The Past, Present and Future of SDGs Discussion on the Korean Peninsula: SDGs as a Framework for New Cooperation

The South Korean government and civic groups, which continuously maintained their position on developing cooperative projects with North Korea from a “people-to-people (working together as a homogenous nation) approach,” underestimated North Korea’s interest in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although in 2016, North Korea adopted the Strategic Framework 2017-2021 with UN organisations operating in North Korea as a plan to implement SDGs, it was not enough for the South Korean government and NGOs to pay attention to this new approach. However, North Korea’s Voluntary National Review (VNR) on SDGs in July 2021 became a critical moment, one where the South Korean government and NGOs recognised the necessity of exploring a new cooperation strategy with North Korea through SDGs. The chapter aims to analyse the paradigm change in the approach to North Korea by various stakeholders in South Korea in terms of the internalisation process of exclusion and acceptance of norms. In specific, it examines how the SDGs Framework is replacing the existing people-to-people approach, why such changes were possible on the Korean Peninsula and what these changes mean.