This edited volume brings together the work of ten distinguished scholars and leading experts on Korean politics to critically analyze the key factors and issues that are shaping a newly emerging security regime on and around the Korean peninsula. The Korean security regime is expected to undergo a swift structural change in the coming years, given new trilateral U.S.-South Korea-Japan relations, U.S.-Japan security cooperation, and increasing rivalry between China and the U.S. and China and Japan. North Korea's most recent initiatives to reach out to the international community have resulted in historic agreements on diplomatic normalization talks with the U.S. and Japan in March 2000. These talks and the first high level visit by North Korean officials to the United States will restructure the security dynamics on the Korean peninsula.

Tens of thousands of US soldiers and untold millions of Koreans died in this war the first major arena of the East-West conflict. This concise international history of the war offers a new approach to its understanding, tracing its origins and dynamics to the interplay between modern Korean history and twentieth century world history. The narrative also uniquely examines the social history of the conflict, and includes material on the newly racially integrated US fighting forces, war and disease, women and war and life in the Prisoner of War camps. While most surveys stop at 1953, with the signing of the armistice, Steven Hugh Lee carries the story through to the Geneva Conference in the spring of 1954 the last major international effort before recent years to negotiate a permanent peace for the Korean peninsula.

"China significantly restructured its relationship with both Koreas during the 1980s and 1990s, but the most striking change occurred more recently: a rapidly strengthening economic alliance with South Korea. China and Korea closely examines this dynamic transformation - as well as its numerous, potentially far-reaching, economic, diplomatic, and military implications." "Professor Lee systematically evaluates three major considerations viewed as influencing China's changing policies toward both North and South Korea: shifting domestic and foreign policy priorities under Deng Xiaoping (particularly regarding ideology, security, and economy), a decisive tilt of the inter-Korean power configurations in favor of Seoul, and China's changing relations with Russia, Japan, and the United States after the cold war." "China and Korea focuses on military policy, diplomatic issues, and changing economic realities to trace China's dynamic emergence from Mao-inspired ideological isolationism to its embrace of the pragmatic, open-door practices of Deng Xiaoping's modern socialist state."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This is the first book-length work in English dealing with the crucial and troubled relationship between Korea and the United States. Leading scholars in the field examine the various historical, political, cultural, and psychological aspects of Korean-American relations in the context of American global and East Asian relationships, especially with Japan.

Discusses how South Korean and American forces battled North Korean special operations teams across the Korean peninsula during the Second Korean Conflict. This conflict included small-scale skirmishes along the demilitarized zone, terrorist strikes, the seizure of the USS Pueblo, and several North Korean efforts to foment a viable insurgency. A case study of a successful low-intensity conflict. Illustrated.

In A Troubled Peace, Professor Chae-Jin Lee reviews the vicissitudes of U.S. policy toward South and North Korea since 1948 when rival regimes were installed on the Korean peninsula. He explains the continuously changing nature of U.S.-Korea relations by discussing the goals the United States has sought for Korea, the ways in which these goals have been articulated, and the methods used to implement them. Using a careful analysis of declassified diplomatic documents, primary materials in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, and extensive interviews with American and Korean officials, Lee draws attention to a number of factors that have affected U.S. policy: the functions of U.S. security policy in Korea, the role of the United States in South Korea's political democratization, President Clinton's policy of constructive engagement toward North Korea, President Bush's hegemonic policy toward North Korea, and the hexagonal linkages among the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas. Drawing on concepts of containment, deterrence, engagement, preemption, and appeasement, Lee's balanced and thoughtful approach reveals the frustrations of all players in their attempts to arrive at a modicum of coexistence. His objective, comprehensive, and definitive study reveals a dynamic—and incredibly complex—series of relationships underpinning a troubled and tenuous peace.

The Korean War is a highly-illustrated account of the political, military and ideological conflict between the communist North and the democratic South.

BORDERLINE WARFARE: United Nations Command Forces in Korea, 1954-1974 (A Historical Chronology) South Korean President Park Chung Hee, following an attempt to assassinate him in 1968, and before a similar attempt in 1970, described the North Korean Communists as “the most vicious and warlike of all Communists in the world.” North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, brazenly dared the United States and South Korea to respond to the numerous provocations it inflicted on the latter. The infiltration of 31 commandos into South Korea on 21 January 1968, with the intent of murdering the South Korean president, was followed by the seizure of the USS Pueblo on 23 January 1968, off the coast of Wonsan, North Korea. Both attacks were overt attempts to create the conditions for a renewal of full-scale war on the Korean peninsula. The ever-hostile North Koreans then deliberately shot down a U.S. Navy EC-121 intelligence-gathering aircraft in April 1969, again daring the United States to respond with military force. These major actions were set against the backdrop of North Korean infiltration into South Korea with the objective of creating a Viet-Cong-like insurgency as an alternative means of toppling the South Korean government and driving out the “U.S. imperialist aggressor army.” From a historical perspective, only the forbearance of the U.S. and South Korean military forces prevented the escalation of hostilities that could have led to World War III.