ABSTRACT
If there is one place in the world where the Cold War has not ended, it is the Korean Peninsula. An armistice terminated the Korean War between North Korea and the United States in 1953. Technically, North Korea is still at war with the United States because no peace treaty has been signed between the two former enemies. The end of the Cold War did not bring peace to the peninsula. Instead, the North Korean nuclear crises starting in the early 1990s have threatened regional security for more than two decades. North Korea’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 further intensified antagonisms and hostilities between North Korea and the United States. In March 2010, the South Korean warship Cheonan was sunk, allegedly by a torpedo from the North. In November 2010, a cross-border clash on the island of Yeonpyeong, near a disputed maritime border, killed at least four South Koreans, including two marines. These two military incidents raised tensions on the peninsula to new heights with the stability of the Korean Peninsula in particular and Northeast Asia in general at stake.
