North Korea’s Attempts to Improve its Relations with the Unit- ed States and Japan and South Korea’s Diplomatic Response: Focused on the South Korean Diplomatic Documents in 1990-1991

Abstract

During the post-Cold War period, North Korea(NK) found an exit from severe diplomatic isolation by improving its relationship with the U.S. and Japan. NK and the U.S. started dialogues as the level of councilor in Beijing in 1988, and they had five meetings in 1991. Both countries maintained continuity of talks at that time. Meanwhile, South Korea(SK) endeavored to ensure that NK-U.S. relationship should not overshadow the SK-NK relationship. In that same year, NK also initiated formal discussions with Japan for the normalization of relations. SK outwardly supported the normalization of NK-Japan. However, SK actually wanted to manage the improvement of the NKJapan relationship through prior consultations with Japan. Normalization of talks between NK-Japan started in January 1991. However, it was recognized that it would be difficult to succeed without the solution to the North Korean nuclear issue. Furthermore, issue, such as NK's abduction of the Japanese, emerged as important dialogue topics. Hence, both states had to be satisfied with the initiation of talks for normalizing the relationship. Eventually, despite its efforts to improve its relationship with U.S. and Japan, NK did not achieve its goals in 1991. In contrast, SK obtained results on the SK-NK relationship and diplomatic competitions of UN during the same period. This study shows two facts of the diplomatic history: first, SK and U.S. fiercely argued about the direction of the North Korea policy under the table in 1991. Second, with regard to the Normalization Talks of NK-Japan in 1991, SK used to SK-USSR economic cooperation as diplomatic means so that Japanese Reparation Policy did not disturb the SK-NK economic cooperation.