Can positive domestic messages generated by a foreign policy of engagement toward another country change public views regarding that state? How resistant are such changes to events that contradict the positive messages? I argue that while positive government messages about an adversary can significantly improve public opinion, highly consequential foreign policy events that contradict the messages influence public opinion at the cost of elites’ ability to shape it through their messages. Such differing effects can lead to a polarization of opinion when the content of the messages and the nature of events diverge from each other. Leveraging the unpredictability of North Korea’s foreign policy behavior, the South Korean government’s sustained policy of engagement toward it during the years 1998–2007, and North Korea’s first two nuclear tests to examine the relative impact of consequential foreign policy events and elite messages on public opinion, I find strong evidence consistent with this argument.

Do women respond in different ways to foreign policy events and elite messages compared to men? This article integrates the literature on gender and conflict with that on public opinion to examine how gender matters for the effect of elite messages and national security events on public opinion regarding a foreign adversary. We theorize that women’s opinions of an adversary are more likely than men’s to be influenced by national security events because of the higher value they attach to the costs of conflict. Our empirical analysis takes advantage of the natural setting of inter-Korea relations, which includes unpredictable, thus plausibly exogenous, real-world national security events instigated by North Korea and contrasting messages regarding North Korea by South Korea’s elites during this timeframe. Using annual survey data from a nationally representative sample of South Koreans about attitudes toward North Korea from 2003 to 2016, we find that foreign policy events of high consequence for national security have a greater negative impact on women’s opinions. This is the case even in the face of positive elite messages that contradict those events.

This paper seeks to explain the split in the South Korean Democratic Labor Party (DLP). To do so, it traces the process leading up to this split, from the heated debates among the main factions after the North Korean nuclear test in October 2006, through the response within the party to the Ilsimhoe case (where party officials were tried in court for allegedly spying for the North Korean authorities), to the DLP Congress in February 2008, which finalised the break-up of the party. It argues that the exacerbating effect that these events had on cleavages between the main factions within the DLP regarding its relationship with the regime in North Korea, or what this paper refers to as the 'Northern Question,' was the key factor leading to the split in the DLP. Implications beyond the DLP are discussed in the conclusion.

To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public’s negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public’s priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that “history” trumps security.

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