한반도 전략도서 개념, 판단과 운용방안

Abstract

With the ongoing forecast that ground natural resources someday will be depleted world wide, many nations around the world are exerting national efforts to secure control and sovereignty over seas around the world. The world wide effort of expanding the nation's maritime sovereignty has led countries to change their view and perception about the value and importance of islands. It has also accelerated the competition to incorporate islands and international waters to the nation's sovereign territory. Now, strategic islands have become a critical factor for securing maritime territory and marine resources, and the effective management of these islands have become a must than a choice in terms of national security. However, due to the security environment such as the conflict between North and South Korea, Republic of Korea has neglected the importance and value of the strategic islands around the Korean Peninsula, and have lacked efforts and roles we could have taken such as developing concepts for the management of the islands. Now it is a time in which we must develop the roles and the management concepts of these strategic islands taking into account the changes in the security environment between the North and South, and the increase of maritime influence of surrounding nations. The research aims to effectively define and develop the concept of these strategic islands and its management in order to overcome the situation in which the importance of these islands are increasing due to the change of the security environment, yet the military-strategic value of islands have not been determined. Firstly, the thesis looks at existing theories and literature of strategic islands and provides a definition of the national strategic islands from an analytical perspective. The term was defined using the logical backings from case studies of strategic islands of other countries (i.e. Kinmen Islands and Okinawa). Based on this, the thesis selects Baengnyeong-do Island, Jeju-do Island, Ulleungdo-do Island as Korea's strategic islands, then provides an overall management plan of the selected islands including roles, missions, threat readiness posture, operation execution system. Only the broad direction and criteria were suggested due to a limitation of data, however, the thesis contributes to the existing literature in that it provides a definition of the nation's strategic islands, and its role and mission from a logical framework. I hope that this research could be the stepping stones for the further development and contemplation about the roles and management plans of Korea's strategic islands.