The New Challenges of Transnational Security in Twenty-First-Century East Asia: The Case of North Korea

In recent years, the concept of security in international relations has been challenged by new emerging trends that have completely overturned the traditional characteristics of this idea. While traditional security was based on the idea of protecting state borders from external, the dramatic changes caused by the advent of globalization led to the emergence of new security threats that go beyond the traditional national dimension of security. At the start of the 21st Century, new transnational security issues began to dominate the agenda of international relations and led to the reinvention of the concept of security by nation-states that could not control and limit these new threats alone any longer. This new perspective on security strongly influenced East Asian countries and transnational security has become a priority also for all the actors in this region. Issues such as terrorism, migration, nuclear proliferation, environmental protection and climate change, health security and disease control have emerged as existential threats that can be effectively addressed only through international cooperation. This approach has proved to be extremely difficult in a region in which supranational institutions and transnational cooperation are very weak, while the traditional aspects of the centrality of nation-state and national security abound. Against this backdrop, North Korea represents a paradigmatic example of a country that has put at the centre of its security policy the pre-eminence of the nation-state dimension and very limited international cooperation, but in recent years has started to face the growing threat of transnational security issues. This chapter aims at exploring the evolution of the concept of security in East Asia in the post-Cold War world and the strategies that the major countries in the region have designed and implemented to address new transnational security issues, with a specific focus on the case of North Korea’s security policy.