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The foreign relations of North Korea – officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) – have been shaped by its conflict with capitalist countries like South Korea and its historical ties with world communism. Both the government of North Korea and the government of South Korea claim to be the government of the whole of Korea. The Korean War in the 1950s failed to resolve the issue, leaving North Korea locked in a military confrontation with South Korea and the United States Forces Korea across the Demilitarized Zone.
Korean reunification refers to the potential reunification of North Korea and South Korea into a single Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification was started by the June 15th North–South Joint Declaration in June 2000, and was reaffirmed by the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula in April 2018. In the Panmunjom Declaration, the two countries agreed to work towards a peaceful reunification of Korea in the future, and the joint statement of the United States President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un at the Singapore Summit in June 2018.
The Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was signed on October 21, 1994, between North Korea (DPRK) and the United States. The objective of the agreement was the freezing and replacement of North Korea's indigenous nuclear power plant program with more nuclear proliferation resistant light water reactor power plants, and the step-by-step normalization of relations between the U.S. and the DPRK. Implementation of the agreement was troubled from the start, but its key elements were being implemented until it effectively broke down in 2003.
The Sunshine Policy is the theoretical basis for South Korea's foreign policy towards North Korea. Its official title is The Reconciliation and Cooperation Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북화해협력정책), and it is also known as The Operational Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북운영정책) and The Embracing Policy (Korean: 포용정책).
The six-party talks aimed to find a peaceful resolution to the security concerns as a result of the North Korean nuclear weapons program. There was a series of meetings with six participating states in Beijing:
Song Min-soon is a Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea and serves on the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee (2008–present). Previously, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2006–2008) and the National Security Adviser (2006) of the Republic of Korea. As a career diplomat for over thirty years, Song has participated in numerous negotiations, including the Korean Peace Talks in Geneva (1999), the revised Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiations between the United States and Korea, and the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear program as Chief Negotiator of South Korea, thus spearheading the landmark Joint Statement of September 19, 2005.
North Korea (DPRK) has been active in developing nuclear technology since the 1950s.
North Korea–South Korea relations are the bilateral relations between North Korea and South Korea. Formerly a single nation that was annexed by Japan in 1910, the two nations have been divided since the end of World War II in 1945 and engaged in the Korean War from 1950–1953. North Korea is a one-party state run by the Kim dynasty. South Korea was formerly governed by one-party military dictatorships until 1987 when it held direct elections. Both nations claim the entire Korean peninsula. Both nations joined the United Nations in 1991 and are recognized by most member states. Since the 1970s, both nations have held informal diplomatic dialogues in order to ease military tensions. In 2000, President of South Korea Kim Dae-jung became the first president to visit North Korea, 55 years after the peninsula was divided.
The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) was established by the Korean Armistice Agreement signed July 27, 1953, declaring an armistice in the Korean War. It is, with the Military Armistice Commission, part of the mechanism regulating the relations between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea.
Inter-Korean summits are meetings between the leaders of North and South Korea. To date, there have been five such meetings so far, three of them were in Pyongyang with another two were in Panumjeom. The importance of these summits lies in the lack of formal communication between North and South Korea, which makes discussing political and economic issues difficult. The summits' agendas have included topics such as the ending of the 1950-53 war, the massive deployment of troops at the DMZ, the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea, and human rights issues.
The Korean Armistice Agreement is the armistice which brought about a complete cessation of hostilities of the Korean War. It was signed by U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Harrison, Jr. representing the United Nations Command (UNC), North Korean General Nam Il representing the Korean People's Army (KPA), and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA). The armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, and was designed to "ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved."
The Lisbon Protocol to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was a document signed by representatives of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan that recognized the four states as successors of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and all of them assume obligations of the Soviet Union under the START I treaty. The protocol was signed in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 23, 1992.
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The 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit, commonly known as Singapore Summit, was a summit meeting between North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump, held at the Capella Hotel, Sentosa, Singapore. This was the first-ever meeting between leaders of North Korea and the United States. They signed a joint statement, agreeing to security guarantees for North Korea, new peaceful relations, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, recovery of soldiers' remains, and follow-up negotiations between high-level officials. Both leaders also met separately with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula was adopted between the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, and the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, on April 27, 2018, during the 2018 inter-Korean Summit on the South Korean side of the Peace House in the Joint Security Area.
The Peace Treaty on Korean Peninsula is a proposed settlement to formally end military hostilities on the Korean Peninsula as a follow-up to the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement implemented by the United Nations after the Korean War. During the inter-Korean summit on April 27, 2018, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in signed the Panmunjom Declaration; the declaration involved an agreement about mutual efforts and action items for transforming the armistice agreement into a peace treaty with the cooperation of the United States and China. During the 2018 Trump–Kim summit, US president Donald Trump and Kim signed a Joint Statement which reaffirmed the Panmunjom Declaration.
The May 2018 inter-Korean summit was the second inter-Korean summit in 2018. On 26 May, North Korean state chairman Kim Jong-un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in met again in the joint Security Area, this time on the North Korean side in the Inter-Korean Peace House in the Unification Pavilion. The meeting took two hours, and unlike other summits it had not been publicly announced beforehand. Photos released by South Korea's presidential office showed Moon arriving at the northern side of the Panmunjom truce village and shaking hands with Kim's sister, Kim Yo-jong, before sitting down with Kim for their summit. Moon was accompanied by Suh Hoon, Director of the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, while Kim was joined by Kim Yong-chol, a former military intelligence chief who is now a vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party's central committee tasked with inter-Korean relations. The meeting was largely centered around North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's upcoming summit with US President Donald Trump. Kim and Moon also embraced before Moon returned to South Korea. On 27 May, Moon stated in a public address that he and Kim agreed to meet again at "anytime and anyplace" without any formality and that the North Korean leader once again pledged to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in accordance with the Panmunjom Declaration.
The September 2018 inter-Korean summit was the third inter-Korean summit in 2018.
The 2007 North–South Summit Declaration is the declaration for the development of inter-Korean relations and peace and prosperity. It is the declaration agreed upon between South Korea's 16th president Roh Moo-hyun and North Korea's representative Kim Jong Il at the 2007 inter-Korean summit. It is often called the 10.4 South-North Summit Declaration or the 2007 North-South Summit Declaration, and it is also referred to as the 10.4 Declaration. On October 4, 2007, at 1 pm, the North and South Korean leaders signed jointly at the Pyongyang BaelHwaWon's guesthouse.
The 2018–19 Korean peace process was initiated in order to resolve the long-term Korean conflict and denuclearize the Korean peninsula. International concern about North Korea's nuclear weapons came to a head in 2017. A series of summits were held between North Korea's Kim Jong-un, South Korea's Moon Jae-in, and Donald Trump of the United States. Trump became the first sitting US President to meet a North Korean leader. Moon became the first South Korean President give a speech in North Korea. In parallel to this, a number of cultural exchanges began.
References
- ↑ "Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula". U.S. State Department. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
- ↑ "Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
- ↑ Letter dated 20 March 1992 from the Permanent Representatives of the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea addressed to the Secretary-General of the Conference on Disarmament transmitting the text of the agreement of Reconciliation, Non-aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North, as well as the Text of the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (PDF). Conference of Disarmament (Report). United Nations. 25 March 1992. CD/1147. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
- ↑ Kim, B-K (2002). Step-By-Step Nuclear Confidence Building on the Korean Peninsula : Where Do We Start? (PDF) (Report). Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
- ↑ Carlin, Robert (13 July 2016). "North Korea Said It's Willing to Talk Denuclearization (But No One Noticed)". The Diplomat. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
That the 1992 N-S joint declaration didn’t work is beside the point; in fact, it never even got through the stage of setting up implementation arrangements, the fault of both sides.
- ↑ "South-North Korea Nuclear Inspection Agreement". Cambridge University Press. 13 February 2009. doi:10.1017/S1052703600008054 . Retrieved 21 April 2018.