Bush House (SE, Room 1.01)

Korea has been the site of one of the main geopolitical conflicts of the Trump era. Dr Ramon Pacheco Pardo will introduce us to the broader history of US-North Korean relations and to US attempts to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons through sanctions, bilateral and multilateral talks, and, last year, the open threat of war. The last summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un earlier this year marked the failure of these US attempts. Dr Pacheco Pardo will analyse Washington's failure and its options as it seeks to denuclearize North Korea, avoid an open split with its ally South Korea and dealing with China. Prof Hazel Smith will then look at this story from the North Korean perspective and the North Korean governments’ failure to achieve their most prized goal of regime security or even just regime survival. Far from being a strong, strategically coherent, domestic and foreign policy actor, North Korea is best understood as fragmented, insecure, and constantly engaged in wars of manoeuvres, at home and abroad, to achieve the short-term but crucial condition of regime survival. Prof Smith will discuss what has become for North Korean decision-makers the double whammy of isolation from abroad and illegitimacy at home. Finally, Dr Soohyun Lee will discuss the possibilities and limitations that improved North-South Korea economic relations might have on the political economy of South Korea, in particular with regard to its three big challenges of population ageing, low productivity and rising inequality.

Speakers

Dr Soohyun Lee is a Lecturer in Korean and East Asian Political Economy at King’s College London.

Prof Hazel Smith is a Professorial Research Associate at the Centre of Korean Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Dr Ramon Pacheco Pardo is a Reader in International Relations at King’s College London and KF-VUB Korea Chair at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.