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Bernd Schaefer Interviewed by VOA about NKIDP Working Paper #2, "<i>Overconfidence Shattered: North Korean Unification Policy, 1971-1975</i>."

Schaefer described how in the wake of the North Vietnamese victory, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung sought Chinese assistance in reunifying the Korean peninsula by force after negotiations between North and South were halted.

CWIHP Senior Scholar Bernd Schaefer was interviewed by Voice of America on NKIDP Working Paper #2, "Overconfidence Shattered: North Korean Unification Policy, 1971-1975."

In the interview, Dr. Schaefer described how in the wake of the North Vietnamese victory, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung sought Chinese assistance in reunifying the Korean peninsula by force after negotiations between North and South were halted. Kim was ultimately dissuaded by Chinese leaders, who did not want to jeopardize the Sino-U.S. rapprochement by once again supporting North Korean military adventurism in an invasion of South Korea.

Bernd Schaefer is a senior scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project, an associate with the Parallel History Project, and former research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington. Dr. Schaefer's publications include "North Korean "Adventurism" and China's Long Shadow, 1966-1972" (CWIHP Working Paper No. 44).

Read the article in Korean at the Voice of America website.
 

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