This year marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation. At the same time, it marks the 70th year of a divided Korean peninsula. For this reason, the 2015 KINU-CKLS joint project on inter-Korean law and policy holds special meaning for its participants and all those concerned with its outcome. In 2013, the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) in Seoul and the Center for Korean Legal Studies (CKLS) at Columbia Law School in New York began a 5-year joint project aimed at establishing in the United States an ongoing forum on the law and policy of inter-Korean relations and unification. The mission of the project has been to bring these topics to a wider international audience and to seek the participation of international scholars and experts in searching out new perspectives and proposals for advancing peaceful relations on the peninsula and a stable path to unification. Now in its third year, the project has produced three volumes of research, including the present one, on a number of critical issues related to the ongoing development of inter-Korean relations and prospects for unification. In its first year, the project held a closed workshop that explored a number of foundational issues, including the historical and geopolitical roots of the Korean division, the challenge of addressing calls for transitional justice mechanisms, and preliminary legal considerations aimed at unraveling the complex and “special” legal status of the inter-Korean relationship in international law. In its second year, the project held a second closed workshop and seminar that sought to develop the international perspective of the project. Topics included the South’s policy of “trustpolitik” and its relationship to international cooperation, the impact of the U.S.-China rivalry in the region, questions of sovereignty and the limits of legalization on inter-Korean questions, legal approaches to Korea-related security issues, and legal perspectives on inter-Korean industrial development and the recent UN findings on the North Korean human rights situation.

Foreword 1 Contributors 11 I. Prospects for Inter-Korean Relations after 70 years of Division: Historical, Regional and Legal Perspectives 21 A. Historical and Legal Perspectives on Inter-Korean Relations in a Regional and Global Context 21 B. Regional Cooperation, Inter-Korean Relations and the Unification Process 135 II. Inter-Korean Relations in a Globalizing World: Systemic Considerations and Current Issues 209 A. Global and Systemic Considerations 209 B. Current Issues: International Investment and Cyber Security 289