ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the likelihood of agreement between North and South Korea on arms control measures in the midterm. Before offering assessment on the prospects, it describes three broad categories of factors that will affect North-South Korean relations. The first factor is the nature of relationships within the six major power dyads—the United States-USSR, the USSR-People's Republic of China (PRC), the United States-PRC, the USSR-Japan, the United States-Japan, and Japan-PRC—that are assumed to affect the nature of interactions between the two Koreas. The second broad category covers the policies of each of the major powers toward the Korean Peninsula. The third category of factors covers trends in domestic developments, political and economic. These factors may be said to comprise an environment in which the leaders of both Koreas must deal with the issue of arms control. A scenario posits a preponderance of power exercised by a hard-line leadership in South Korea seeking to undermine and absorb the North Korean regime.
