big Four, especially in South Korea and the United States,

in post-Cold War years.^28

With this in mind, it is possible to see how in recent years the Lee
Administration’s hard line approach to the North has also translated
generally into a tougher stance from the Obama Administration than the
Clinton Administration. The US is interested in keeping the South content
in order to continue to expand its economic trade and to secure the
maintenance of its military bases. For the North, the change in leadership
and the Lee Administration’s consequential revocation of aid and end to
the Sunshine Policy meant the North no longer had a reason to treat the
South as a possible ally. It is illustrative that, as noted, in 2009, the same
year the South ended the Sunshine Policy, the North withdrew from the
Six Party Talks.
The Korean détente not only ended in theory, but in practice as well.
Two major incidents in 2010 occurred as a result of increased tensions.
First, on March 26, 2010, the ROK Cheonan exploded and sank off the
coast of South Korea, in the Yellow Sea. As a result, 47 South Korean
sailors died. An initial investigation conducted by South Korea and the

(^26) Cho, “Collective Identity Formation on the Korean Peninsula: United States’
Different North Korea Policies, Kim Dae-Jung’s Sunshine Policy, and United
States-South Korea-North Korea Relations.”
(^27) Rogin, “Kim ́s death thwarts Obama’s North Korean engagement attempts.”
(^28) Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, 20.