Utilizing data from South Korea’s National Health Insurance Database, which covers the entire population, this study investigates the health-seeking patterns of North Korean defectors in South Korea, focusing on mental health issues. We find that female North Korean defectors utilize mental healthcare services significantly more than male defectors and more than their matched counterparts among either South Korean natives or other immigrants. Regarding the long-term effects of residing in South Korea, indicators of both the prevalence and seriousness of mental health issues do not appear to decrease over time, for up to fifteen years after migration. We recommend more active medical support and intervention by the government to alleviate the difficulty of adjustment among female North Korean defectors that arises from mental health issues.

This study examines how the post-Cold War geopolitical context penetrated through the struggles and empowerment of North Korean female defector entrepreneurs in South Korea. Reconceptualizing the notion of intersectionality, the study focuses on a grey area of informality and the resilience of these women. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observations, the findings indicate that these women leveraged geopolitical limits to develop their entrepreneurial assets. Informality developed through their involvement in Jangmadang and cross-border mobilities via informal brokerage. Through human-trafficked marriages, they stayed in China, learning the Chinese language and working in South Korean companies. The disadvantages of the job market and gender roles motivated them to start their businesses. The research emphasizes the complex ways in which agency, mobility, and geopolitics intersect.

This study investigates the extent to which the benefit levels of the North Korean Defector Settlement Support System (NKDSSS) have changed and differentially impacted the various groups of North Korean Defectors (NKDs). It employs a historical approach to policy analysis and uses datasets compiled, summarized, and converted with the Consumer Price Index by the author. Findings suggest a portion of Unconditional Cash Transfers decreased through the first pro-work reform period (2005-2014) and Conditional Cash Transfers conditioned on job preparation decreased through the second pro-work reform period (2015-2019). The changes may generate a blind spot of poverty and enhance inequality among the NKDs. For the NKDSSS to accomplish its goals of promoting socio-economic integration of NKDs in South Korea and preparing for a peaceful Korean unification, supplemental policies are required.

The purpose of this article is to study the characteristics and patterns of the field of peace and conflict studies in South Korea by tracing its history. A reflection on peace and conflict studies in Korea shows that the 1987 democratization was a critical moment, and that the subsequent end of the global Cold War initiated the full-blown development of the field. The Korean case shows that the advancement of peace and conflict studies is linked to real-world changes. The recent inclusion of human rights and transitional justice issues is meaningful since rights and justice were core but unaddressed issues in Korea. It is time for peace and conflict studies in Korea to leap forward, and this new attention to human rights and transitional justice can be a way to lead this development.

With around 34,000 North Korean defectors having arrived in South Korea (as of June, 2021), perceptions toward them remain ambiguous and unbalanced. The dominant discourse about North Korean defectors centers on adaptation, and cultural difference is often identified as one of the most challenging obstacles. This article examines how a specific conceptualization of culture is utilized to alienate North Korean defectors, while securing the belief in a single ethnicity of all Koreans. As a result, North Korean defectors are rendered as cultural other in South Korean society. While cultural difference is often believed to be the basis of discrimination for North Korean defectors, this article argues that social prejudice and discrimination reproduce and reinforce the discourse about cultural difference of North Korean defectors.

Weaker parties in a negotiation can change the assumed structural outcome of the negotiation by using strategies such as time delay tactics, which lead to entrapment. In this article, the Six-Party Talks are evaluated empirically to explore the utility of applying this bargaining tactic insight into international relations. The article applies Galin’s (2015) five stages of time delay tactics to the fifth and sixth rounds of the Six-Party Talks, with a focus on the triangular relations between the United States, South Korea, and North Korea. The article shows how North Korea as the weaker negotiating party used the time delay tactic to affect the fifth and sixth rounds of the Six-Party negotiations in its favor. North Korea’s use of several tactics included slowing down negotiations as much as possible, avoiding reaching a final agreement, prolonging negotiations by diversion, dragging out the negotiation process until some external or internal change occurs, and exhausting opponents until they are ready to concede. These tactics ultimately entrapped North Korea’s opponents resulting in the unsuccessful outcome of the Six-Party Talks.

This article revisits the role that Ahn Jung-geun plays in Korean collective memory today and contrasts this with the Moon administration’s foreign policy. An analysis of Korean collective memory shows that Ahn’s assassination of Ito Hirobumi is heavily emphasized but Ahn’s ultimate goal of bringing peace to Northeast Asia is overlooked. This emphasis is understood through Jan Assmann’s model of collective memory. Based on Aleida Assmann and Linda Shortt’s proposition, it is argued that the historical figure of Ahn can instead play a constructive role. Shifting the focus of collective memory toward Ahn’s ambition for peace in Northeast Asia may serve as a positive nudge for Seoul’s Japan policy, thus helping to ameliorate Korea-Japan relations in the medium term.

Deforestation is a severe environmental problem in North Korea. Beginning in 2001, the government implemented ten-year reforestation projects with few positive outcomes. Inter-Korean forestry cooperation began in 1999. Local governments and NGOs were the main implementers of cooperative projects from South Korea. The two Koreas had also been seeking financial and technical support from international organizations. This study examines the cooperative networks between government agencies, NGOs, and international organizations and financing possibilities to identify the reasons why so little has been accomplished. It also provides a meaningful contribution to the understanding of comparative relationships among the stakeholders and practical recommendations to improve the effectiveness of cooperative forestry programs in North Korea.

This article looks into how media representations of North Korean defectors reproduce the images of North Korean defectors, while paying particular attention to the contrasting voices of North Korean defectors which reflect self-presentation. The media-perpetuated image of North Korean defectors as displaced victims whose memories are mostly clustered around the oppressive regime fails to grasp the intersection of aspiration, determination, and agency of North Korean defectors. The self-presentation of North Korean defectors reveals that they are eager to be in charge of constructing and controlling their own images, which goes beyond hitherto nationalized, gendered, and ethnicized identities. Self-presentation, at the same time, is a product of strategic choices conditioned by social discourse and media representation.

The arrival of many Yemeni people on Jeju Island in 2018 to seek asylum became a mega-political issue in South Korea. This article investigates two questions. First, how and why have Yemeni asylum seekers suddenly become the focus of securitization concerns in South Korea? And second, how have these concerns affected the government’s responses? We argue that three key factors—the influence of media on the refugee crisis in Europe, the Yemenis’ race, gender, and religious background, and South Korea’s internal political and economic situation—have intersected with each other and produced the securitization of Yemeni migration. Amidst highly contested political debates on the protection of forced migrants in South Korea, the state has strictly controlled the border but showed contradictory refugee policies.

In this article, the limits and possibilities of Korean unification education is critically examined and compared with the peace process on the Korean Peninsula for overcoming division from the perspective of peace education. For the purpose of becoming a single unified Korea, the direction of unification education has been presented within a hostile frame to cultivate attitudes and values for its own sake. Peace education in a divided society refers to a collective effort to transform the situation of hostile division into peaceful coexistence and rapprochement. In this context, unification education for overcoming the division of the Korean Peninsula should be established as the subject of critical peace education according to the global standards of Sustainable Development Goal 4.7.

This article focuses on a seven-year legal battle initiated against the Japanese government in the 1970s by a South Korean illegal entrant and its historical significance. Son Jin-doo, a victim of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, demanded the Korean hibakusha receive the same medical and legal rights that the Japanese hibakusha had been granted since 1957. His legal case contributed to bringing Japan’s long-forgotten colonial past to the surface and raised the question of why many Koreans resided in Japan during the colonial era. Additionally, the trials revealed the different legal statuses of Japanese hibakusha and overseas hibakusha. Son Jin-doo was a pioneer in asserting the rights of the latter and raised consciousness about the abandonment of the Korean A-bomb survivors.

Using the framework of centripetal and centrifugal force, this article analyzes alternating periods of peace and conflict in South Korea-Japan mutual perceptions since 1998 when the two nations took unprecedented conciliatory actions. Centripetal force is comprised of political leaders’ reconciliation initiatives, restrained historical/territorial disputes, and common security threats. Centrifugal force incorporates heated historical/territorial disputes, political leaders’ use of those disputes for their political purposes, and divergent security priorities. This article suggests that top political leaders in both nations can play a significant role in improving or aggravating mutual perceptions between the two neighbors. However, political leaders’ conciliatory initiatives are a necessary but insufficient condition in reconciling the two former adversary states.

How would North Korea’s development of the capability to target the United States with nuclear weapons influence its foreign policy? I argue that it would cause more dangerous crises than those of the last decade, and predict that these crises would eventually cause Kim Jong Un and his senior military associates to experience fear of imminent nuclear war or conventional regime change. I show that the effect of such fear would depend on whether or not Kim believes that he has control over the occurrence of these events. I argue that if he experiences fear and believes that he has some control over whether these extreme events actually happen, he will moderate his nuclear threats and behave more like other experienced nuclear powers. But if he experiences fear and believes that he has no control, he will likely pursue policies that could cause nuclear war. I use this insight to prescribe and proscribe policies for Washington, Seoul and the regional community.