북한과 일본 관계 : 접근의 동인과 결별의 구조

Abstract

This study analyzed the drive for both countries' attempt at relationsimprovement through the analysis of the three cases of ending in failure thoughNorth Korea and Japan attempted to improve mutual relations, and alsoanalyzed the structural restrictions that led their attempt into an unavoidablerupture. The relative cases of failure in both countries' attempt include the attemptat improvement of relations in the 1950s; talks on diplomatic ties establishmentin the early 1990s, and summit talks between North Korea and Japan in theearly 2000s. As a result of the analysis, this study was able to learn that thereexisted a considerable difference in the drive for both countries' commitmentto relations improvement. From the position of North Korea, their improvement in relations with Japanwas a very vital issue at a systematic level, whereas Japan attempted at relationsimprovement for the reason of diplomatic horizon expansion, or their domesticpolitics. Due to such a difference in the drive between them, North Korea couldn'tbut assume a low posture in the process of negotiations, which led NorthKorea into acceptance of a considerable part of Japan's requests. Nevertheless,the reason for all the above three failure cases lay in the structural restrictions Japan had. In other words, in case of Japan, limited is their autonomy of breakingout of the US world strategy; moreover, they aren't equipped with the abilityto give an impetus to improvement in relations with North Korea from theperspective of domestic politics as well. The drive in an approach and structural restrictions of a split, as revealedin these three cases still remain in status quo without any sign of changes;consequently, presumably, it won't be easy for North Korea and Japan toachieve relations improvement for the time to come.