Event

While the US and China were starting the process of normalizing their relations in the early 1970s, the two Koreas engaged in their very first dialogue since the Korean War. Behind the façade of the peaceful talks, however, Seoul and Pyongyang were building up and modernizing their armed forces while militarizing their societies. Using declassified intelligence data and diplomatic documents from South Korea, the US, and former countries of the Eastern Bloc, I examine how and why inter-Korean military competition intensified during the détente period, culminating in the security crisis of 1976. Triggered by the Panmunjom axe murders, the stand-off was the Korean version of the Cuban missile crisis: the two Koreas narrowly but consciously avoided full-scale war; yet the arms race continued and persists to this day. This analysis serves as a case-study in the development of a cold war conflict and problematizes the notion of détente.