Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, has digitised a National Security Archive collection on US-Korean relations, expanding the Digital National Security Archives (DNSA) database series. Available for purchase now, "The United States and the Two Koreas: 1969-2000" is stated to cover diplomatic, security and economic relations between the US and its ally, South Korea, as well as challenges to the US posed by an adversarial North Korea.
The collection spans events dating from the Nixon administration's response to the April 15, 1969 downing of a US reconnaissance plane by North Korea to efforts during the Clinton years to deter Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. It seeks to enable researchers to easily search and access these documents via libraries.
The 34th collection in DNSA, "The United States and the Two Koreas" contains more than 1,500 records released by the State Department, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies, as well as historical material compiled through research at the National Archives and the presidential libraries. The many newly-declassified documents in the database are seen to reveal a wide range of significant themes and events, including contingency military plans; growing concern over North Korea's economic instability; various leadership transitions; and political liberalisation in South Korea. Researchers can also explore US-South Korea economic relations, a historic summit meeting between the leaders of South and North Korea in 2000, and secret discussions with other powers, including Japan, China and Russia, aimed at coordinating an international diplomatic response to North Korea's threat to regional security.
DNSA is the online version of the National Security Archive collections, derived from documents on file at the Archive's office in Washington, DC. An independent non-governmental research institute and library located at the George Washington University, the Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It also serves as a repository for government records on a range of topics pertaining to the national security, foreign, intelligence and economic policies of the US. The Archive won the 1999 George Polk Award, a US journalism prize, for "piercing the self-serving veils of government secrecy, guiding journalists in the search for the truth and informing us all".
The Archive obtains its materials through a variety of methods, including use of the Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review processes, and through research in presidential paper collections and congressional and court records. Archive staff members systematically track US government agency and other federal records repositories for documents that have never been released, or that otherwise shed light on the decision-making processes of the US government, and the historical context underlying official decisions. DNSA, its online outlet, is reportedly considered by researchers to be a powerful primary research and teaching tool available for issues related to US foreign policy, intelligence and security affairs.
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