Should South Korea go Nuclear?

A nuclear debate has arisen in South Korea following North Korea's nuclear tests and weapons program. Despite the US extended nuclear deterrence for its security, a sizable section of the people in South Korea have started debating if their country can revisit the nuclear option as a deterrent to North Korea's continued threats. Several law makers have started articulating such a view. Several opinion polls held recently also endorse such a view. However, the US is unlikely to allow South Korea to take the nuclear path as it would have serious consequences not only for the region but also the world. China would also not rejoice with the prospect of having another nuclear power in its neighborhood. If South Korea goes nuclear, Japan and Taiwan will find it difficult to resist having their own nuclear weapons. To stem such a trend, it becomes all the more necessary for the international community to address the issue of denuclearizing North Korea. The suspended Six-Party-Talks ought to restart soon and China has a great role in reigning in Pyongyang. Fortunately, the government in South Korea has not supported the view of the country going nuclear. But if the security situation deteriorates further, it might become irresistible for the government to have a rethink, with an inevitable domino effect in Japan and Taiwan soon.

This article makes an in-depth study of the prevailing trend in South Korea, the views of some influential law makers pleading for the country to go nuclear, various public opinions polls, possible US stance and implications that such a change in policy would have on the region's security situation and the author's assessment based on the critical examination of the above-mentioned factors. Many sources have been cited to analyze this issue before arriving at an objective assessment of the point raised in this essay.     

Diplomatic Objectives in Trade Politics: The Development of the China-Japan-Korea FTA

This article seeks to analyze the development of free trade agreement (FTA) policies adopted by China, Japan, and South Korea with particular interests in the trilateral FTA. It seeks to address what the determinant factors that have conditioned the development of the trilateral FTA are. While the three governments began the informal joint study of the trilateral FTA in 2003, they pursued diverse trade strategies that disturbed a shift to formal negotiations. However, China's strategy to hedge against the US influence in East Asia became a catalyst in shifting from the long-lasting study stage to the launching of negotiations. Moreover, Japan's strategy to participate in TPP negotiations as a soft balancing against China through closer political linkages with the United States weakened China's and South Korea's willingness to engage in the trilateral FTA positively. Thus, the three countries’ commitments to the trilateral FTA were primarily confined by their specific diplomatic objectives responding to the political-economic evolutions in the Asia-Pacific region.     

Flawed Mediation and a Compelling Mission: Chinese Diplomacy in the Six-Party Talks to Denuclearise North Korea

This paper examines China’s role in the Six-Party Talks, a multilateral initiative with the aim of denuclearising North Korea. As North Korea’s behaviour has become increasingly provocative, evidenced by the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Incidents and the newly unveiled uranium enrichment plant at Yeonbyon, China’s indecision in dealing with the deteriorating situation has dramatically undermined Beijing’s ability to continue successfully to play the leading mediator role. Yet if China fails to take decisive action now, the consequences could be dire. Further deterioration in North Korea’s behaviour could trigger a nuclear arms race, severely hamper regional economic development and even create a geopolitical split in East Asia, leading to a confrontation between the US, South Korea and Japan acting together on one side, and China, Russia and North Korea aligned on the other. The factors that have prevented China from making further progress in the diplomatic process are many and various and this paper will reveal the complexity of the North Korean issue for China. Foreign academics and policy makers have tended to attribute China’s indecision over North Korea to China putting its own security interests first. But this is far too simplistic a picture of the complex relationship that China has with North Korea. There are a host of factors at work that need to be taken into account to understand the present impasse in the diplomatic process. These factors include China’s emotional ties to North Korea and empathy with its position as the weakest party in the Talks, the conflicting attitudes within the Chinese government itself towards the North, and the competing interests and lack of trust between the different stakeholders. It seems that for the foreseeable future, the North Korean issue will continue to plague Chinese foreign policy until all the parties involved act as a collaborative body to reach a consensus on how to resolve the situation.     

Why Japan's Development Aid Matters Most for Dealing with Global Environmental Problems

It is evident that Japan has made global environmental issues a top priority in its foreign policy agenda since the early 1990s. Although Japan's “environmental ODA” decision-making copes with numerous hurdles arising on both external and internal fronts, this world's largest donor nation has already shouldered a great financial responsibility to help resolve such problems on a global scale. Moreover, Tokyo has played a prominent role in efforts to establish major legally binding international agreements on environmental issues. This study argues why Japan with its economic prowess, extensive experience, and modern technologies is one of the most important actors contributing to the environment, despite the recent withering trend of Tokyo's ODA volume. Although the environment is just the kind of global dilemma the UN is perfectly positioned to address, there is actually a startling array of environmental concerns in which enhanced participation and cooperation by Japan could really make a difference. Therefore, as Japan has the goal of attaining a niche in world environmental leadership, the country needs to elevate the strategy, efficiency, and effectiveness of its aid diplomacy in the days to come.     

Perceptions toward North Korea’s nuclear weapons program: Findings from a public opinion survey

Due to the potential spread of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s nuclear weapons test represents a serious security threat to East Asia as well as a global risk. Many sources, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, argue that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program poses a security threat to the United States because missiles fired from North Korea could reach Hawaii or Alaska. Against this backdrop, however, no empirical research analyzing how much the ordinary American feels threatened by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has been conducted. This paper examines American public opinion toward North Korea’s nuclear weapons program based on a regional survey conducted in Hawaii during the summer of 2005. The research compares and evaluates through various quantitative research methods, to what extent the respondents’ various demographic, political, and socioeconomic backgrounds seem to have divergently influenced the perception of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In the evaluation of the majority of people in Hawaii, North Korea is pursuing the nuclear weapons program to enhance their national prestige and for self-defense purposes. Many respondents proposed multilateral negotiation as a desirable settlement method for managing North Korea’s nuclear program.     

SADC and the GCC: Shared regional challenges and potential links

This article assesses the prospects for a clearly articulated economic diplomacy approach in South Africa's foreign policy. It argues that while South Africa's foreign policy has been to a considerable extent normatively grounded, it has failed to develop a coherent economic diplomacy that is based on focused and distinctly expressed priorities. This is a crucial gap that limits the country's ability to respond to regional and global changes, in particular those posed by emerging powers. The article identifies a number of gaps in South Africa's foreign policy approach and highlights its oblivion to global developments and geopolitical dynamics in the African continent. It sets out possible policy outlines for developing a clearer and stronger economic diplomacy. The building blocks for such an approach include the identification of strategic foreign policy priorities; greater institutional co-operation among agencies dealing with economic and foreign policy development; synergies between corporate strategies and government's foreign policy objectives; and the need for South Africa to develop a stronger leadership ambition in the African continent, both to contribute to Africa's development and to pursue its own economic interests. This ambition will require awareness of South Africa's own limitations, thus focusing the better part of its foreign policy on a limited set of countries that match strategic priorities.     

From distrust to mutual interests?: Emerging cooperation in Northeast Asia

In Northeast Asia, historical legacies, a lack of common identity and great power politics impeded political cooperation and economic integration. However, China, Japan and South Korea have exhibited a growing interest in political and economic cooperation since the late 1990s. This article examines how the three Northeast Asian countries have developed political and economic cooperation by using the concept of ‘multilayered intergovernmentalism’. It argues that despite political tensions between China and Japan, regional cooperation among China, Japan and South Korea has been promoted by talks and bargains among the heads of state and government who strengthened incentives for closer cooperation. Moreover, multilayered frameworks formed at the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) level, through the Track II mechanisms, and in issue-specific areas have provided valuable input into advancing regional cooperation initiatives. Whereas the APT framework offered incentives and opportunities to exchange views and information for closer trilateral cooperation, the outcomes of the research at the Track II were incorporated into the leaders' cooperative initiatives. The existence of issue-specific frameworks stirred talks and negotiations at the summit level.     

Land reform and Bimas in Indonesia

Underlying the current process of industrial restructuring in Korea is the weakening of the social and political comerstones of Korea's “miracle” economy: low wages maintained through labor market segmentation and suppression of labor movements, state leverage over the chaebol and labor, the containment of the middle class through a state-of-war mentality, and the decentralization of industry away from the capital city through the creation of countermagnets and growth poles. Korea's success in generating its own version of a post-fordist regime of accumulation will depend as much on changes in social and political institutions as it will on pursuing an industrial path of flexible specialization.     

South Korea’s policy toward Russia: A Korean view

The article focuses on delineating South Korea’s policy toward Russia. First, it gives a cursory review, from a historical perspective, of how South Korea came to normalize diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and has continued to maintain its diplomatic relations with Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in an attitude of increased pragmatism. Second, it examines the salient features of South Korea’s diplomatic milieu, especially in terms of its strategic security and economic interests, in a bilateral and regional context in the post-cold war era, in light of its newly established diplomatic relationship with Russia. Finally, South Korea’s policy agenda vis-à-vis Russia is identified in various arenas, including diplomacy and security; bilateral and multilateral economic cooperation; and regional multilateral secruity regime-building.     

Japan as the “Indispensable Nation” in Asia: A Financial Brand for the 21st Century

This article addresses Japan's global financial “brand.” It first examines the concept of a national “brand” and the difficulties associated with creating a desirable image of a country among outsiders. It adopts an instrumental concept of branding, which focuses on the behavior that the national image should elicit from foreign countries. It also notes that effective branding must accurately reflect reality. For Japan, the goal should be to promote economic cooperation where mutual interests exist. Efforts should be focused on East Asia, where mutual economic interests are least fully realized, and where Japan's national image appears to be an important stumbling block. Japan should seek to demonstrate the potential for transition to a “post-developmental” financial model and to be the “indispensable partner” for regional cooperative and development initiatives. This will require continued progress in cleaning up and improving the competitiveness of Japan's financial institutions and financial system.     

Financial liberalization in South Korea

This article analyzes the process of financial liberalization in South Korea from the perspective of financial globalization through an international political economic approach. Korean financial liberalization has been highly influenced by the outside pressure of the United States, the OECD and the IMF, as well as by the big business conglomerates (chaebols), as a powerful domestic interest group. In a broad perspective, South Korea's entrance into the OECD, the Financial Services Agreement under the WTO and the Structural Adjustment Program of the IMF after the 1997 financial crisis were important moments for Korea's financial reforms. There are two viewpoints on the causes of the Korean financial crisis. From a domestic viewpoint, South Korea had a weak financial market system and its financial liberalization process was too premature to create a stable financial market when Korea met the financial crisis. In a globalization perspective, financial globalization intrinsically encourages uncontrollable short-term financial capital flows across borders, thus financial crisis is inevitable regardless of a strong or weak domestic financial system. This article compares these two viewpoints in the case of South Korea.     

India's “Look East” Policy

A combination of economic, strategic, and domestic considerations has led India to pay greater attention to its eastern neighbours since the 1990s. India's steadily growing ties with East and Southeast Asian countries have become an increasingly important element of India's foreign policy. India is working with these countries bilaterally as well as through regional frameworks like the EAS, ASEM, and ASEAN, and sub-regional organizations like BIMSTEC and Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. The main driver remains economic, and India has many ongoing and planned FTAs with the countries of this region. Of late, defence and security ties too have grown. However, India's relations with China remain tense and troubled, with persisting differences over the border, Tibet, and China's patronage of India's South Asian neighbours, particularly Pakistan. Asia's major players will have to overcome internal rivalries and consciously evolve a cooperative paradigm for Asian security and cooperation to enable Asia to play a leading global role.     

“National Emergency” in India

This article challenges a popular assumption that Korea has been refining and perfecting the Japanese foreign direct investment model. In the case of Korea, the pattern of overseas expansion of smaller companies is quite unlike that for smaller Japanese companies. In the former case, the move overseas is quite independent and related to the needs of the individual concern or entrepreneur while the latter usually moved offshore in tandem with larger companies and as part of their sub-contracting networks. Given this premise, major mechanisms behind the successful development of Japanese FDI in comparison with those of Korea will be examined. These include a) the role of the trading companies (sogo shosha), b) the role of the small and medium-sized firms, and c) the patterns of institutional linkages between government and business in the progress of FDI. This cross-examination demonstrates that Korea's trajectory and its dynamics are different from those of Japan, thus Korea's future cannot be predicted by simply looking at Japan.     

Understanding Brazil's new drive for Africa

Following a period of some distancing through the 1980s and 1990s, Brazil has made a concerted effort to engage with Africa. Today, under the leadership of President Lula, Africa is clearly a priority, especially as Brazil emerges as a global economic power and leader of the developing South. Yet, relatively little is written of Brazil's engagement with Africa and the rationale behind the political and economic drive toward the continent. What is clear is that Brazil's engagement with Africa, viewed in the historical context, maintains its underlying foreign policy principles of economic development on the one hand and the preservation of autonomy in an asymmetric world on the other. Brazil's engagement with Africa has taken on a three-pronged approach of political diplomacy, commercial engagement and development co-operation. This is indicative of a new era of Brazilian foreign policy and Brazil's process of internationalisation in general. This is a complex and inter-related process that Brazil seems to have managed well through a high degree of diplomatic sophistication and open cooperation between the political, commercial and various development entities. Africa displays one of the best contextual examples of Brazil's delicate balancing act between commercial and strategic interests and external development assistance. The way Brazil manages this and builds on its positive image in Africa is indicative of its role and approach as a new and emerging power on the international stage.     

Russia and the United States: Still cold in Northeast Asia?

The US has been reluctant to acknowledge Russia's relevance to the Asia‐Pacific, the author says, because “too little time has passed since the interests of these two former adversaries collided in the region.” Russia has the longest Pacific coastline and borders with China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia. Despite the end of the Cold War, however, Russia is still not an integrated participant in Northeast Asian economic cooperation. Vladimir Ivanov is a Visiting Fellow at the Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia in Niigata. He argues that Russia has made a clear choice between “guns and growth,” and that the country should be allowed to come in from the cold and join this region's development.     

Building bridges? South African foreign policy and trilateral development cooperation

As questions concerning international development climb the international agenda, so countries find themselves drawn into a burgeoning number of negotiations on issues ranging from the future shape and direction of the post-2015 development agenda to ‘aid effectiveness’ and international development cooperation. Moving from the position of a ‘beneficiary’ state in the traditional donor–recipient aid hierarchy, South Africa is looking to define its own niche within the wider development diplomacy context as a development partner. This paper provides an assessment of South Africa's evolving approach towards international development cooperation, with a particular focus on trilateral development cooperation, and what this means for Pretoria's foreign policy in bridging the divide between developed and developing country positions within the international development regime.     

Japan Confronts the Global Economic Crisis

In the face of the global economic crisis of 2008–09, Japan has played a positive role in helping to stabilize the regional and global financial systems. Among the positive actions it has taken have been large-scale fiscal and monetary stimulus at home, an unprecedentedly large loan to the International Monetary Fund, liquidity support to South Korea, and a proactive role in G-20 discussions. However, regional arrangements such as the Chiang Mai Initiative have been of minimal importance in preventing financial crises in East Asia. Japan can continue to demonstrate leadership in promoting regional economies and financial systems by expanding its current activities, while ensuring that regional arrangements continue to support global ones.     

The Potential of China-Japan-South Korea Free Trade Agreement

This article explores the economic calculations behind the recent initiatives for the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the Governments of China, Japan and South Korea (CJK) and clarifies the implications for future regional economic integration. First, the proposed trilateral FTA signifies an advancement of China-centered regional economic integration. Regional economic integration led by China may also increase its political clout at the global stage. Second, the Governments of South Korea and Japan seek greater involvement in China's huge domestic market, but the former is concerned that a trilateral FTA will worsen its trade deficit with Japan, and the latter is afraid of losing its market shares in China and America to its Korean rival. Japan, therefore, seeks membership of both the CJK FTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Third, China and the US' active involvement in regional economic integration will push the three countries to go forward towards greater economic cooperation. However, it will take longer for China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and America-led TPP to bear fruit because of the large number of countries involved. Therefore, the conclusion of CJK FTA will be an important boost for the further progress of both RCEP and TPP. It will also be an important stabiliser for the trilateral political relations in the future.     

美韩同盟再定义与韩国的战略选择:进程与争论

本文系统总结了自2002年底以来美韩同盟再定义的磋商过程,以及双方在驻韩美军基地调整、同盟内部军事安全角色分工、同盟的未来战略构想等三大焦点问题上所取得的实质性进展,认为通过区域扩展和内涵扩展的路径选择,美韩同盟再定义已基本实现利益平衡与威胁平衡的双重目标。通过对美韩全球性战略同盟关系的定位与确认,韩国也由此结束了数年来激烈的外交方向辩论,再度确立了中近期亲美的结盟外交路线,然而有关韩国对外战略的争论不会就此终结。     

跨太平洋伙伴关系协议(TPP):研究前沿与架构

"跨太平洋伙伴关系协议"(TPP)在美国的积极推动下发展迅速,似乎将成为亚太地区新的竞争性区域合作机制。TPP以成员国全面零关税、知识产权保护、劳工和环保等议题为特点,提出建立高质量和高标准的自由贸易区,已吸引了包括美国在内的亚太九国参加协议谈判。在TPP建立过程中,美国企图重获亚太经济主导权的意图明显;日本虽积极参与,但自身困难重重;东盟在巩固现有基础上,并不排斥新机制出现。当前,美国主导TPP势头正盛,但其发展态势并不明朗,TPP谈判仍将面临美国国内政治因素和技术问题的双重障碍以及日本能否顺利加入等问题;当前的国际政治与经济局势,使中国面临新的挑战与机遇,宜通过调整经济结构,扩大内需,完善和巩固现有区域合作战略以积极应对TPP的发展。未来,中国与美日韩以及东盟等双边和多边经贸关系受TPP的实质影响将成为新一轮研究重点。