What Set Off the Korean Conflict of 1950? Interests, Reputation, and Emotions

Emmanuel Petit (1)

1 GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée

In April 2018, a historic meeting took place between the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, and the president of South Korean Moon Jae-In, starting with a highly symbolic handshake in the demilitarized zone separating their two countries. This came as a cooperative move that helped greatly to pave the way to the ground-breaking US-North Korea summit in June 2018 (as studied by Mark Young in his chapter “Playing Red and Playing Blue : The Run up to the Trump/Kim Singapore Summit” in this volume) and later in February 2019. As the whole world still watches two countries that are theoretically still at war and wonders if the two Koreas will be able to sign a peace treaty (only an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, at the end of the conflict that began in 1950), I will review, following Jonathan Mercer’s analysis (2013), the unexplored affective reasons why military conflict took place between these countries.

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Emmanuel Petit. What Set Off the Korean Conflict of 1950? Interests, Reputation, and Emotions. Landmark Negotiations from Around the World – Lessons from Modern Diplomacy, Intersentia, In press. ⟨hal-02872091⟩