천안함 사태가 북핵 6자회담에 미치는 영향: 동북아 평화안보협력체제 구축에 미치는 영향을 중심으로

Abstract

The 2.13 Agreement on North Korean nuclear program is based on the premise that the countries concerned will Northeast Asian security issues through mutual security cooperation. Indeed, there were discussions about the constitution of a multilateral security regime to settle Northeast Asian security problems before the Agreement, but they bore no great fruit. The 2.13 Agreement is different in many ways from the previous debates on a Northeast Asian multilateral security regime in that it presents concrete and realizable methods to organize such regime. But now that the Cheonan's sinking has proved to have been provoked by the North Koreans, it is foggy whether the Agreement will be fulfilled and whether the six-party talks will be resumed. The present study addresses what influence the Cheonan incident will have on the construction of a Northeast Asian peace and security system. First, this study looks into the design and limitations of the system the working group for the six-way talks is working on as well as the progress of the talks. Lastly, the study estimates the future effects of the Cheonan on the building of the Northeast Asian peace and security mechanism. The Cheonan incident represents the limitations of the regulations on bilateral relations, as seen in the South-North Basic Agreement, in the solution of the Korean Peninsula issues. Furthermore, it enables the six-party talks countries to recognize that a Northeast Asian multilateral security regime needs to be built to resolve the Korean Peninsula problems and improve the Northeast Asian security environment. Despite such necessity and common recognition, the possibility does not seem to be high that such regime will be constructed in the short term. This is because such construction is fully associated with the settlement of North Korean nuclear issues.