Security has been a dominant concept of inquiry for the study of international relations, foreign policy or domestic contexts. It has led to the development of diverse approaches to its definition, interpretation, and application. Obviously, this development can be interpreted along the lines of world history from the 2nd World War onwards, from the beginning of the Cold War and the so-called bi-polar world order to the fall of the "iron curtain" and further to what some scholars view as the new, multi-polar world since the turn of the millenium. Another angle may be the division into traditional and non-traditional security issues and the development of new topics that gradually became entangled with security, either globally, regionally or domestically.
Many of the related issues and questions crystallise in the context of the Korean peninsula, and not only with the onset of the North Korean nuclear crisis. In this seminar, we will attempt to identify and interpret a number of security issues which in the literature oftentimes are characterised as dilemmas for South Korea. Beginning with the interwar period 1945/48-1950, we will build a solid foundation to help us understand and analyse South Korea's contemporary situation around these issues using appropriate theoretical tools.
- Kursleiter/in: Florian Günther Pölking