ABSTRACT
Set around the 38th parallel, and dividing the Korean peninsula into two parts similar in size, the inter-Korean border separates the two states born after the division of the Korean peninsula following the colonial rule of the Japanese (19101945) defeated in World War II: the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) in the South, former a newly industrialized country, now a developed and postindustrialized society that has encountered rapid democratization since the end of the 1980s; in the North, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), a reforming socialist country, non-democratic, facing a grave crisis of its politico-economic system since the mid-1990s. Still one of the most closed and heavily armed borders on the planet, seemingly a perfect example of a ‘hot border’ crystallizing probable conflicts (Foucher 1991), the inter-Korean border thus remains an awkward outcome of the Cold War in the ‘post-Cold War’ world of the beginning of the twenty-first century.
