Beyond North Korea: Future Challenges to South Korea’s Security

Why should Americans worry about South Korean security? The answer is clear: North Korea, and beyond. Most international attention to the North Korea problem has focused on U.S. policy, but South Korea’s long- term role may in fact be more important. South Korea’s security is vital to peace and stability, not only in Northeast Asia but also the wider world.

Written by eminent scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with extensive on-the-ground experience, Beyond North Korea assesses the varied contexts-- regional and global, traditional and nontraditional--that underpin South Korea’s varied security challenges. What are South Korea’s military requirements? How do relations with its neighbors enhance or undermine its position? What economic, environmental, and demographic factors come into play? This book reveals that South Korea’s national security rests as much on sound domestic policy choices as on successful interstate relations.

General (ret.) Byung Kwan Kim is the former deputy commander of ROK-US Combined Forces Command and the Commander of Ground Component Command. Most recently, he served as the inaugural Koret Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University.

Gi-Wook Shin is the director of Shorenstein APARC; the founding director of the Korean Studies Program; senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and professor of sociology, all at Stanford University.

David Straub is associate director of the Korean Studies Program at Shorenstein APARC. Straub retired from the U.S. Department of State in 2006 as a senior foreign service officer after a thirty-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs.