3
Choi 1985; Park 1992; Izumi 1992; Oh 1990). Its numerical superiority of armed forces
and some hardware compared to those of South Korea has been regarded as its general
superiority in national power, and its continuous military buildup has been seen to prove
its offensive intention. However, the long peace in the peninsula after the Korean War in
1950 indicates that the North Korean military threat has been overemphasized like that of
the Soviet Union. North Korea has never had the material capabilities enough to be
prominent over the South, and balance of power around the Korean peninsula has
continuously moved against the North (Kang 2003). In economic area, North Korea was
close to South Korea in the 1960s but quickly fell behind since. Military balance has also
become unfavorable to the North, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The two Koreas
were in rough parity in military capability until the early 1970s, but the North began to
fall behind since. North Korea still possesses more armed forces and hardware than the
South, but the South’s military is more efficient because it is supported by its much
stronger economy. Moreover, South Korea has continuously enjoyed strong U.S.
security guarantee while North Korea lost two major patrons in Russia and China after
the Cold War. Considering these circumstances, what holds for the Korean peninsula
seems just like what looked like the US-Soviet relations during the Cold War. North
Korea has been just a weaker and declining challenger to the South like the Soviet Union
was to the U.S., so that the North has been deterred in the same way that the Soviet
Union was during the Cold War.
In short, both the Soviet Union and North Korea were weaker and declining
nations compared to the United States and South Korea, so that it is logically wrong or
statistically mistaken to argue that such weaker states had windows of opportunity. Then,
Convention