한미 동맹과 한중 전략적 협력 관계：G2시대 한국의 전략적 선택을 중심으로

Abstract

The critical key for the 21th century’s peace and prosperity in the Korean Peninsula will be a path-dependent way of Korea-US alliance and Korea-China relationship. Korea-US alliance was established at the beginning of cold war with combination of US security interest for containment policy toward Soviet Union and Korean security interest for North Korean threat. Korea- China relationship was developed with the initiative of China’s open-door policy and Korea’s northward policy. The relationship remarkably achieved economic and human exchanges but the region’s security structure of alliance system restrained development of security and military relationship. Not withstanding that growing economic interdependence surrounding Korean peninsula raised the indispensability of balance between economic and security structure, Korean’s embedded preference for the value of Korea-US alliance is highly deep. This fairly reflects that the institution of Korea-China relationship has been less developed than that of Korea-US relationship. With the being of North Korea as an independent variable Korea-China relationship will not be accepted as an substitute for Korea-US relationship by Korean people. There is a reality, at least in nominal term, that Korea-US defense treaty might clash with North Korea-China treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance. Therefore, to get over the dilemma of alliance system, whether entrapment or abandonment, there necessarily requires a multilateral security cooperative institution in Northeast Asia. The settlement of North Korean nuclear matter and change of North Korea’s policy will be a turning point for a start of imagining the institution. As for Korea, institutional design for the multilateral security cooperative organization should be searched for the sake of Korea to establish the perpetual peace system in Korean peninsula sharing interests and concerns of neighboring big powers.