Security, Governance, and Operationalizing the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (HDPN) on the Korean Peninsula

Abstract

This chapter examines the evolution of attempts to provide both international systemic security and security for the constituencies of global governance (states and their peoples). It notes how, over time, security provision in both theory and practice, has become increasingly entwined with other governance aspirations and provisions, while at the same time broadening along the x-axis of issues and the y-axis of referent objects of security. The chapter assesses not only the promise of the newly emerging discourse on the humanitarian-development-peace nexus (HDPN), but also continued shortcomings in terms of how it is currently operationalized at the global level, in response to the call to action for a more integrated and human-centered approach to security and governance. It further examines HDPN policymaking in South Korea, an aspirational new normative actor, and how such an approach could be utilized to engage North Korea. The main conclusions are first, that traditional models of security and governance are no longer sufficient to address real-world challenges and conditions; second, that significant progress has been made in the field of non-traditional security (NTS) analysis and the human-centering of governance, as well as the spillover between categories, culminating in the HDPN; but third, that these initiatives are insufficiently developed to allow a robust operationalization in terms of description of causality, prediction of consequences, or governance policy prescription whether for international or national (Korean) governance actors.