Nuclear crises, propaganda and espionage, a clash of ideologies – the Korean peninsula is the only place in the world where the Cold War lingers. This persistence is the result of the 1953 Armistice Agreement and the apparent neorealist policies employed by North Korea. Despite the problems with neorealism and its appropriately dwindling popularity, it remains a useful lens through which to understand the conflict on the peninsula, and the defensive realist reactions on the part of China and South Korea.
Rather than asserting that realism or its offshoots are the ultimate International Relations grand theories, I suggest that neorealism remains a crucial aspect of IR security theory. The offensive realist behavior of the DPRK and the defensive realist policies of China and the South Korea serve to illustrate the unfortunate but continued significance of neorealism within international relations.
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