From Japan Focus:
On 13 February 2007, a historic deal was struck in Beijing commencing the process of the denuclearization of Korea, comprehensive regional reconciliation, ending the Korean War, and normalizing relations between North Korea and its two historic enemies, Japan and the United States. The agreement is complex, and its implications are enormous, not just for the peninsula. The following paper offers a preliminary analysis.
The “North Korea Problem”
The tectonic plates under East Asia have begun to shift. In a world where gloom predominates and resort to force to settle disputes is common, and more often than not indiscriminate, the prospect of war recedes, and a new order of peace and cooperation begins to seem possible, radiating out from the very peninsula that was throughout the 20th century one of the most violently contested and militarized spots on earth. Japanese colonialism, the division of Korea and its consequent civil and international war, the long isolation and rejection of North Korea and its confrontation with the United States and with South Korea, and the bitter hostility between it and Japan: all these things suddenly seem to be negotiable. [Full Text]
