Free trade agreements and “economic territory” as a geoeconomic imaginary in South Korea

Since the early 2000s, the discourse of “economic territory” has surfaced in conjunction with economic neoliberalization in South Korea. This paper argues that economic territory as a geoeconomic imaginary not only facilitated the expansion of free trade agreements as an accumulation strategy but also served as a hegemonic project which masked the nature of an accumulation strategy as a class project and consolidated political legitimacy by manipulating nationalism. To examine this linkage, it critically draws upon the idea of cultural political economy (CPE) developed by Lancaster-based sociologists Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum. This paper offers a fresh and more substantial interpretation of South Korea’s political economy and opens up new analytical space for CPE.     

A Geo-Economic Object or an Object of Geo-Political Absorption? Competing Visions of North Korea in South Korean Politics

Abstract

The so-called Sunshine Policy launched by the liberal regime of South Korea brought about a significant transformation in its visions of North Korea. Through it, North Korea became an “object of development.” This was something different from the previous idea of North Korea as a politico-military target. However, to conservatives, North Korea remains within the politico-military realm as an object of territorial and ideological absorption. As a result, political conflicts in South Korea in the conception of North Korea – between a geo-economic object and an object of geo-political absorption – entail competitive appropriation of the discourse of “China’s colonisation of North Korea” and affect the way North Korean territory is produced.     

驳毛泽东主张“无支配自由”说

毛泽东从未主张过"无支配自由",从未追求过"无支配自由"。说毛泽东主张"无支配自由"并为之奋斗终身,说毛泽东思想与事业的基本主题是"无支配自由",说毛泽东领导中国人民的动力和路标是"无支配自由",说毛泽东"根据无支配自由的根本要求"进行人民民主的"整体构想和具体构建",这是对毛泽东,对毛泽东思想与事业,对马克思主义中国化理论、马克思主义中国化道路的极度歪曲、莫大污蔑。打着毛泽东的旗号鼓吹西方的"无支配自由"论,是极其有害的。     

理解南海共同开发与航行自由问题的新思路——基于国际法视角看南海争端的解决路径

南海共同开发与航行自由问题的明确与解决,直接关系到中国的海洋权益以及南海的未来法律秩序。尽管泰国湾地区的共同开发经验能够为中国提供借鉴,但南海主海的情况与之有很大区别。共同开发方式在国际范围内接受程度不广泛,实际效果不理想,其对南海争端的可适用程度较低。因此,应对共同开发方式在南海争端解决中的作用予以重新定位。从长远的角度出发,共同开发不能成为解决南海争端的优先选择和主要方式,即便在短期内以共同开发方式为处理南海争端的权宜之计,也应当注重构建一个合理的共同开发机制。中国对南海的"历史性权利"并未被后来的有效国际法律规范所更改或取消,这一权利不能按照《联合国海洋法公约》的架构来解读,也并不存在妨碍南海航行自由的问题。相反,倒是其他南海周边国家滥用《联合国海洋法公约》规定所提出的意在分割、控制南海的种种主张更加妨碍南海的航行自由。比较之下,中国的主张更加符合南海水域本身的性质及其适用当代海洋法之后的应然状态。     

Calidad democrática en América Latina: ¿proyecto o utopía?

While recognizing the heuristic limits of the concept “democratic quality” this article argues that measuring democracy over time is the most adequate way to identify, discuss and analyze its presence in every country. “Democratic quality” sheds new light on both concept elaboration and empirical studies because it synthetizes two political processes that have developed in the region in the last twenty five years: democratic transition and democratic consolidation. This category allows us to define the current state of Latin American countries in terms of their institutional and societal development of democratic life. We can thus, at least in theory, observe and propose an integrated improvement of existing political regimes in a context in which modern representative democracies are reorganized in terms of their new attributes and rights. Based on these premises, this article proposes two interrelated paths of analysis: a) considering the model of “democratic quality” to analyze Latin American democracies and characterize their present problems; and b) examining the relevance of this model’s heuristic power. The main thesis holds that not even the most visible long or short-term transformations undergone by our democratic political legal codes, since its inception, are sufficient in and of themselves to bring us closer to the democratic quality model, or in other words, to the basis of a democratic State of law.     

Sino-South Korean economic cooperation: An analysis of domestic and foreign entanglements

One of the most explicit manifestations of post-Mao China’s pragmatic foreign policy has been the significant shift in Beijing’s position vis-à-vis Seoul from a “non-policy” todefacto economic diplomacy. Despite the extent of cooperative endeavors, Sino-South Korean economic relations have been circumscribed by various domestic and external factors. While a further intensification of the cooperative relationship is projected for the second decade of Sino-South Korean economic diplomacy, the actual materialization of such prospects depends on how China and South Korea are going to maintain economic complementarity. More importantly, it also depends on when and how China is going to accommodate politically its economic relations with South Korea by resolving the issue of “two Koreas,” thus maximizing the potential benefits from its ties with Seoul and simultaneously minimizing the negative effects from the entanglements of various domestic and foreign factors.     

Environmental Security and New Middle Powers: The Case of South Korea

This article considers the role of new middle powers in the climate change debate. We focus on the issue of “green growth.” We argue that new middle powers such as South Korea are increasingly proactive in promoting this green growth agenda and, as a result, challenging conventional realist and liberal approaches and expectations to new middle powers. This diplomacy is aiming to bridge states, great and small, by leading to strategic breakthroughs in the current climate change negotiation deadlock. The article discusses South Korea’s green growth initiative and identifies how this initiative affects South Korea’s middle power role in the global environmental debate with respect to its inclusion in the Environment Integrity Group and its initiative the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI).     

The Pancasila Delusion

Rather than producing a new liberal democracy, Indonesia’s sudden democratising process that started in 1998 has produced a mere electoral democracy. This commentary argues that this situation cannot be separated from the preservation of the Five Principles, or the Pancasila, in the political reform agenda (reformasi). In this case, the Indonesian version of exceptionalism (national self-righteousness) has unwittingly legitimised some fundamental deviations from internationally well-established practices in global constitutionalism as the post Suharto Indonesia proceeds to “electoralise” its public life. Indonesia’s version of exceptionalism might best be described in an unabated conviction about the inviolable nature of Pancasila in national political life and beyond. This Pancasila delusion has gone further with the introduction of some legal efforts to prosecute any sacrileges against it. To make matters worse, this delusional conviction in Pancasila has stubbornly featured in Indonesia’s political thinking, which eventually has also prompted the process of reformasi to drift from one ad hoc response to another.     

What History Cannot Write: Bei Dao and Recent Chinese Poetry

An examination of the dictates and implications of contemporary counter-terrorism in the United States, this article analyzes the rhetorical tropes, historical precursors, and political valences of the “war on terrorism” as they pertain to the nature of sovereignty, the status of law, and the formation of political subjectivity. Building from a consideration of the demonological discourse on terrorism and the history of counterterrorism during the cold war, the article turns to the contingent sovereignty conferred to other states in the Bush administration's NationalSecurity Strategy and as borne out by its recent foreign policy and military actions. It notes a parallel development within domestic politics since September 11, as the administration seeks to consolidate sovereign authority against the other branches of government, evidenced most clearly in contests with the judiciary over the legitimacy of military tribunals and the legal status of “unlawful” and “enemy combatants.” Pursuing its thesis that counterterrorism as promulgated by the Bush administration needs to be registered as an emergent political rationality, the article draws from the thought of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault for its concluding analysis of the effects of counterterrorist surveillance and other forms of social regulation on political subjectivity and the enactment of democratic freedom.     

Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea

This article analyses the disputed election of President Park Geun-hye and her administration’s confrontation of left-nationalist politicians and other social movements during her first year in office. We argue that the Park administration’s policies resonate with contemporary discussions of “post-democratisation,” a process whereby social rights are increasingly subordinated to market logics and state power insulated from popular challenges. Under the conservative governments of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, this process has been animated by a mode of confrontation known in South Korea as “politics by public security.” This politics targets social conflict and political dissent as threats to national security and has involved both illegal interventions by state institutions – such as the 2012 electoral interference by state agencies including the National Intelligence Service – and a cultural politics that affirms but revises the narrative of Korean democratisation by obfuscating the nature of the democracy movement and by attempting to restore the honour of conservative forces associated with former dictatorships. In order to better understand this conjuncture, we explore its origin within a tacit alliance between both former public security prosecutors-cum-conservative politicians and a movement of conservative intellectuals known as the New Right.     

“The Chinese Dream” and Chinese Foreign and Security Policies—Rosy Rhetoric versus Harsh Realities

The “China Dream” announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping’ in 2012 paints a very rosy picture of China under his seemingly undisputed leadership: China's economic and political rise will be beneficial to China and indeed the international community putting Beijing on top of the list of “peace-loving” countries. Reality, however, as it turned out over the last four years, is distinctively different as a number of countries in China's neighborhood and beyond can surely confirm. Indeed, Beijing unilaterally claiming and building civilian and military facilities on disputed islands in the South China Sea are arguably the very opposite of a peaceful contribution to world politics and security facilitated by the rhetorical hype of Xi's “Chinese Dream.” While outside observers can be excused for concluding that the “Chinese Dream” mantra is directed at the Chinese domestic audience to distract from the very many economic, environment and social problems within China, the consequences of Beijing's “dreaming” of re-gaining its former undisputed “Middle Kingdom” status in Asia are very much felt abroad. This, it is argued, could be the time when “dreams” turn into “nightmares” for those at the receiving end of Beijing's dream.     

The question of “the black lesbian”: monstrous,ideal and fictitious postapartheid citizen

This paper calls attention to how “the black lesbian”—as a figure and an idea—is emerging as a model of the ideal postapartheid citizen. I argue that this figure is both instituted and undermined at the point at which the nation becomes vexed by its own limits. Within this symbolic politics, “the black lesbian” is staged as a traumatized victim. To track how black lesbians have become enmeshed in debates about defining citizenship, I revisit the rape trial that was initiated when the pseudonymous “Khwezi” made a rape complaint against Jacob Zuma. I examine how “Khwezi” and Zuma came to represent competing ideas about citizenship. Drawing on Berlant’s analysis of the crucial role that “official sexual underclasses” play in the production of “national symbolic and political coherence,” I argue that the trial evidences how “the black lesbian,” a simultaneously abjected and idealized figure, is produced and mobilized as a political resource in South Africa’s citizenship politics.     

“一国两制”澳门实践:成就、经验与展望

回归20年来,“一国两制”在澳门特别行政区取得举世公认的成功,政权组织逐步健全并高效运转,具有自身特色的法治体系日益完善,民主政治有序推进,经济稳步转型发展。澳门的成功经验在于立足“一国两制”的核心内容,正确处理“一国”与“两制”的关系、宪法与基本法的关系、“澳人治澳”与善用内地因素三对基本关系。随着“一国两制”实践进入新阶段,澳门特别行政区应坚持以辩证思维看待和处理“一国两制”涉及的三对基本关系,确保“一国两制”实践行稳致远。     

Nationalism,Confucianism, work ethic and industrialization in South Korea

The “economic miracle” of South Korea has been well documented by many scholars, but most studies have focused on the cooperative relations between the state and entrepreneurial elites, with little attention being given to the accomplishments and contribution of Korean labor to industrial development. To date there has been no comprehensive sociological study as to how workers in South Korea were “ideologically” mobilized and motivated to commit their labor power to the process of industrialization. In an attempt to redress this imbalance, this article offers an analysis of the role of Confucianism and nationalism in the state-sponsored ideology of work in South Korea during its economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued here that both the workers' voluntary participation in industrial work and the harmony in the workplace, which were two of the most essential factors in the nation's remarkable economic success during the 1960s and 1970s, were intimately linked to a new ideology of work and entrepreneurship which combined nationalism and pro-growth Confucian precepts. The article will thus sociologically examine ways in which ideas about work in South Korea have incorporated nationalist ideals and Confucianism, and analyze the relevance of this ideology of work to the nation's phenomenal economic growth.     

The Right Turn in India: Authoritarianism,Populism and Neoliberalisation

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the growth of authoritarian forms of politics in India should be seen in the context of a long-term crisis of the state as successive governments have been unable to establish legitimacy for the policies of neoliberalisation that have been pursued since the 1990s. These policies contributed to the fracturing of dominant modes of political incorporation. The previous Congress Party-led government’s mode of crisis management – which it dubbed, inclusive growth – failed to create new forms of political incorporation by addressing long-term structural problems in India’s political economy, such as jobless growth, and gave rise to new problems, such as large-scale corruption scandals. Subsequently, it increasingly developed what Nicos Poulantzas called, “authoritarian statist” tendencies to marginalise dissent within a framework of constitutional democracy. The current Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s mode of crisis management builds on these authoritarian statist tendencies but has sought to build legitimacy for these tendencies and neoliberalisation through an appeal to authoritarian populism. This seeks to harness popular discontent against elite corruption with majoritarianism to create an antagonism between the “Hindu people” and a “corrupt elite” that panders to minorities.     

Anti-Royalism in Thailand Since 2006: Ideological Shifts and Resistance

Since the military coup d’état of 2006 and the downfall of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand has experienced chronic political turmoil. Crises of legitimacy expanded to engulf every political institution. This includes the monarchy, usually claimed to be the most “beloved” and “revered” of all institutions, and which has faced widespread anti-royalism since 2006. In this article, it is argued that this recent anti-royalism was neither a well-planned scheme or plot, as claimed by the country’s military junta, nor driven by Marxist or republican ideologies that featured in previous bouts of anti-monarchism. Rather, the new anti-royalism will be shown to have emerged from the royalist hegemony that has been deepened since the late 1970s. Moreover, anti-royalist ideas and expressions have shifted dynamically as society has become more polarised. Thailand’s political conflict is overwhelmingly characterised by contestations over meanings. In this context and in a highly repressive political and legal context, those who wished to challenge royal power used metaphorical ambiguity, jokes, vulgarity and parody on a daily basis. These arts of resistance were reproduced through popular channels which tended to escape state surveillance, for instance, protest songs, poetry, chats at gathering sites, formal and informal speeches, and symbols in both on and offline worlds.     

Fighting the Korean War in pacifist Japan: Korean and Japanese leftist solidarity and American Cold War containment

Where does “pacifist” Japan fit within the history of the Korean War? Was Japan simply the beneficiary of the wartime boom – a case best exemplified by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s characterization of the Korean War as “a gift of the gods”? When North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and launched a full-scale attack against South Korea, the U.S. occupation in Japan quickly transformed the pacifist nation into the indispensable rear base of United Nations military intervention in the Korean War. The Japanese Communist Party and leftist groups organized by zainichi Koreans (Korean residents in Japan) launched an antiwar movement to stop Japan from producing and sending arms to UN forces in Korea. The U.S. occupation responded with determined efforts to contain every antiwar voice emerging from the streets of the pacifist country. By examining the political dynamics of zainichi Korean and Japanese leftist solidarity and U.S. countermeasures, this article shows how the Korean War was fought in pacifist Japan. It also illuminates how the practice of Cold War containment was mutually linked on the ground between occupied Japan and South Korea.     

Thaksin's Achilles' Heel: The failure of Hawkish approaches in the Thai South

Abstract

Many scholars voice approval for the political strategies and approaches that businessman-turned-politician Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has borrowed from the business world. His CEO management style is regarded as a key political asset. Moreover, his populist policies such as the “one village–one tambon” village fund and the “bank for the poor” show him to be full of concern for grass-roots Thais. In this article I argue that Thaksin's handling of the South reveals another side of his character, his preference for the use of violence to tackle problems and his disdain for “softer” methods such as discussion and negotiations. Thaksin pays very little attention to peaceful solutions offered by academics, the National Human Right Commission, and even the government-appointed National Reconciliation Commission. Unfortunately, this hawkish approach has widened distrust and discrimination among Thais and non-Thais. Thaksin's draconian methods have had serious consequences both on himself and the country. The volatile conflict in Thailand's far South is Thaksin's Achilles' heel.     

冷战初期日本南海政策及东南亚战略取向

冷战使日本在美国的全球战略中作用提升,成为反共"防波堤",其具有政治目的性的东南亚"经济外交"呈现出明显的海洋战略取向,且影响至今。因地缘利益、东南亚战略,日本南海政策的基本出发点自冷战开始后始终没变,即追随美国遏制中国政策,对南海诸岛归属问题上采取模糊态度和立场,这为后来南海周边某些国家侵占南海岛礁留下所谓借口。此时日本还曾插足于南海诸岛,由于海峡两岸对南海权益的维护使其非法行为无法为继,但随着经济的发展,日本越来越依赖南海航道和加大南海石油资源的开发,这决定其"关心"南海问题就是势所必然了。     

Dealing with North Korea: The case of the agreed framework

The “Agreed Framework,” a deal that the United States and the DPRK cut in Geneva in October 1994 on the North Korean nuclear issue, now approaches the first of its check points to pass a test as to whether it really has a chance to survive. The United States is required to secure by April 21, 1995, a “supply contract” for the provision to North Korea of a light water reactor project as a quid pro quo for North Korea’s eventual dismantlement of its suspected nuclear weapons program over a period of ten or more years. With the reactor issue looming as but the tip of the iceberg that results from the many “ambiguities” and “omissions” of the Agreed Framework, the United States now enters a stage where it will have to brace for another wave of North Korea’s “diplomatic brinkmanship” featured again by threats of reneging on the Agreed Framework and involving the United States in a renewed military conflict on the Korean peninsula.