Should the U.S. Continue to Pursue the Six-Party Talks?

By Joseph D. Ryu

Final Paper for
Strategies in International Relations

Spring 2011

Abstract

Over the last half of the century, the Korean peninsula has been in a state that it had not been in for thousands of years. It has been divided between the North and the South, more specifically on the 38th Parallel North of the circle of latitude. With the North being supported by the Soviet Union and the South by the United States, the divided Koreas developed into who they are now through the separate decisions that both countries made throughout the Cold War onto today. Early on, North Korea obtained the Soviet’s support to build nuclear weapons and this became America’s most significant threat from North Korea. This had led to the implementation of a series of multilateral meetings called the Six-Party Talks in 2003, designed to find a peaceful resolution to the security concerns of nuclear proliferation in North Korea. The six nation states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the People’s Republic of China (China), the United States of America, the Russian Federation (Russia), and the State of Japan (Japan) began meeting in 2003 but stopped meeting in 2009 when North Korea pulled out of the talks because of a disapproval by the United Nations Security Council of North Korea’s actions. By exploring different perspectives of international relations theories, this paper hopes to find the answer to the question of whether or not the United States of America should continue to pursue a multilateral dialogue in engaging North Korea and provide policy recommendations for the United States in regards to its approach towards North Korea post Six-Party Talks.

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