The European Union as international actor: the case of the diplomatic engagement with North Korea

Abstract

The European Union is an organization that had and still has great power in the international context. The aim of this thesis is to observe how the EU chose to engage with the delicate case of North Korea and how It was able to start diplomatic ties with it.

The engagement of the EU went from an active one to a phase of “critical engagement”.

In order to understand how this happened there will be an accurate research about the history of EU-DPRK relations. Later on, the point of view of both North Korea and the European Union will be analyzed.

At the end there will be an explanation of why the EU decided to follow the U.S. and stepped back from an active engagement in the Korean peninsula but also in the East Asia peace-keeping problem. Finally, some strategies that the EU could follow will be explained.