남북러 철도(TKR-TSR) 연결의 정치학 : 과제와 국제협력

Abstract

Since its launch, the Moon Jaein Administration has promoted various cooperative projects with Northern areas, including Russia and Eurasia, in order to derive ripple effects in economics such as diversification of political diplomacy and denuclearization of North Korea. In particular, the ‘East Asian Railway Community’ with a focus on the New Northern Policy was proposed to achieve greater effectiveness of this policy. Even in the face of complex challenges to embody this conception, a variety of international cooperations are currently being pursued to achieve corporeality with northern countries such as Russia and Central Asia. This is part of the plan to complete the Iron Silk Road as an important model for Northeast Asia multilateral cooperation, which connects Northeast Asia and Eurasia through the connection of the continental railways with the Trans Korean Railway (TKR), Trans Siberian Railway (TSR) and Trans China Railway (TCR) to realize the modern version of the Silk Road, which is one of the long-cherished ambitions. In this connection, the progress of North Korea’s denuclearization, which is the biggest obstacle to the development of energy and resources in the Far East region and significant paradigm shifts in transportation in Northeast Asia region through rail transport, will emerge as the biggest issue. Therefore, railway cooperation with Russia is becoming more important to induce the expansion of domestic market and opening of North Korea, and to build an everlasting peace regime on the Korean peninsula through the overland route connection via a the TKR-TSR linkage in the future. In this context, the main purpose of this paper is to seek to intensively examine challenges and international cooperation required for a linkage of the TKR-TSR linkage by the medium of the inter-Korean railway connection, which is a symbol of peace and economic cooperation, with the TSR through which Eurasia connects.