Portrayals of Non-North Koreans in North Korean Textbooks and the Formation of National Identity

This article examines the portrayal of non-North Koreans in North Korean textbooks to assess the influences on the formation of North Korean identity, and how such identity formation is important in Kim Jeong-il's retention of power. This study not only looks closely at textual representations; it also examines how political and ideological changes in North Korea had a critical influence on these texts. The study encompasses both lexico-grammatical analysis and the analysis of textual and visual images, based on an examination of six North Korean language textbooks published from 1954 to 2000. It demonstrates that North Korean identity is defined through the portrayal of non-North Koreans, particularly enemy others. The portrayal of non-North Koreans facilitates the formation of a solid North Korean identity – an identity that entails serving their political leaders, remaining vigilant against threats to their country, and liberating South Koreans from poverty and oppression by America and its puppet states.     

Nuclear Sisyphus: the myth of denuclearising North Korea

Is North Korea ready and willing to give up its nuclear weapons? Proponents of arms control and sustained engagement with North Korea maintain that Pyongyang's desire to acquire nuclear weapons stemmed from ingrained insecurity vis-à-vis the United States or more specifically, the threat that the US poses to fundamental regime security.

However, the primordial source of Kim Jong Il's existential insecurity stems largely from the abnormal, structural idiosyncracies of his regime and not, as many naively believe, the hardline policies of the Bush administration. Accordingly, the Kim Jong Il regime's fundamental dilemma boils down to the fact that the domestic political costs of giving up its nuclear capabilities are just as high as the costs of retaining them.

Debunking the myth that the US, rather than North Korea, poses the greater challenge to South Korean security is as important as ensuring that North Korea dismantles its nuclear arsenal.     

‘Red on White’: Kim Il Sung,Park Chung Hee,and the Failure of Korea’s Reunification, 1971–1973

The articles argues that in 1971–1973 North Korea’s leader Kim Il Sung used the Sino-American rapprochement and the Soviet-American détente to pursue Korean reunification on his terms; his aim was to ‘democratize’ and then ‘revolutionize’ South Korea and so achieve through dialogue what he failed to achieve through militancy. Kim’s game was based on a misreading of the political dynamics in South Korea and on misplaced confidence in North Korea’s attractiveness. He also misjudged his ability to obtain China’s and the USSR’s backing for his schemes.     

Kim Dae-jung and the Persistence of Anti-Communist Hegemony in South Korea

Existing writings that explore the relationship between inter-Korean relations and the political economy of South Korea stress the role of the ruling ideology of anti-communism in the domestic struggle for power or hegemony. They also consider Kim Dae-jung a member of the hegemonic group because he represented the interests of the bourgeoisie and, thus, they contend that the level of inter-Korean reconciliation during his presidency was a product of the hegemonic group’s accommodation of the people’s nationalist demands. Their arguments are, however, contradictory because, among other things, Kim was one of those most severely damaged by the hegemonic group’s ruling ideology. Drawing on Gramsci’s concepts, such as historical bloc and hegemonic project, I attempt to resolve the contradiction by arguing that Kim was not a member of the hegemonic group, but a leader of the counter-hegemonic liberal nationalists. Accordingly, this article demonstrates Kim’s stance on the chaebol-centred economic structure and his abortive attempt to change it. By the same token, it argues that the inter-Korean reconciliation was a hegemonic project to realise the liberal nationalists’ vision of peaceful unification through a liberal approach and to undermine the anti-communism with which the hegemonic group had exercised ideological leadership for decades.     

The political economy of economic reform in North Korea

For over 10 years, North Korea has undergone a severe economic crisis, including food shortages, which has inflicted great suffering upon the North Korean people. Given such dire realities, it is beyond all doubt that the North Korean government should actively carry out comprehensive economic reforms as quickly as possible which aim to transform North Korea's present inefficient socialist planned economic system into a market economic system. Many argue that such reforms would give rise to successful economic growth in North Korea, which could enhance the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. Yet, the North Korean regime has consistently avoided implementing economic reforms, even though it has had a number of opportunities to do so. The July 1st reforms, which were introduced in 2002, have been half-hearted and inconsistently applied. This then raises an important question: Why has the North Korean government avoided adopting comprehensive economic reforms? In other words, what is the crucial barrier that has hindered North Korea's implementation of economic reforms? This article pinpoints North Korea's unique political system—i.e. its monolithic system of political control and policy making which exhibits the highest level of power concentration in one individual among all political systems—as the biggest barrier to economic reforms. No doubt North Korea desperately needs comprehensive economic reforms, in light of its economic crisis and food shortages. Nonetheless, the current North Korean regime has avoided adopting such reforms since they will undermine North Korea's monolithic system. In conclusion, North Korea's monolithic system has been the biggest obstacle to North Korea's economic reforms.     

Making creative industries policy in the real world: differing configurations of the culture-market-state nexus in the UK and South Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper compares creative (content) industries policies in the UK and South Korea, highlighting the coevality in their development. Seeing them as ‘industrial policies’, it focuses on how state intervention is justified and why a certain set of policy options have been chosen. The UK policy-makers prefer passive and decentralised roles of the state that addresses market failures via generic and horizontal policies. Meanwhile, Koreans have consistently believed in the strong, resourceful and ambitious state in developing centralised, sector-specific policies for cultural industries. While demonstrating two contrasting approaches to the nation state’s management of cultural turn in the economy, both cases seem to present a ‘paradox’. Despite its neoliberal undertone, the horizontal and fused approach taken by the UK’s creative industries policy engenders some space for ‘cultural’ policy. On the contrary, the non-liberal and state-driven content industries policy in Korea has shown a stronger tendency of cultural commodification.     

Explaining North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions: Power and Position on the Korean Peninsula

The USA has long called for the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea. But is this a realistic policy option? In order to address this question, a broader question needs to be answered: What are the primary drivers of North Korea’s interest in nuclear weapons? Most answers to this question take one of two basic positions. ‘Doves’, on the one hand, see North Korea developing nuclear weapons because of the threatening foreign policies of the USA and South Korea. ‘Hawks’, on the other hand, see North Korean nuclear development as driven by factors internal to the North Korean regime, inherent in its personality. The author examines these two arguments against the evidence and finds them both wanting. In contrast, he puts forth an alternative argument focused on the power of the global hegemon, the USA, and its position on the Korean Peninsula. This power and positional alternative is shown to be better reflected in the evidence presented.     

South Korea’s North Korean Image Problem: Human Rights under the Spotlight

ABSTRACT

The 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea (UN COI) had a decisive impact on South Korea’s approach to North Korea’s human rights abuses in the several years following its release. This article interprets moves within South Korea to support the UN COI’s recommendations as taken in the interests of ontological security, or a stable sense of identity, which has also driven the state’s broader initiatives on image management and nation branding. It extends the boundaries of nation-branding research by considering why and how a state may adopt policies that enhance its moral visibility and reputation in world affairs. It considers how a positive reputation is enhanced by demonstrating good international citizenship, promoting the visibility of state identity parameters beyond its culture and core industries. This article interprets the South Korean government’s efforts to act on North Korean human rights following the UN COI, as well as the significance of being seen to be doing so at home and abroad as security-giving behaviour asserting its moral authority in relation to North Korea. It explores how a longstanding policy of relative silence on North Korea’s human rights record acceded to identity-driven pressures arising from the UN COI and influencing South Korea’s international image-management strategy between 2014 and 2017.     

Revisiting the South Korean developmental state after the 1997 financial crisis

This study reassesses the conventional wisdom surrounding the developmental state of South Korea (hereafter Korea) since the 1997 Korean financial crisis. The conventional wisdom is that, as a result of the continued structural reforms prompted by the crisis, the Korean developmental state, inherently characterised by active or direct state intervention, strong economic and industrial policies, the chaebol-oriented economic policy, and labour exclusion, has finally begun to dissolve in earnest. In this study, we have considered whether that is really the case and also which theoretical implications can be drawn from this consideration. Analysis of the Korean developmental state following the 1997 crisis has indicated that, quite contrary to conventional wisdom, the developmental state has continued to prevail as a core policy framework of the Korean administrations even after the crisis. There is no doubt that the continued structural and market reform after the crisis certainly undermined the Korean developmental state to a certain degree, but that does not mean the beginning of the end of the Korean developmental state at all. For much evidence strongly indicates that the Korean developmental state still remains intact and strong despite the structural reforms, on account of the successive Korean governments’ assiduous and deliberate efforts to maintain and reinforce it. Even after the crisis, the Kim Dae-Jung and post-Kim regimes have hardly abandoned many of their market interventionist policies. Such market interventionist policies, which were routinely practised under the military regime in the 1960s and 1970s, diametrically contravene the argument that the Korean developmental state has begun to dissolve as a result of structural reform after the 1997 crisis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Korean developmental state persists as usual. All this information, then, suggests that path dependence is in action in the case of the Korean developmental state, and this suggests a further hypothesis that the Korean developmental state is very likely to persist in the future as well, despite increasing globalisation pressure, given the strong path dependence.     

Cultural policy archetypes: the bathwater and the baby

ABSTRACT

Cultural policy archetypes have been fundamental to comparative cultural policy study and continue to be influential in both everyday and scholarly characterizations of national cultural policy systems. This paper explores the proposition that cultural policy archetypes reflect what people believe to be true about culture – their cultural ideologies. Cultural ideologies are integral to the formation of cultural policy and, thus, must be considered in any theory that hopes to measure the extent to which and explain why cultural policies differ. Cultural ideologies embody ideas about why culture is important and how it should be governed. Those ideologies spotlight certain administrative mechanisms, overemphasizing their role in systems that actually are deeply administratively hybrid. This makes archetypes poor tools for analyzing the mechanisms of cultural policy; however, because archetypes tell us about cultural ideologies in straightforward and powerful ways, it is essential that they continue to be a part of comparative cultural policy study.     

The Chun Doo-Hwan Authoritarian Regime’s Securitisation of Water: The Case of the Peace Dam,South Korea

This article explores the securitisation of water aimed at avoiding a political crisis for the Chun Doo-Hwan regime in South Korea (1979–1988) using the case of the Peace Dam. The legitimacy of the Chun regime was vulnerable because of diverse factors such as internal and external crises inherited from the previous regime and Chun’s rise to power through a military coup and civilian massacres. In this political situation, the securitisation of nature could be an effective method of curbing potential resistance and ruling a people facing a complex crisis. The constructed threat of an attack by flooding by North Korea and the consequent alleged need for the Peace Dam were part of a scheme by Chun to maintain political power through the securitisation of water, specifically by establishing North Korea as an external enemy and unifying the South Korean people.     

Designing cultural policy in a postcolonial colony: the case of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States in 1898 with the end of the Spanish-American War. In 1952, the island became a ‘Commonwealth’ through the development and approval of a local constitution. While this political status allows Puerto Rico some degree of autonomy, it nevertheless continues to subject the island to United States federal authority. For the last 60 years, discussions on whether Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth status is a permanent or transitional status has fuelled much of the political debate and public policy of the region, and has been highly influenced by political status ideologies: to become a state of the United States, to maintain the current status, or to become independendent. Budgetary, legal, and commercial dependence on the United States causes constant conflicts in the design and implementation of Puerto Rican public policy in areas such as education, law, and economic development. Likewise, culture has not been exempt from these debates. In fact, cultural differences have caused conflict at all levels – from the theoretical conceptions of culture, to cultural policy and arts management. Moreover, the implementation of cultural policies has also been subject to political ideologies and the concept of culture has variably been seen as an obstacle or strength for specific political purposes. In the midst of a sustained economic crisis, the current Puerto Rican government has proposed the development of a comprehensive cultural policy through a participatory process. The objective of this paper is to present this process as a means of analyzing Puerto Rico’s experience through the challenges in designing and implementing cultural policy within a ‘postcolonial colony’ scenario. This paper will place emphasis on the government’s role, cultural public institutions, and cultural production.     

Bringing Organizations Back In: Multilevel Feedback Effects on Individual Civic Inclusion

Policy feedback scholarship has focused on how laws and their implementation affect either organizations (e.g., their resources, priorities, political opportunities, or incentive structures) or individuals (e.g., their civic skills and resources or their psychological orientations toward the state). However, in practice the distinction between organizations and individuals is not clear‐cut: Organizations interpret policy for individuals, and individuals experience policy through organizations. Thus, scholars have argued for a multi‐level model of feedback effects illuminating how policies operating at the organizational level reverberate at the individual level. In this theory‐building article, we push this insight by examining how public policy influences nonprofit organizations’ role in the civic life of beneficiaries. We identify five roles that nonprofit organizations play. For each role, we draw on existing research to identify policy mechanisms that either enlarge or diminish nonprofits’ capacity to facilitate individual incorporation and engagement. From these examples, we derive cross‐cutting hypotheses concerning how different categories of citizens may need policy to operate differently to enhance their civic influence; whether policy that is “delivered” through nonprofits may dampen citizens’ relationship with the state; and how the civic boost provided by policy may be influenced by the degree of latitude conferred on recipient organizations.     

Canada’s Trade Policy: In Search of a Roadmap

This article examines Canada’s trade policy in light of efforts by the Harper government to respond to increasing global competition through the Global Markets Action Plan (2013). Through an analysis of three initiatives, the Canada–Korea Free Trade Agreement (CKFTA), the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), and the Trans–Pacific Partnership (TPP), it becomes clear that Canada’s current strategy has only gone part of the way to enact policies that will be most beneficial to its economy. This article shows that Canada’s Global Markets Action Plan, though ambitious, does not correctly prioritize Canada’s interests: it gives too little attention to improving Canada’s strongest trading relationship with its immediate neighbors in North America; it does not comprehensively address the changing nature of trade (which is now focused on trade in value-added products); and finally, its almost singular focus on market access and increasing exports directs attention away from the type of liberalization that would be most beneficial to Canadians, which is opening up the market for imports and dismantling Canada’s supply management system.     

Domestic events,ideological changes and the post-cold war US–South Korea alliance

How can we account for the weakening of the US–South Korea alliance after the cold war? After the cold war, the US–South Korea alliance was expected to remain strong due to North Korea's threats of weapons of mass destruction. For the past decade and a half, this realist projection has not fully come to pass: rather, it has changed inversely. How can we account for this puzzle? In explaining this counter-intuitive development, the author employs the critical juncture approach. The author argues that in South Korea, certain domestic critical events readjusted domestic ideologies that affected its alliance policy towards the USA. With the initiation of Nordpolitik after the end of the cold war (the first critical juncture), conservative anti-communism and progressive nationalism became coexistent in South Korea, thus causing frictional policy towards the USA. The 2000 North–South Korean Summit (the second critical juncture) made the progressive nationalistic move more dominant in Korea, and this ideological change made its alliance policy towards the USA less friendly.     

《韩史綮》与金泽荣的历史批评

流亡中国的原朝鲜通政大夫金泽荣于 1 91 4年完成了一部在当时朝鲜的儒林和旧士大夫中引起了强烈震撼的史著《韩史綮》。金泽荣通过《韩史綮》 ,剖析了封建王朝的腐朽与丑恶、理学的虚伪与无能 ,全面展示了他的历史观的各个层面。《韩史綮》的完成 ,也标示了金泽荣从一名封建王朝的宫廷史官转变成了一名具有自由思想的独立史学家     

Transnational Advocacy Networks and Affirmative Action for Dalits in India

In India, movements and parties representing the lowest ranking dalit caste groups have followed different strategies in their struggle against social, economic and cultural discrimination. In this article, a new dalit movement making use of a ‘transnational advocacy network strategy’ will be compared to a more ‘classical’dalit political party. The main policy target for the new movement is an extension of existing affirmative action policies, while the dalit BSP party focuses more on emancipatory issues. Based on an analysis of the impacts of the BSP and of the new movement at the grassroots level, it is argued that the achievements of the new movement are tempered by the fact that in order to make use of international discourses and political pressure, the movement has had to develop a strategy and policy proposals compatible with existing mainstream neoliberal discourses. This depoliticizes the policies, and hence makes them of less importance strategically. It is argued that this is likely to be a difficulty for transnational advocacy networks in general.     

China’s Evolving Policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under Xi Jinping

Despite international pressure to condemn North Korea (DPRK), China’s successive leaderships have dealt carefully with Pyongyang, especially vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons program. This moderate stance reflects the two countries’ decades-long relationship, summarised in the Chinese idiom that Pyongyang and Beijing are “as close as lips and teeth”. Nevertheless, the DPRK’s third nuclear test in February 2013 raised enormous challenges for the new Xi Jinping leadership to maintain the previous DPRK policy focused on the status quo and stability on the Korean Peninsula. China’s attitudes and policies towards the DPRK after the provocative third test signified a possible reorientation of Beijing’s DPRK policy. This generated repercussions in the countries concerned and prompted debates among experts. This article asks how these events should be understood and what their implications are for the Xi leadership’s policy on the DPRK, the stability of the Korean Peninsula, and Northeast Asia. Given China’s competitive relations with other major powers, we conclude that the Xi leadership will not abandon the DPRK; indeed it will reinforce the policy of strengthening China’s influence over it. Nonetheless one aspect of doing so will involve China opening up to other – cooperative, multilateral – approaches to reinforcing stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.     

Mad cow militancy: Neoliberal hegemony and social resistance in South Korea

Massive protests shook South Korea through the summer of 2008. This political eruption which exhibited many novel and unexpected elements cannot be explained by pointing to basic political conditions in South Korea (strong labor unions, democratization, and so forth). Neither does the putative reason for them – to protest the new President’s decision to reopen South Korea’s beef market to the U.S. – adequately explain the social dynamics at play. In this paper, we examine the political geography of the ‘candlelight protests’ (as they came to be known), focusing in particular on their novel aspects: the subjectivities of the protesters, fierce ideological struggles, and differentiated geography. We argue that the deepening of neoliberal restructuring by the new conservative regime formed the underlying causes of these intense conflicts. In other words, the new protests should be seen as a response to the reinforced contradictions engendered by neoliberalization and a new alignment of social groups against the prevailing hegemonic conditions in South Korea. In this view, the huge demonstrations revealed vulnerabilities in conservative hegemony but failed to produce a different hegemony. To advance these claims, we examine three aspects of the protests: first, the neoliberal policies of the new conservative regime; second, the intense ideological conflicts around the media; and finally, the spatial materialization of the protests.     

Choosing Sides in the Global Cold War: Switzerland,Neutrality, and the Divided States of Korea and Vietnam

This article examines neutral Switzerland's recognition policy towards the divided states of Korea and Vietnam. Drawing comparisons with other neutrals, notably Austria and Sweden, allows us to assess the credibility of neutrality in the Global Cold War. All three neutrals explicitly or implicitly aimed to reinforce their neutrality through the principle of universality, which entailed the recognition of all regimes, no matter their political couleur. Yet this principle was not applied consistently, but rather pragmatically. Until the beginning of the 1970s, Switzerland, as well as Austria and Sweden, favoured the Western-oriented over the Communist halves of Korea and Vietnam. Thereby, this article argues, they undermined the credibility of neutrality. They were, however, willing to take that risk, because they feared that the recognition of North Korea and North Vietnam could irritate the United States, and provoke East German claims for recognition, which was undesirable due to the Hallstein doctrine and West Germany's economic weight. It was only with the rise of the Third World as a political force, and the softening of the US position that the neutrals, which saw themselves in competition with each other for status and influence, eventually recognised North Korea and North Vietnam.