Embattled Korea: The Rivalry for International Support (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 279 Embattled Korea: The Rivalry for International Support. By Ralph N. Clough. Boulder, Colo. & London: Westview Press, 1987. 391 pp. $29.95/ hardcover. Reviewed by David Youtz, MA. candidate, SAIS. The Korean Peninsula seems fated to be subject to constant international scrutiny . In the space ofone year the world has watched South Korea convulse with enormous popular demonstrations, government concessions, the promulgation of a new constitution, a controversial election, record-breaking economic successes , and an airplane bombing blamed on North Korea. News from North Korea focused on the non-assassination of Kim Il Sung and the beginning of cautious experiments along the lines of Chinese economic reforms. Looming over all of these events are the upcoming Olympics, which will again rivet world attention on Seoul and Pyongyang. Any book on the Korean Peninsula, then, seems destined to be left behind by the pace of events. At the same time, as the Koreas increase in world importance , a comprehensive survey of their development and prospects becomes indispensable . Ralph N. Clough's Embattled Korea is a well organized and very readable solution to both problems. Clough focuses on how the Koreas have arrived at their present situations: the role of the international rivalry between the two states since World War II. their respective paths toward economic and political maturation, and the agonizing progress toward eventual peaceful coexistence and reunification. Clough organizes this history according to types of competition. The most salient of these has been the direct military confrontation, which has resulted in war, division, decades of hostile recrimination, and abortive efforts at dialogue . A second form of competition has been the rivalry for international support and diplomatic recognition, both from the regional superpowers and from the broader world community. There has also been competition in economic performance, ideology, and sports. The first six chapters of the book form a history of these competitions from the end of the period ofJapanese colonization through the 1980s. Despite their identical cultural and historical heritage — a Confucian educational legacy, imposedJapanese development, and an urgency for modernization — the two Koreas chose radically different strategies for development and national identity. The surprise in Clough's analysis is that there are similarities in the experiences of the two rivals. For example, both Koreas have been driven by a traditional tendency toward autarky. North Korea made Kim Il Sung's formulation of chu-che, selfreliance , the core of its national policy. In the south Park Chung Hee's economic development drive of the 1960s and 1970s was intended to make South Korea more self-reliant, less dependent on the United States, and thus less subject to American pressure. However, neither nation achieved complete autarky or independence — both remained heavily dependent on economic and military backing from the superpowers. Self-reliance also led the rivals in opposite directions . As North Korea became an international recluse, comparable in the world 280 SAIS REVIEW community only to Albania, South Korea became subject to an unprecedented degree of outside influence. Clough suggests that the trend of the future will be gradual convergence of the two rivals, as North Korea falls further behind South Korea's economic and diplomatic performance, as both Koreas resolve their problems of leadership succession, and as the big-power sponsors become impatient for a practical solution in their own — and in Korea's— interests. Convergence will occur as part of a lengthy evolutionary process beginning with the type of cross-contacts already appearing in the news: Chinese commerce with South Korea, Japanese contacts with North Korea, and tentative Soviet and American moves in the same directions. Cross-recognition and admission of both Koreas to the United Nations will follow in time and allow the evolution of a state of peaceful coexistence and eventual reunification. Even this lengthy process will require movement by the superpowers to overcome the decades-old suspicions and ideological rigidities of both sides. The final section of Embattled Korea suggests a strategy by which the United States can begin to encourage this process toward fruition. Contract Law in the USSR and the United States. By E. Allan Farnsworth and Viktor P. Mozolin. Washington, D.C: International Law Institute, 1987. 350 pp. $35.00/cloth...