Sanctions, Dialogue and Friendship-Building as a Strategy for Peace

This chapter focuses on South Korea's peace strategy. Even though we cannot see what South Korean approach based on confidence and friendship-building or its alternatives will become in the future, we can trace the global and regional track record of similar policies in the past. The main alternatives to the current Korean strategy that have been presented in the political and scholarly literature are military action, military deterrence and economic sanctions. The chapter adjusts the track record of these options to the conditions of the Korean Peninsula. Then it compares the track record of these alternative options with the track record of the chosen policy option of dialogue with friendship-building. Such a strategy of investigation reveals that in general the Korean strategy is better than its main alternatives, but it also suggests some options for the finetuning of the Korean approach.