The study analyzes and reconstructs the process of dialogues between South and North Korea from the adoption of the South-North Joint CommuniquIJ on July 4, 1972 to that of the Basic Agreement on December 13, 1992. Through these works, it tries to und...
The study analyzes and reconstructs the process of dialogues between South and North Korea from the adoption of the South-North Joint CommuniquIJ on July 4, 1972 to that of the Basic Agreement on December 13, 1992. Through these works, it tries to understand the contents and significance of the changes in the inter-Korean relations.
The study is a case study of qualitative research and uses the method of process tracing. It stands on a viewpoint that can be summarized in four phrases Ħ la a book, History Matters edited by Timothy W. Gunnane, William A. Sundstrom, and Warren Wheatley: history matters, context matters, the facts matter, and meaning matters.
The authorities of the two Koreas have raised issues to compete for the legitimacy of governance in the Korean peninsular, and also to manage or to advance the inter-Korean relations. Thus the study explores the interests of the top leaders of the two sides concerning these issues at the junctures of inter-Korean relations; the changes in her side of the identity of her counterpart; those in discourses; the process and the final outcome of discussing and resolving the issues raised by each side; and the meaning of that outcome in the progress of inter-Korean relations. For those explorations, the study uses path dependence and constructivism as its main analytical tools and game theory and Boolean methods of qualitative comparative analysis as its auxiliary tools.
The main findings of the study are as follows:
Firstly, the beginning and the process of the dialogues between the two Koreas showed path dependent character. The secret dialogue in 1971 that produced the July 4 South-North Joint CommuniquIJ the next year began as one of three alternatives South Korea could have chosen in the early 1970s under the Nixon Doctrine. The dialogues from the year to the adoption of the Basic Agreement had been sustained, although they sometimes stopped temporarily and restarted, and showed "increasing returns" in their formalities and contents.
Secondly, inter-Korean relations and the issues of national unification are actively constructed. For the authorities of the two Koreas, their dialogues are parts of the competition for legitimacy to govern the Korean peninsular. Thus the identity of their counterpart that they define and the discourses to justify a solution to the issues they raised are important factors in the process of the dialogues.
Lastly, the major factors for sustaining the dialogues are South Korean President's position on a dialogue between the South and the North and the awareness of North Korean leaders of the crisis of their socialist system, especially that of economic crisis. And the configuration of legitimacy competition has moved from the upper-left quadrant (the plane made of the X-axis of the communist revolution in the South and the Y-axis of the South's anti-communism) to the lower-left quadrant (the plane made of the X-axis of the communist revolution in the South and the Y-axis of the reform and opening of North Korean system) to the lower-right quadrant (the plane made of the X-axis of the protection of North Korean system and the Y-axis of the reform and opening of North Korean system) in the two-dimensional coordinate axes of the communist revolution in the South?Dthe protection of North Korean system (X-axis) and the South's anti-communism?Dthe reform and opening of North Korean system (Y-axis).