New Approaches to the Trilateral Cooperation between South Korea, North Korea and Russia

Abstract

Strengthening the level of integration and connectivity between the Korean Peninsula, Eurasia, and the Russian Far East/Siberia regions is at the core of the three-decade-old trilateral cooperation project. The goal is to create a new growth engine for the Northeast Asian region by expanding the economic dynamism of the Korean Peninsula to the Russian Far East and Siberia via North Korea, making full geographical advantage of the shared borders between Russia and the Korean Peninsula. The vision of the trilateral cooperation has been of particular interest to the parties since it was initially proposed in that it may help them establish a new value chain across Northeast Asia, and increase interdependencies between the countries involved by easing the hard-line and security-oriented stance prevailing in the region. The question that needs to be answered here is: how is it possible a vision that is bilaterally supplementary and beneficial to all parties is still unrealized?