This paper explores the trilateral relationship among South Korea, North Korea, and the United States after the end of the Cold War, especially around the time of the inter-Korean summit meeting in June, 2000. Many useful theoretical insights have bee...
This paper explores the trilateral relationship among South Korea, North Korea, and the United States after the end of the Cold War, especially around the time of the inter-Korean summit meeting in June, 2000. Many useful theoretical insights have been applied to explain the relationship among three countries, both in bilateral or trilateral terms, adopting grand theories such as realism, liberalism, or constructivism, or middle ranges theories coming from various branches of foreign policy theories. But more micro-level analysis focusing on the structure and process of bilateral negotiation among three countries have been less developed.
This paper traces the development of various theories of negotiation, trying to find out useful frameworks to be applied to this case. Three most significant elements of negotiation, that is, interest, power, and inner structure of negotiator have been identified, with the presentation of theories that take these elements into consideration. Lebow's theory of negotiation, Fisher and Ury's conceptualization of principled negotiation, Habeeb's elaboration of negotiation power, and Putnam's two-level theory, with a partial application of constructivism, have been found highly useful in analyzing the structure and process of the negotiation among South Korea, North Korea, and the United States. By exploring the bilateral complexes of common interests of three countries, changing balance of negotiation power, and the multi-level games that three different countries perform in a different way, this article tries to suggest a coherent explanatory framework for the post-Cold War, trilateral relationship in negotiation processes, with some logically induced policy suggestions for the future.