Korean War Case Study

Historically, the Korean War played a tremendous role in both North and South Korean societies. The Korean War was simply a victim of the rivalry between the Communism and the Capitalism. North Korea followed the communist beliefs, while the South Korea was backed up by the United States and its allies. The result of this war was deleterious, over 5 million people were killed from both sides. (Stueck, 1997). After experiencing a huge amount of loss both economically and socially, the Korean peninsula still remains divided. In other words, Korean people have experienced extreme tragedy for nothing in return. Visibly, the two Korean states have now a miniature intention to get into Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). Accordingly, a realist

North Korea is surrounded by strong East Asian states, including South Korea, Japan, and China. China is both the regional power and major power while Japan is a major power (Volgy, 2016) Perhaps, the status of these neighboring countries worries North Korea because clearly, they do not have the economic or other important capabilities to compete with these states. Therefore, I assume that the only way to protect itself from these powerful neighboring countries is to raise the military capability. Even though DPRK tries to raise their military capability, there is still a long way to catch these major states in the east Asian region. The figure 1 illustrates the number of MID’s in the regions. According to this map in the figure, the East Asian region looks extremely conflicting, particularly the Korean Peninsula seems to be drawing most of its MIDs in the region. Furthermore, in part A of figure 1, we can see that the Europe is the most conflictual region in the world from 1816 to 1945. Obviously, most of this activity has to do with the World War I and the World War II. Regardless of the major world wars, I assume that European conflict is high because of the fact that there are many countries with powerful military capabilities in the particular region. For instance, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and

As a result, their interest is often associated with their status and identity. The interest of the U.S is not similar to a small developing country. For example, a small developing country such as Bolivia does not have any interest in making treaties with bigger nations, or even developing a nuclear weapon because these interests collide with their identity. Therefore, the size of North Korea, regime type, and their status of divided status might all be playing certain roles in constructing the true North Korean identity and