Japan's Defence: Challenges and Future Directions

This chapter provides an initial and cautious assessment of President Park’s foreign policy overtures in her first year or so in office, focusing in particular on her policy towards North Korea. It is perhaps too early at this stage to pass a definitive judgement on the President’s approach, but it is useful to consider how effective she has been in translating principle into practice when dealing with North Korea, and how much strategic vision she has shown in developing her foreign policy priorities in the face of a number of distinctive and urgent foreign policy challenges. Perhaps the most striking element of Park’s policy towards North Korea has been her attempt to walk a middle path between the pro-engagement forces of the left in Korea, associated with the late President Kim Dae-Jung and President Roh Moo-hyun and the more hawkish approach of conservative leaders such as Lee Myung-bak, her immediate presidential predecessor. © 2015 Routledge.