Deterrence Dilemmas on the Korean Peninsula
February 28, 2023 – Prompted by growing tension, Ambassador of the European Union to the Republic of Korea H.E. Maria Castillo-Fernandez, Senior Fellow at the ASAN Institute for Policy Studies Dr. Go Myung-Hyun, and Reuters Senior Correspondent Josh Smith address the increasingly intricate issues of extended deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and their impact on regional security and nonproliferation. Embedded in the context of a nuclear North Korea and the US-ROK alliance, the topic also raises questions of credibility. What about it is making conservatives rally for South Korea to acquire its own nuclear deterrent, and will these measures be sufficient to strengthen the deterrent message to North Korea?
Moderator and Professor Mason Richey facilitated the discussion as our panelists pulled from their respective fields of expertise to comprehensively assess major indicators, areas of concern, and expected implications.
Moderator
Mason Richey is a senior contributor at Asia Society Korea and an associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Seoul, South Korea). Dr. Richey has also held positions as a POSCO Visiting Research Fellow at the East-West Center (Honolulu, HI) and a DAAD Scholar at the University of Potsdam.
His research focuses on U.S. and European foreign and security policy as applied to the Asia-Pacific. Recent scholarly articles have appeared (inter alia) in Pacific Review, Asian Security, Global Governance, and Foreign Policy Analysis. Shorter analyses and opinion pieces have been published in War on the Rocks, Le Monde, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, and Forbes, among other venues.
Panelists
Maria Castillo Fernandez, European diplomat/official of Spanish nationality, is now Ambassador of the European Union to the Republic of Korea. Previously, she served as EU Ambassador in Malaysia from 2016-2020, as Head of Division for India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh since September 2012 at the European External Action Service of the European Union, in charge of managing and coordinating the European Union's overall relations with these South Asian countries as well as with the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
From 2008 to September 2012, she was posted in Hong Kong, representing the EU as the Head of the Office of the European Union accredited to Hong Kong and Macao SARs.
Dr. Go Myong-Hyun is a senior research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Previously, Dr. Go was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research applies quantitative perspectives to traditional and non-traditional security issues, with special focus on North Korea, sanctions enforcement, and security and strategic dimensions of technology.
Dr. Go’s latest publications include Not Under Pressure: How Pressure Leaked of North Korea Sanctions (2020) and The Rise of Phantom Traders: Russian Oil Exports to North Korea (2018). Dr. Go received a B.A. in Economics and M.A. in Statistics from Columbia University in the City of New York, and a Ph.D. in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California.
He is a Munich Young Leader of Munich Security Conference 2015, and is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the ROK Ministry of National Defense, Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
