In most essays, however, an effort has been made to signal the complex connections between domestic conditions and international relations, as well as the degree to which broader strategic considerations have penetrated the region and its component units. The essays that follow come at a time of considerable fluidity in international relations, East and West. At the same time, the widespread proclamation of nonalignment is part myth, and conceals an important reality of these times. Few if any nations are or can be purely nonaligned. It will be recalled that Burma, one of the nations closest to such a status, withdrew from the Nonaligned Conference because it regarded most members as aligned.
China is a good example.
While proclaiming nonalignment, and notwithstanding its current efforts to improve relations with the USSR, the PRC today pursues tilted nonalignment, and the tilt is toward Japan and the West, especially the United States. As indicated at the outset, these essays seek to capture various facets of an extraordinarily complex and fluid situation at a given point in time. No doubt a reassessment will be warranted within a few years. Nevertheless, all of the essays indicate certain persistent features of North Korea and its foreign policies as well as certain consistent patterns in the evolutionary changes that have taken place that will certainly serve to illuminate the future, whatever its precise course. The conference that engendered these essays was held in Cheju City, Republic of Korea, August 20-23, 1984.