Understanding the ROK–U.S. Missile Guidelines

Why did the ROK–U.S. alliance go through a process of alleviation by finding consensus rather than dividing when facing conflict over missile guidelines? What underlying principles operated between the two countries? This study aims to address these questions. As a result of a literature review, an analysis of the process of moving from conflict to alleviation in the Missile Guidelines along the timeline from the Park Chung-hee administration to the Kim Dae-jung administration, the Lee Myung-bak administration, and finally the Moon Jae-in administration shows that the occurrence of a “policy tradeoff” led to the transition from conflict to deescalation. Here, the author introduces the concept of a “policy tradeoff,” which in this study refers to the exchange of policies to maintain cooperative relations amid conflicting national principles. Through a case analysis, the author finds conflicting principles of “self-defense” in the ROK and “non-proliferation” in the United States. Consequently, the ROK aligned with the non-proliferation principle of the United States by pursuing denuclearization while the United States relaxed missile development restrictions in alignment with the ROK’s self-defense principle. The purpose was to transition the phase of conflict between the two nations regarding the ROK’s missile development to a phase of cooperation. Here, the ROK–U.S. Missile Guidelines underwent a gradual shift from conflict to cooperation based on the notion of a “policy tradeoff.” KCI Citation Count: 0