Perspectives on South Korea's Strategic Options in the 21st Century

It is widely recognised that a nation s structure of its security strategy is inevitably influenced by its past and present reality. In the past decade, the international community has been trying to catch up with dramatic transformations and to open a new international order in the post-Cold War era. In particular, Northeast Asia has seen nationalistic behaviour by the regional powers to strengthen their own power and thus, they started to establish a new regional order. Due to considerable uncertainty of security environment of the Korean peninsula, Korea has sought to redefine its relations with neighbours and plan new security policy. What would be the best survival strategy for the Korean peninsula that it is surrounded by the major powers? Korea s most urgent task at present would be to understand factors relevant to the regional powers that encircle the Korean peninsula. Unfortunately, Korea seemed to fail to deal with its relations with four major powers in the past. In the future, Korea desperately needs to understand the major power s foreign policies and behaviour patterns and thus, work out effective counter measures.