Abstract
This opening article presents rationales for the Special Section which analyses South Korea’s debates and discourses on crucial issues related to East Asian regional politics. The article opens with a consideration of why attention is drawn to South Korea and particularly to its discourses. Expanding upon constructivist theoretical insights, this article shows how they matter in foreign policy-making and state behaviour. In addition, the article clarifies the scope of analysis of this Special Section. While recognising that many different actors and issues shape the regional order in East Asia to varying degrees, we hold that the most direct impact on changes and/or continuity in that order comes from state actors in the realm of security (or the security–economy nexus). The article ends on a cautiously optimistic note: although the perspectives and discourses analysed in this Special Section are not exhaustive, the analysis can serve as a useful reference point for discussion that seeks to advance our understandings of how South Korea is likely to behave toward its neighbours and what the future of the East Asian regional order will look like.
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Country or Region: South Korea
Kong, Tat Yan
Abstract
In response to the challenge of unstable North Korea (weak economy, weapons of mass destruction [WMD] development), China has followed an engagement-oriented strategy based on diplomatic persuasion, economic interaction and moderate economic sanctions. Intensified engagement (2009–2012) facilitated North Korean convergence with China in respect of economic reform but divergence has persisted over WMD development. Despite the widening of divergence since 2013, China has refrained from applying crippling sanctions. This article seeks to explain these diverging results and their implications for China’s strategy towards North Korea. Reviewing recent literature and data, it will argue that Chinese economic input reinforced the trend of economic reform that formed the basis of political consolidation under the new hereditary regime. On the other hand, the prospect of stable dependence on China ran counter to that regime’s pursuit of WMDs as the basis of security and diplomatic diversification. These mixed results reveal the limits of China’s strategy: its economic input involuntarily reinforces North Korea’s WMD potential but it is not prepared to accept the risks of enforcing WMD restraint by crippling sanctions either. With limited room for manoeuvre, the attainment of China’s strategic objectives ultimately depends upon policy change from the US or South Korea.
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Zhang, Muhui
Abstract
In recent decades, the development of trilateral institutions among China, Japan and South Korea has begun to take shape. This study analyzes its strengths and weaknesses with regard to the nexus between trilateralism and bilateralism. A well-functioning trilateral grouping needs to overcome two structural limitations – dilution effects and bilateral constraints – both of which are triggered by embedded bilateral approaches. The critical juncture approach is effective in terms of elevating the payoffs of cooperative trilateralism during times of exigency. However, once common crises have dissipated, trilateralism has revealed starkly different performances with respect to functional and political-diplomatic cooperation. This article adopts a dichotomous approach between the two. Functional trilateralism has been steadily growing, and has proven to be less subject to fluctuations in the nations’ political relationships. Its outcomes are positive and worthy of praise. However, the outcomes of trilateralism have been less convincing in fields of middle and high politics. Trilateralism is overwhelmingly subject to fluctuations when its embedded bilateral relations change, and cooperative outcomes within a trilateral grouping are prone to being diluted by bilateral approaches. China–Japan–Korea trilateralism at diplomatic levels remains more an extension of bilateral relations than a mature form of minilateral arrangement.
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Kim, Sung Chull
Abstract
This paper seeks to understand why the United States treated Japan and Korea differently in the revisions of bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements. On the sensitive issue of grating its allies the rights of developing enrichment and reprocessing (ENR), the United States did so for Japan in the 1977 and 1987 revisions, but did not for Korea during the 2015 revision. For the great power as a supplier state, there are two factors affecting the decision: policy-makers’ concern about alliance management prior to the calculation of security outcome, and firms’ commercial interests. In order to avoid damage to the US–Japan alliance and to maintain Japan’s complementation for the US nuclear industry, Washington granted the rights of ENR to Tokyo. In contrast, because of its confidence of managing the US–Korea alliance and partly because of incompatibility of commercial interests between the two, Washington did not grant the rights to Seoul at the 2015 revision. Based on the comparison of the two cases, this paper underscores a need to alter the power projection theory regarding nuclear proliferation by explicating the alliance management as the ex ante element of power projection and by accounting for commercial interests such as fuel sale and technological partnership.
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Saxer, Carl J
Abstract
While the Korea–United States (KORUS) free-trade agreement negotiations were concluded in 2007, and ratified in 2011, the agreement has remained deeply controversial. Labor unions, civil society groups, and opposition politicians in South Korea have criticized the agreement as being unfair, and also in the United States have voices spoken out against the agreement. The process of negotiation by South Korea was deeply flawed, and the conclusion of the agreement, that included a unilateral ratification by the ruling party in National Assembly, was forcefully opposed by many groups in South Korean society with violent demonstrations leading almost to the collapse of the Lee Myung-bak government. This article argues that it was not only the perception of potential economic damage to, in particular agricultural, domestic interest that was the main cause of the public resistance to the agreement, but that the unique nature of the relationship with the United States, and how this influenced the progress of negotiating and ratifying the agreement in South Korea, was a leading course of the divisiveness of the agreement and the massive resistance it faced. This is also why while the conservative Park Geun-hye government has expressed its willingness to re-negotiate other free-trade agreements, it has remained adamant in its refusal to even consider reopening the KORUS agreement. It is not only the apparent trade benefits that accrued to South Korea that is behind this refusal. With the ruling party having lost the April 2016 National Assembly elections and presidential elections scheduled for December 2017, the conservative elite, concerned about its electoral fate, has no interest in re-opening such a divisive issue as the KORUS free-trade agreement.
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Horesh, Niv
Abstract
The political-economic evolution of post-Mao China has been portrayed as a historically inevitable embrace of neoliberalism; as an exemplification of the East Asian developmental state and as an extension of Soviet New Economic Policy-style state capitalism. This paper evaluates these portrayals through a broad historical and geographical framework. It examines the position of China as a new state after 1949. It then places the shifting logics of socioeconomic regulation in China in relation to (1) the global neoliberal hegemony since the 1980s and (2) the concomitant shifts in the economic policies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how the Communist Party of China creatively adapted and re-purposed regulatory logics from the Washington Consensus and East Asian policies to consolidate its own version of Leninist state-led development.
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Ye, Min
Summary
This book offers a comprehensive examination of China–South Korea relations after their diplomatic normalization in 1992, paying close attention to the most recent controversies in the bilateral relationship after the turn of the century. Inspired by the sharp contrast between their booming economic exchanges and declining political relations in recent years, this book posits that the so-called “end of China–South Korea honeymoon” actually reflects two emerging features in the bilateral relationship. The first is a process of strategic adjustments in East Asia prompted by the new reality of a rising China, and to a lesser extent, a rising South Korea. The second regards both countries’ domestic politics: traditional state autonomy in foreign policymaking is being challenged by better-informed and more assertive general publics who raise, frame, and highlight issues and effectively press their governments for action.
In this book, the developments of China–South Korea relations are analyzed from a broader historical and theoretical perspective. Historically, the developments in the bilateral relationship are seen as a sign of transitions in a changing internal and external context. Theoretically, a comprehensive framework is constructed to integrate intergovernmental interactions (conventional diplomacy), semi- and non-official contacts (public diplomacy), and each country’s domestic political institutions. The analysis reveals a complicated and dynamic process that defines the bilateral relationship in the new century.
Wirth, Christian
Summary
Grounded in extensive empirical research, Danger, Development and Legitimacy in East Asian Maritime Politics addresses the major issues of geopolitics in the region that have been and will continue to shape the international politics of the Asia-Pacific for years to come. Covering the nation-states of China, Japan and South Korea, it includes an examination of the key island disputes, as well as analysis of the North Korea–South Korea clashes in the Yellow Sea, controversies in Japan’s relations with both Koreas and the so-called ‘history disputes’, including recognition of World War II atrocities across the region. In doing so, this book explores a range of themes from the ecological environment to the globalized nature of shipping and therein links the East Asian maritime sphere directly to the dynamics and developments in the domestic politics of each country. Thus, it serves to demonstrate how several controversial debates in the international politics of the Asia-Pacific are ultimately and inextricably intertwined.
A timely contribution that furthers our understanding of contemporary politics of the Asia-Pacific, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, international relations and the Asia-Pacific region in general.
Wang, Chih-ming, and Pei Siong Daniel Goh, eds
Summary
In the midst of refugee crises, terrorist attacks and territorial disputes across the globe, nationalism remains a powerful force in generating affects of inclusion and exclusion. In Asia, inter-Asian migration, enabled and disrupted by a history of colonialism, capitalist globalization and political conflicts, has rendered the idea of nation as both politically distinct and culturally malleable.
Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia explores the affective politics of Asian nationalism by addressing the entwined structures of precarious belonging and national feelings. Bringing together leading scholars it looks at how the reification of nationalism in social movements, popular sentiments, online groups, and cultural representation directs hatred towards migrant and minority groups across Asia. The book posits that nationalist affects are embedded in the politics of exclusion, and seeks to make room for precarious belongings in the transnational and multicultural present. It should be of interest to students and scholars interested in Asian Cultural Studies, transnationalism, migration and nationalism.
Pitakdumrong, Kaewkamol Karen
Summary
Every international negotiation bears a risk of collapse, as even among like-minded countries, different players often have different priorities and interests. This can result in conflict as states clash over certain agreement details, and their disputes can escalate and founder the entire negotiation, missing an opportunity to realize potential initiatives. However, other circumstances have witnessed the cases of successful deals. This begets a puzzle: What did these states do to salvage their talks and seal their deals?
This book examines East Asian financial negotiation processes and seeks to explain why some negotiations are successful despite the risk of bargaining failure. Using the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) talks as the case study, the book analyses how states with little prior experience at dealing with certain aspects of an agreement manage to avert negotiation failure and successfully conclude their final deal. Using extensive archival research, in-depth interviews with involved negotiators and experts, and process-tracing method, it reconstructs the making of the CMIM agreement. The multi-country analysis reveals the roles played by key actors, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, in shaping the agreement terms. The book goes on to argue that preventing a stalemate or succeeding in concluding arrangements like the CMIM is a product of various strategies and tactics employed by negotiators. These include employing bargaining strategies and tactics that help avoid a negotiation deadlock, and assessing the conditions under which such strategies and tactics are likely – or unlikely – to achieve the objective of avoiding bargaining failure.
As a study of East Asian economic negotiation processes, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of East Asian cooperation and regionalism as well as finance, international business, international relations and international political economy.
Ku, Yangmo, Inyeop Lee, and Jongseok Woo
Summary
Politics in North and South Korea provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the political dynamics of the two Koreas. Giving equal weight to North and South Korea, the authors trace the history of political and economic development and international relations of the Korean peninsula, showing how South Korea became democratized and how Juche ideology has affected the establishment and operation of a totalitarian system in North Korea.
Written in a straightforward, jargon free manner, this textbook utilizes both historical-institutional approaches and quantitative evidence to analyse the political dimensions of a wide variety of issues including:
- Legacies of early-twentieth-century Japanese colonial rule
- South Korean democratization and democratic consolidation
- South Korean diplomacy and North Korean nuclear crises
- The economic development of both North and South Korea
- The three-generation power succession in North Korea
- North Korean human rights issues
- Inter-Korean relations and reunification
This textbook will be essential reading for students of Korean Politics and is also suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on East Asian Politics, Asian Studies, and International Relations.
Hwang, Wonjae
Summary
South Korea has experienced new challenges both internally and externally with respect to its foreign policies. Internally, democratization has changed political terrain for domestic and international politics. Democratization and the information revolution have reinvigorated civic life and citizens have become active in expressing very divergent and often polarized views on foreign policies. Democratization also promotes South Korean nationalism. Rising nationalist sentiments make it difficult for the U.S. to effectively handle regional security-related issues such as the North Korean nuclear program, balancing against China, and dealing with the potential Sino-Japanese conflict.
Externally, globalization has brought significant changes to South Korea’s foreign policies. Economic dimension and issues rather than security-related issues become salient and important. For example, although security concerns are still dominant in Korean society, economic interests necessitate South Korea improve its relations with China and redefine its political position between the U.S. and China. Globalization has also promoted Korea’s national interests to reach out to other countries. The Korean government has tried to develop new economic partnerships with developing countries for the purpose of securing energy and natural resources and expanding its soft power.
Economic globalization and democratization have brought about changes in South Korea that raise many interesting questions with respect to foreign policy. Has South Korea’s rise as an economic power and a democracy changed its relationship with neighboring powers? Does economic integration between South Korea and China reshape their relationship? How about its impact on U.S.-Korea relations? Are geopolitical and security-related concerns still the dominant factor in explaining South Korea’s foreign policies? Does economic integration between Korea and Japan help to reduce tensions or emotional animosities that derive from historical disputes? Has South Korea, as a growing economic power, sought to forge relations with other middle or small powers beyond the confines of its region? Overall, this book theoretically and empirically explores how democratization and economic globalization have changed domestic politics in South Korea and reshaped its foreign policies.
Hensel, Howard M., and Amit Gupta, eds
Summary
A vital component of the interdependent global economy, maritime transit routes are nowhere more critical than those traversing the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. Previously, areas of the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific have been viewed as separate and discrete political, economic, and military regions. In recent years, however, a variety of economic, political, and military forces have created a new understanding of these maritime expanses as one zone of global interaction.
This book complements the material presented in its companion volume, Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, by analysing the perceptions, interests, objectives, maritime capabilities, and policies of the major maritime powers operating in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. In addition, the book also assesses the contemporary maritime challenges and opportunities that confront the global community within what is rapidly becoming recognized as an integrated zone of global interaction.
A valuable study for researchers and policymakers working in the fields of maritime security; military, security and peace studies; conflict resolution; and Asian affairs.
Dittmer, Lowell
Summary
This balanced and deeply informed book provides a comprehensive account of China’s Asia policy since the Cold War. Lowell Dittmer traces the PRC’s policy toward its Asian neighbors in the context of the country’s move from a developing nation to a great power, capable of playing a role in world politics commensurate with its remarkable economic rise. The author considers China’s bilateral relations with Russia, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Australia. Each of these relationships is also viewed in terms of China’s rivalry with the United States, which has viewed China’s rise with admiration tinged with a certain foreboding. Thus, Dittmer employs a triangular analysis to understand Beijing’s attempt to expand in Asia while at the same time deterring Washington’s interference. Reframing the international relations of Asia in a thought-provoking and informed manner, this important book presents a panoramic view of the dynamics at work on all sides of China.
Connors, Michael Kelly, Rémy Davison, and Jörn Dosch
Summary
Now in its new and fully updated third edition, The New Global Politics of the Asia-Pacific continues to provide a compelling analysis of a region undergoing dramatic changes. Based on new research and offering fresh interpretation, this edition evaluates the prospects for continuing US dominance in the ‘Asian Century’. Whilst presenting evidence for a multifaceted ‘Beijing Strategy’, which aims to counter the US by building an alternative regional order, it also explains Japan’s definitive departure from its limited military role. Providing an introductory guide for the main frameworks needed to understand the region, including realism, liberalism and critical theory, this new edition is reader-friendly, and offers sophisticated competing explanations. Key content includes:
- Intra-regional conflicts in the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula;
- The different responses within the Asia-Pacific to the globalization of Western ideas of democracy and political economy;
- The underappreciated success of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in building a regional identity;
- The European Union’s soft power in the region.
A highly topical account, which offers an overview of the main actors, institutions and contemporary issues in the Asia-Pacific, the book will be essential reading for undergraduate students of Asian Studies, International Politics and anyone interested in the region.
