[Citizen College Season 3] Missile Politics of Northeast Asia

On November 15, 2019, the eighth lecture of the Citizen College Season 3 “Citizens and the World: Peace on the Korean Peninsula and International Politics” was given at Korea University’s Political Science & Economics Bldg. 101. The eighth lecture was given by Kim Ji-il, a professor at the Institute for Peace and Democracy at Korea University.

Under the title of “North East Asia’s Missile Politics,” the lecture was about the meaning and deterrence of missiles in international politics, as well as the missile development process in South Korea and North Korea and the missile capabilities of Northeast Asian countries (China, Russia, Japan). There are cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles have short-range missiles (below 1,000 km), medium-range missiles (11,000 km to 5,500 km), and ICBMs (more than 5,500 km) depending on the launch distance. The effects of a missile are ‘destructive’, ‘speed’, ‘stable’ of the system, ‘invasive’, ‘survival’, low-cost, high-efficiency ‘economy’, ‘operationality’ of continuous development and ‘psychological’. Psychology is associated with deterrence theory. If there are countries A and B with nuclear weapons, and if B has the ability to retaliate in large numbers, then A can not strike B first because A is afraid of nuclear retaliation. At this point, the nuclear deterrence strategy was successful. There are various definitions of deterrence by scholars, but they are characterized as ‘preventing war and promoting peace while enjoying psychological effects.’ A missile used in deterrence serves as an important indicator of the innermost state of a country.

If you look at Korea’s missile development process, from the Korea-U.S. memorandum of understanding (1979), to the third revision of the Korea-U.S. missile guidelines (2017), the Korean missile range and warhead weight have been gradually increased through a compromise with the U.S. The current missile range is limited to 800 km and the warhead can be developed without limits. North Korea succeeded in developing its first missile by reverse designing Soviet-made SCUD-B missiles. Starting with the first long-range missile test in 1998,  North Korea has continued to develop missiles. In addition, after Moon government, North Korea was launching a variety of missiles in a variety of places,  this is that North Korea is entering the steps of strategy. Although it seemed to have entered peace mode for a while from 2018 to mid-2019, North Korea launched about 10 short-range missiles from various areas since May 2019. This can be seen as an attempt to show North Korea’s missile level. And Korea is now embracing these dangers. Therefore, the speaker concluded by stressing that ‘Korea’s independent missile development is an independent act for the minimum security of Korea.’