Lessons learned for promoting human security in North Korea

Abstract

North Korea is a conflict-affected state facing the inter-related challenges of underdevelopment and human insecurity, as well as poor governance structures and policies. The international community has a moral obligation to aid the most vulnerable in North Korea-not only because of the latter's entitlement rights due to a shared humanity, but also because of the negative impact of some of the policies that have been adopted toward the DPRK by actors on the international stage. This moral obligation is linked to principles underlying the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) paradigm. In the case of North Korea, however, R2P faces serious obstacles. This paper, therefore, not only looks to how best strategically to engage with North Korea, but also to what lessons can be learned from the study of what can be seen, to a greater or lesser extent, as regional post-conflict development success studies; South Korea, Indonesia, and Vietnam. © 2012 Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.