Colonialism and imperialism in the quest for a universalist Korean-style international relations theory

This article aims to conduct a critical appraisal of two major discourses in South Korea on how to construct its national school of international relations (IR) in the global academic field. This article argues that South Korean IR academia's recent quest for an independent, self-reliant national school of IR with universal applicability still appears to be operating under a colonial mentality, either treating Korea as a mere test bed for mainstream rationalist IR approaches or mimicking the character of hegemonic IR theory, thereby reaffirming it. The normative consequences of seeking to promote a national rival to dominant theorizing provide an interesting case study on the sometimes hidden politics of IR scholarship.     

On-line and Memory-based: Revisiting the Relationship Between Candidate Evaluation Processing Models

Reexamining the relationship between the on-line and memory-based information processing models, this study presents a theoretical basis for the co-occurrence of on-line and memory-based processes and proposes a hybrid model. The study empirically tests the hybrid model by employing real-time tracking of participants?? reactions to two candidates in a US presidential primary election debate. The findings confirm an independent, but complementary relationship between on-line and memory-based information processing in an individual??s candidate evaluation and vote choice. The co-occurrence of the two modes applies to an individual??s comparison of candidates as well. The implications of the hybrid model for the functioning of democracy are discussed.     

Security,Nationalism and Popular Culture: Screening South Korea’s Uneasy Identity in the Early 2000s

By examining the cultural representations of the South Korean notion of the Self/Other in relation to its major traditional enemy — North Korea — this article aims to capture a picture of South Korea’s discursive economy of the North, and to problematise the South Korean identities implicated in that economy in the early 2000s. To achieve these aims, this article focuses on representations of a successful popular South Korean film which was released in 2000, just a few months after the first inter-Korean summit: Joint Security Area JSA. By analytically reading JSA, it is revealed that, in South Korea, the traditional discursive practices based on the Cold War thinking have been eroded. For the South, the North is part of the Self (Korean-ness; love for the North as the same nation) and, at the same time, is an Other (South Korean-ness; contempt for the North as an inferior state). Related to this, South Korea appears to be the uneasy Self without a firm Other in between Korean-ness and South Korean-ness.