저자 : 임상수 학술지명 : Journal of North Korea Studies 발행처 : 고려대학교 세종캠퍼스 공공정책연구소 권호 : Vol.12, No.1 게재년월 : 2026년 6월 초록: How can a security-based approach account for South Africa’s denuclearization in the early 1990s, and how can it be applied to explain North Korea’s nuclear retention? Building on security-based explanations of denuclearization, this paper specifies threat reduction by focusing on its durability, defined by whether a perceived decline in threat reflects a significant and not readily reversible weakening of the adversary’s material capacity, rather than temporary policy shifts or diplomatic engagement. Using the process-tracing method, the paper argues that South Africa’s denuclearization reflected Pretoria’s assessment that the regional communist threat had undergone a durable decline as a result of Soviet retrenchment. Applied to North Korea, this framework suggests that Pyongyang is unlikely to undertake full denuclearization in the foreseeable future because the threat posed by the⋯