Korea’s Changing Security Environment

Abstract

Discussion of Korean security tends towards oversimplification; to an analysis of the size and imminence of a communist assault upon the South. Yet in the mid- to late 1980s this issue itself is contingent upon several factors: the attitudes of the great powers, the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons by the two Koreas, the development of intra-Korean relations, the succession in the North, and most critically of all, the continuing dynamic growth of the South Korean economy.