Korean Endgame

A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement

Selig S. Harrison

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780691116266
  9780691096049
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400824915
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Nearly half a century after the fighting stopped, the 1953 Armistice has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. While Russia and China withdrew the last of their forces in 1958, the United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea and is pledged to defend it with nuclear weapons. In Korean Endgame, Selig Harrison mounts the first authoritative challenge to this long-standing U.S. policy.


Harrison shows why North Korea is not--as many policymakers expect--about to collapse. And he explains why existing U.S. policies hamper North-South reconciliation and reunification. Assessing North Korean capabilities and the motivations that have led to its forward deployments, he spells out the arms control concessions by North Korea, South Korea, and the United States necessary to ease the dangers of confrontation, centering on reciprocal U.S. force redeployments and U.S. withdrawals in return for North Korean pullbacks from the thirty-eighth parallel.


Similarly, he proposes specific trade-offs to forestall the North's development of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, calling for the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella in conjunction with agreements to denuclearize Korea embracing China, Russia, and Japan. The long-term goal of U.S. policy, he argues, should be the full disengagement of U.S. combat forces from Korea as part of regional agreements insulating the peninsula from all foreign conventional and nuclear forces.


A veteran journalist with decades of extensive firsthand knowledge of North Korea and long-standing contacts with leaders in Washington, Seoul, and Pyongyang, Harrison is perfectly placed to make these arguments. Throughout, he supports his analysis with revealing accounts of conversations with North Korean, South Korean, and U.S. leaders over thirty-five years. Combining probing scholarship with a seasoned reporter's on-the-ground experience and insights, he has given us the definitive book on U.S. policy in Korea--past, present, and future.

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• OVERVIEW: The United States and Korea
• PART I Will North Korea Collapse?
• CHAPTER 1 The Paralysis of American Policy
• CHAPTER 2 Nationalism and the “Permanent Siege Mentality”
• CHAPTER 3 The Confucian Legacy
• CHAPTER 4 Reform by Stealth
• CHAPTER 5 Gold, Oil, and the Basket-Case Image
• CHAPTER 6 Kim Jong Il and His Successors
• PART II Reunification: Postponing the Dream
• CHAPTER 7 Trading Places
• CHAPTER 8 Confederation or Absorption?
• CHAPTER 9 The United States and Reunification
• PART III Toward U.S. Disengagement
• CHAPTER 10 Tripwire
• CHAPTER 11 The United States and the Military Balance
• CHAPTER 12 New Opportunities for Arms Control
• CHAPTER 13 Ending the Korean War
• CHAPTER 14 The Tar Baby Syndrome
• CHAPTER 15 Guidelines for U.S. Policy
• PART IV Toward a Nuclear-Free Korea
• CHAPTER 16 The U.S. Nuclear Challenge to North Korea
• CHAPTER 17 The North Korean Response
• CHAPTER 18 The 1994 Compromise: Can It Survive?
• CHAPTER 19 Japan and Nuclear Weapons
• CHAPTER 20 South Korea and Nuclear Weapons
• CHAPTER 21 Guidelines for U.S. Policy
• PART V Korea in Northeast Asia
• CHAPTER 22 Will History Repeat Itself?
• CHAPTER 23 Korea, Japan, and the United States
• CHAPTER 24 Korea, China, and the United States
• CHAPTER 25 Korea, Russia, and the United States
• CHAPTER 26 Then and Now: The Case for a Neutral Korea
• Notes to the Chapters