When two triangles fall apart: The new Korean geopolitics



Columns When two triangles fall apart: The new Korean geopolitics Japan talking to the North? China cozy with the South? What’s going on? Aidan Foster-Carter July 2, 2014 SHARE COPY LINK FACEBOOK X LINKEDIN MASTODON Korea China Press Conference - Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Photographer name) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons As I write, North Korea and Japan – two states that could hardly hate each other more – are talking in Beijing. This week China’s president will meet his best Korean friend – in Seoul, not Pyongyang. Both events show how drastically the peninsula’s geopolitics have changed. Gone are the old frozen Cold War dichotomies. Everything is more fluid now. Anything goes. To see how radically things have changed in the last 25 years, let’s take a short ride back on a time machine. In the 1980s I introduced a course that I called Modern Korean Societies (note the plural: © Korea Risk Group. All rights reserved. No part of this content may be reproduced, distributed, or used for commercial purposes without prior written permission from Korea Risk Group. Get the Daily Update & Podcast Updates Start your day with the North Korea stories that matter most – as selected by Trending

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When two triangles fall apart: The new Korean geopolitics

Japan talking to the North? China cozy with the South? What’s going on?

Aidan Foster-Carter July 2, 2014

When two triangles fall apart: The new Korean geopolitics

Korea China Press Conference - Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Photographer name) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

As I write, North Korea and Japan – two states that could hardly hate each other more – are talking in Beijing. This week China’s president will meet his best Korean friend – in Seoul, not Pyongyang. Both events show how drastically the peninsula’s geopolitics have changed. Gone are the old frozen Cold War dichotomies. Everything is more fluid now. Anything goes.

To see how radically things have changed in the last 25 years, let’s take a short ride back on a time machine. In the 1980s I introduced a course that I called Modern Korean Societies (note the plural:

When two triangles fall apart: The new Korean geopolitics

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