China’s LEGAL WARFARE: Origin, Characteristics, Cases, and Its Implication to Security of Korea

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to discuss characteristics of China’s legal warfare and its strate-gic implications to ongoing regional disputes in Asia Pacific. The study aims to present the origin, major characteristics, cases of legal warfare by China. Additionally, the study will argue that China’s legal war-fare will highly likely to be implemented in future politico-military conflicts at the Korean Peninsula, too. Method: This article presents the origin, major characteristics, cases of legal warfare of China, and its possible implications to the security of Korea. In order to proceed the study, various academic references are quoted in this article; including other journal articles, books, and governmental publications. Results: Based on the study, the following findings can be deduced. First, legal warfare of China is originated from the idea of unrestricted warfare in the late 1990s; as an asymmetrical approach to evade military superiority of the U.S and gain strategic initiative at politico-military conflicts in East Asia. Second, the originality of China’s legal warfare is that it uses legal systems as a political and diplomatic weapon: 1)to undermine adversary’s activities; and 2)to justify its own measures at international disputes. Conse-quently, legal warfare by China can be conducted in both offensive and defensive manners. And third, China’s legal warfare is already applied in practice at a number of regional disputes; such as ongoing conflicts at the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait. Conclusion: As strategic competition between the U.S. and China is getting fierce, geopolitical vulner-ability of the Korean Peninsula can be heightened in the present and future. It will make legal warfare by China more substantial challenge to the national security of Korea. Therefore, Korea needs to develop capabilities and systems to effectively deal with threats from China’s legal warfare.