Min-hyung Kim’s research while affiliated with Kyung Hee University and other places

The main goal of this article is to analyze the conditions under which South Korea would decide to go nuclear. It seeks to examine the key factors that would trigger Seoul's decision for nuclear‐arming. The article contends that South Korea is likely to go nuclear under the following conditions: where South Koreans' demands for nuclear weapons continue to rise despite US security assurances; where Pyongyang's threats of its nuclear weapons attacks are increasingly directed towards Seoul as opposed to Washington; where US security assurances for South Korea become highly questionable; and where potential nearby proliferators (Japan and Taiwan, in particular) go nuclear. Any single one of these conditions might not be enough for Seoul's decision to nuclearize, but when at least any two of them are fulfilled at the same time, South Korea is highly likely to go nuclear.

North Korea’s economic and technological backwardness does not seem to allow Pyongyang to possess proficient cyberwarfare capabilities. Yet, North Korea’s cyber offensive capabilities are a major security threat in a new convergence space called the cyber–physical space (CPS) that connects the real world and the virtual world. How has North Korea become a formidable actor in the CPS, despite economic and technological disadvantages? Put differently, what makes North Korea a global cyber power despite its disconnect from international society? What are North Korea’s motivations behind strengthening its cyber capabilities in recent decades and what implications do these hold for international security? The primary objective of this article is to examine North Korea’s motivations for strengthening its cyber capabilities and analyze their implications for the sustainability of stability and peace on the Korean peninsula and beyond. By investigating the exemplary cases of North Korea’s recent cyberattacks, it seeks to explore the effective ways to manage the risks that North Korea’s enhanced cyber proficiencies pose in the current and future CPS.

Given the limits of the prevailing hedging account for Seoul’s puzzling behavior that is in conformity with the interests of its adversary (i.e. North Korea) and potential threat (i.e. China) rather than those of its principal ally (i.e. the United States) and security cooperation partner (i.e. Japan), this article emphasizes the impact of the progressive ideology on Seoul’s security policy. In doing so, it calls for attention to a domestic source of ideology in explaining the security behaviors of a secondary state, which is under-researched and thus is poorly understood.

This article seeks to provide a theoretically compelling account for North Korea’s strategic choice to go nuclear and explores its implications for East Asian security. Its main research question is as follows: despite the obvious risks of going nuclear, what makes North Korea so desperate in its pursuit of nuclear capabilities? Contrary to the extant accounts that only emphasize either nonsecurity variables or an “external security” factor, this article conceptualizes North Korea’s security considerations as “regime survival” and explains its strategic choice from it. The central thesis of this article is that North Korea’s decision to go nuclear is a strategic choice, of which the purpose is to achieve its goals of safeguarding independence from external powers as well as ensuring regime security. North Korea pursues nuclear weapons because they not only protect Pyongyang’s regime from foreign aggressions but also help to consolidate Kim Jong-un’s domestic power. North Korea also seeks nuclear weapons in order to safeguard its independence and autonomy from China because the removal of China’s influence is critical to ensuring its regime survival in the long run. North Korea’s strategic choice to go nuclear and its emergence as a de facto nuclear power have significant implications for East Asian security.

The main purpose of this article is to critically examine the EU’s policies toward North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. By analyzing the EU’s approach to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, this article contributes to the debate about what kind of an actor the EU really is—i.e., whether it is a military power, a civilian power, or a normative power—in the security arena of world politics. As an autocratic regime with fundamental problems in relation to the proliferation of WMD and human rights, North Korea presents a good test case for considering the contested concept of EU’s international identity. The central thesis explored in the present article is that the EU is, strictly speaking, neither a military, nor a civilian, nor a normative power. That said, the EU’s international identity is closest to the concept of a global civilian power.

Purpose According to the conventional wisdom, trade is not a zero-sum game, but a positive-sum game. By allowing countries to focus on producing the goods that they can produce relatively efficiently, free trade is largely beneficial for everyone involved. Then, why are the world’s two largest economies (i.e. the USA and China) currently engaged in a trade war, which is likely to hurt their own economies? What is the driving force for the trade war between the two economic giants? The purpose of this paper is to offer an explanation of the underlying cause of the US–China trade war. Design/methodology/approach In an effort to make sense of the trade war between the USA and China, the paper draws the insights from the two international relations theories – i.e. hegemonic stability theory and power transition theory. Findings As China continues to threaten US hegemony in the world in general and East Asia in particular, the Sino–US competition for hegemony will intensify over time. As a result, the trade war between the two countries may persist longer than many anticipate. Further, even if the trade war between the two superpowers ends soon, a similar type of conflict is likely to occur later as long as the Sino–US hegemonic rivalry continues. Originality/value The central thesis of this paper is that “US fear” about its declining hegemony and China’s rapid rise as a challenger of US hegemony is driving a US-launched trade war with China. Since the underlying cause of the trade war between the world’s two largest economies is political (i.e. the Sino–US hegemonic rivalry) rather than economic (e.g. US attempts to improve the trade balance with China by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods), the paper contends that the full understanding of the trade war requires close attention to the importance of power competition between the two superpowers.

This article seeks to critically assess the relevance of International Relations Theory (IRT) for East Asia International Relations (IR). After identifying the shortcomings of IRT in explaining East Asia IR, the article provides several ways to modify it with a goal to make it more suitable for East Asia IR. Its central claim is that the IRT’s bias toward European experiences and great power politics generates unsatisfactory accounts for and inaccurate predictions about East Asia IR. This does not mean, however, that we should treat IRT as completely irrelevant and develop an indigenous theory of East Asia IR. Given that no single theory is complete and perfectly relevant across time and space and that many core concepts and key variables of IRT are also pertinent for East Asia IR, our efforts should instead be made to refine the existing IRT and make it more suitable for East Asia IR by problematising its major assumptions and central claims on the basis of East Asian experiences. This will save IRT from being a region-specific and a country-specific theory of IR.

This article presents an analysis of South Korea’s strategic choices over the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in light of the Sino–US competition in post-Cold War East Asia. South Korea’s puzzling behavior here represents Seoul’s hedging strategy against the uncertain future of the Sino–US competition in East Asia. The driving force of South Korea’s hedging behavior is Seoul’s dual concerns about being excessively dependent on the USA for its security at the time of China’s rapid rise on the one hand and being pulled into a growing China’s sphere of influence at the expense of traditional US–ROK security ties on the other. Reflecting Seoul’s prudent balancing acts between the two superpowers, South Korea’s hedging often results in apparently indecisive and underdetermined strategic choices in the face of the intensifying Sino–US competition. Nevertheless, South Korea’s hedging strategy allows Seoul to deepen extensive economic ties with Beijing while maintaining a traditional security alliance with Washington. The hedging behavior of South Korea, which is uniquely positioned as a strategic partner of rapidly rising China as well as a key security ally of the rebalancing USA, sheds important light on the behavior of middle powers in alliance politics, which has largely been neglected in the current literature.

The Sino–DPRK relationship had often been described, at least until the end of the Cold War, as one of “lips and teeth” or “blood-cemented” brothers. However, remarkable changes in the previously strong Sino–DPRK relations have been observed in recent years. Most importantly, the DPRK has ignored the People's Republic of China's repeated warnings to withhold nuclear tests, instead conducting them five times in a row since 2006. In response to those tests, China has vehemently criticized the DPRK. In addition, it voted for UN Security Council resolutions that imposed strict sanctions on Pyongyang. China even imposed its own sanctions against the DPRK. The strained relationship between China and North Korea is demonstrated by the fact that China's new president, Xi Jinping, has met South Korea's President Park Geun-hye eight times since he came to office in 2013, whereas he has never had a summit meeting with North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un, who succeeded his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011. What has driven this dramatic change in the relationships of these two military allies? This paper argues that while multiple factors have pushed formerly strong Sino–DPRK relations into a new direction, the three most important factors are mistrust between two allies (historical), diverging interests (strategic), and growing Sino–ROK ties (economic and political).