In response to increasing North Korean hostilities, South Korea’s Defence Minister Kim Kwan-jin unveiled a 73-point military reform measures in early March 2011
The temporary hope of peace returning to the Korean peninsula following North Korea’s peace overtures dissipated no sooner than it started when North Korean negotiators walked out of the meeting room at the DMZ in Panmunjam.
North Korea’s offer of a dialogue is unlikely to elicit a positive response from South Korea which instead is militarily drawing closer to Japan to enhance deterrence.
Soon after naming the North Korean regime as its “enemy”, South Korea has, quite abruptly, invoked the desirability of reverting to the Six-Party Talks.
Kan’s statement about sending the SDF to the Korean peninsula to rescue Japanese citizens and people of Japanese origin in the event of an emergency has raised the spectre of a possible revival of Japanese militarism.
The UNSC statement is more a testimony to Sino-US compromise arrived at after nearly a month and half of negotiations rather than being a “diplomatic victory” as has been hailed by North Korea.
While the effect of regionalism has begun to wane, the propensity of youth to vote against specific issues that they deem not beneficial is likely to be the dominant cleavage in South Korean politics.
