This paper aims to illustrate the strategies and tactics employed by the Republic of Korea (ROK, or ‘ South Korea ’) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or ‘ North Korea ’) to uphold their respective state autonomy in the face of competing major power intervention between 1948 and 1988. Since 1945, both the ROK and DPRK sought to build a nation by relying on foreign aid and support, mostly from the US and Japan in the South, and from the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China in the North. Broadly, both regimes attempted to articulate a nationalist idea of Korea which would bind and inspire citizens in each domain. The chief purpose of such nation-building strategies in the two Korean states was to develop freedom through autonomy for each administrative entity. The ways in which the two states chose to pursue such an aim were diffe...
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