07/14/2010

International Conference on Non-Traditional Security Issues

Over the last two decades, governments have learned that “security” can no longer be measured in the hard currency of bombs, bullets and sanctions. The world has recognized that security is not simply two-sided – military and politics – but that it has a fine reeded edge: environmental degradation, food and energy shortage, communicable diseases, drug trafficking, human trafficking, illegal migration, terrorism, cyber terrorism, piracy, and more shape the grooves of what sovereign states now recognize as “non traditional” security threats. In Northeast Asia, such endo/exogenous threats are never more so perceptible – and menacing – than in the case of North Korea.

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty, the Institute For Far Eastern Studies of Kyungnam University and the Center for Korean Research of the University of British Columbia therefore were drawing on the knowledge, expertise and experience of a number of outstanding and discerning scholars and experts, who reexamined traditional and non-traditional security in the context of North Korea by drawing out implications and recommendations for the global community in its ongoing efforts to understand and cooperate with the DPRK.

The conference reviewed various dimensions of non traditional-security issues in North Korea and approached it through multidisciplinary perspectives: political, economic, social, environmental, technical, legal and human security.

The participants came to the general consensus that in order to adequately address non traditional security issues in North Korea we have to circumvent or compromise national security interests of the countries of the region. However the states with responsibilities for national security want to control non traditional security efforts. Traditional and non traditional security threats should concurrently be addressed in a common framework. Non-traditional security issues directly threaten a person’s health, freedom, economic capability, and community and by doing so its social and political impact on the state can be grave.