Jeju Peace Institute

YI Seong-Woo (Research Fellow, Jeju Peace Institute)

Conventionally, the concept of security used to refer to war, armed provocation or local clashes. Then, the term comprehensive security emerged as a concept expanded to include crises such as natural disasters or calamities or problems with a country’s core infrastructure and with public safety. It is necessary to re-orient our understanding of security-related risk factors at a time when the new security paradigm is displaying a tendency to integrate conventional security with non-traditional security.

With regard to the situation on the Korean Peninsula, security-related risk factors can be classified from a tempo-spatial perspective, as follows: 1) internal risk factors, 2) external risk factors, and 3) those associated with the reunification of the two Koreas.

Internal risk factors existing from the past are composed of 1) ideological conflict, 2) regionalism, and 3) class conflict. External risk factors that have newly emerged amid the increase in exchange and collaboration between South Korea and other countries in the process of globalization include: 1) multicultural integration, 2) cybercrime, 3) international crime/terror threats, and 4) the spread of anti-Koreanism. Risk factors that could emerge in a newly unified Korea include: 1) equal opportunities, 2) integration under the market economy, and 3) cultural heterogeneousness.

This study conducted a statistical analysis based on the results of a survey on the opinions of domestic and foreign experts concerning the aforementioned ten risk factors in three sectors.