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Implementing a Japanese-Korean Nuclear Weapon Free Zone: Precedents, Legal Forms, Governance, Scope and Domain, Verification and Compliance, and Regional Benefits

Michael Hamel-Green, Dean of and Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development, Victoria University, writes, “The time is now ripe for the leaderships in Korea and Japan to show the same kind of vision that Brazilian and Argentina leaders showed in the early 1990s in averting a nuclear arms race that would have undermined their economic development at the same time as risking future nuclear conflict… we now have a new window of opportunity for denuclearization of Northeast Asia despite the current crisis in relations between the two Koreas.”

Policy Forum 10-049: A New Paradigm for a New North Korea

Lee Byong-Chul, senior fellow with the Institute for Peace and Cooperation (IPC) in Seoul, South Korea, writes, “With a new generation rising to power now is the time to focus on the young North Korean technocrats who are willing to reform their country in a way that can help it develop. This will give the North Koreans incentive to engage the outside world. It’s time the global organizations, in particular the United Nations, should try to steer North Korea toward development and co-existence instead of waiting for it to collapse.”

Political Prospects for a NWFZ in Northeast Asia

Leon V. Sigal, Director, Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, writes, “While broaching the subject of a NWFZ runs political risks, conventional deterrence continues to operate on the Korean Peninsula. The South has long had conventional forces capable of defeating the North, with or without U.S. troops, and the North has long held Seoul hostage to its forward-deployed artillery. The North’s nuclear weapons affect the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula insofar as they could put U.S. forces and bases in Japan at risk.”