South Korea in 2016

Asian Survey ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-110
Author(s):  
Gi-Wook Shin ◽  
Rennie J. Moon
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
South Korea ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Heavy Industry ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
Official Position ◽  
Leadership Crisis ◽  
High Altitude Area

President Park faced a leadership crisis after revelations that she relied on a confidant with no official position for key decision-making in state affairs. Heavy industry met with serious financial difficulties, and a strong anti-corruption law was enacted. North Korea tested more nuclear weapons and missiles. Controversy over the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense strained South Korea’s relations with China.

South Korean Politics and Foreign Policy in 2017 and 2018

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (01) ◽  
pp. 123-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaewoo CHOO
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South Korea ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Basic Strategy ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The North ◽  
High Altitude Area

The election of Moon Jae-in in South Korea signals a shift to a more conciliatory approach towards North Korea. Moon’s basic strategy towards the North contradicts that of the United States, emphasising a “dual-track” policy of seeking North Korea’s denuclearisation while calling for dialogue to facilitate inter-Korean summit and not North Korea’s denuclearisation. Moon’s acceptance of China’s “Three oppositions” to the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defence is controversial as they are not within Korea’s jurisdiction.

South Korea’s Politics 2018: Unpredictable External Relations and a Slowing Economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 100-110
Author(s):  
Jaewoo CHOO
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Economic Base ◽  
External Relations ◽  
High Altitude Area ◽  
The Government

South Korea will face enormous challenges on two fronts for 2019. The country’s economic base will collapse because of the government’s inability to counter the trap it has laid on itself with a dramatic elevation of minimum wage and tax rates on property and housing. The government will be diplomatically isolated for its blind love towards North Korea, and confronted with rising friction with Japan over history issues and China on Terminal High Altitude Area Defence.

Race, transnational militarism, and neocoloniality: The politics of the THAAD deployment in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 096701062110228
Author(s):  
Seungsook Moon
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Defense System ◽  
Missile Defense ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean ◽  
High Altitude Area ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Internal Homogeneity

This article explores the neglected connection between race and militarism by focusing on a US missile defense system deployed in South Korea. In September of 2017, the two countries installed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in a rural village. Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, this missile defense system was to protect South Korea from attacks by North Korea. The system is integral to US global military strategy, but from the perspective of human security, its benefits are dubious at best. By drawing on a theory of the ‘racial state’ and critical studies of the US empire-state, the article examines two fundamental practices of the neocolonial military relation between the two states: wartime Operational Control of the South Korean military and extraterritoriality of US bases in South Korea. It argues that these neocolonial practices in which the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system deployment is embedded reflect ‘the historicist racial ruling’ that denies self-rule for Koreans and its internalization by Koreans who support the unequal military relation. It also analyzes how the South Korean racial state promotes internal homogeneity and otherizes North Korea to bolster national security through the missile defense system.

North Korea

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McEachern
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
The North ◽  
American President

After a year of trading colorful barbs with the American president and significant achievements in North Korea’s decades-long nuclear and missile development programs, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared mission accomplished in November 2017. Though Kim's pronouncement appears premature, North Korea is on the verge of being able to strike the United States with nuclear weapons. South Korea has long been in the North Korean crosshairs but worries whether the United States would defend it if North Korea holds the American homeland at risk. The largely ceremonial summit between US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and the unpredictability of both parties, has not quelled these concerns and leaves more questions than answers for the two sides' negotiators to work out. The Korean Peninsula’s security situation is an intractable conflict, raising the question, “How did we get here?” In this book, former North Korea lead foreign service officer at the US embassy in Seoul Patrick McEachern unpacks the contentious and tangled relationship between the Koreas in an approachable question-and-answer format. While North Korea is famous for its militarism and nuclear program, South Korea is best known for its economic miracle, familiar to consumers as the producer of Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, and even K-pop music and K-beauty. Why have the two Koreas developed politically and economically in such radically different ways? What are the origins of a divided Korean Peninsula? Who rules the two Koreas? How have three generations of the authoritarian Kim dictatorship shaped North Korea? What is the history of North-South relations? Why does the North Korean government develop nuclear weapons? How do powers such as Japan, China, and Russia fit into the mix? What is it like to live in North and South Korea? This book tackles these broad topics and many more to explain what everyone needs to know about South and North Korea.

South Korea in 2016

2017 ◽  
Vol 09 (01) ◽  
pp. 114-126
Author(s):  
Jaewoo CHOO
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Government ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Comfort Women ◽  
High Altitude Area

In 2016, a scandal that involved President Park Geun-hye and her confidante shook the country. Cases of bribery, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, illegal persecution of dissenters and so on surfaced. Confidence in Park’s leadership began to waver when she closed the chapter on ‘comfort women’ issue with Japan in December 2015 without public consultation. The deal was unacceptable to the Korean public in the absence of a formal apology from the Japanese government. The speed with which President Park sealed the agreement with the United States to deploy Thermal High Altitude Area Defence also took the country by surprise. These foreign affairs endeavours have wiped out her diplomatic success achieved in 2015.

Lopsided Security on the Korean Peninsula

Asian Survey ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Kil Joo Ban
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Gray Zone ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
The North ◽  
Conventional Weapons

North Korea’s asymmetric provocations over the last decades can be classified into two periods: tactical provocations at sea in 1970–1990 and strategic (nuclear) provocations in 2000–2020. What is the logic underlying the North Korean imbroglio? And how does the former period differ from the latter? The first set of provocations was intended to shift the threat imbalance caused by a widening gap in conventional military capabilities into a balance of insecurity, where the weaker North Korean side faced South Korea and the combined ROK–US forces. The second set was intended to shift the balance of insecurity into an imbalance of terror while ensuring that only Pyongyang would be armed with nuclear weapons in the area. The “gray zone” discourse of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (rather than North Korea) ended up bolstering North Korea’s nuclear program, while South Korea intensified only its conventional weapons program.

Needing Help against "Evil"

Asian Survey ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Rozman ◽  
Noah Rozman
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Terrorist Groups

The fallout from September 11 continued to recast U.S. relations with both Southeast and Northeast Asia. Alarm over Islamic terrorist groups such as the perpetrators of the Bali disco bombing and development of nuclear weapons by North Korea eclipsed concern with China's relentless rise and Japan's deepening economic morass. The Bush administration looked to the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to root out conspiratorial cells, and to South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia to pressure Pyongyang. After Bush branded North Korea as part of the "axis of evil," a conciliatory tone prevailed toward all who could help in containing the nation.

Nuclear weapons’ utility will grow for states globally

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Electronic Warfare ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Near Abroad

Significance The world’s nuclear-armed states and their allies have boycotted the talks, whereas over 123 non-nuclear countries are participating. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley described the UN effort as dangerous and unrealistic, citing the provocative behaviour of “bad actors” like North Korea. Entrenched disagreement about the conference suggests widening international divisions on the practicality, pacing and scale of marginalising nuclear weaponry. Impacts Greater US nuclear tensions with China, North Korea and Russia are likely to have political effects in Europe, Japan and South Korea. Increased sophistication of electronic warfare capabilities could diminish policymakers' confidence in missile defence systems. China and Russia may seek a greater role in global nuclear ordering aimed at limiting US activity in their respective ‘near-abroad’ spheres. If normative commitments to disarm are abandoned, that leaves only deterrent relationships.

Asymmetrical Interdependence and Sanction: China’s Economic Retaliation over South Korea’s THAAD Deployment

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (04) ◽  
pp. 1940008
Author(s):  
FLORENCE WEN-TING YANG
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
High Altitude ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
Insufficient Evidence ◽  
Chinese Companies ◽  
Economic Coercion ◽  
High Altitude Area

Since China’s economic rise, there has been an upsurge of cases demonstrating that the country has translated its increasing economic capabilities into political influence over other states. The focus of this paper is to investigate the case of China’s economic sanctions on South Korea in response to its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment. Its goal is to deepen our understanding of how China has employed economic coercion in order to alter the policies of other states. China’s economic sanctions have included intentional ones like the Hallyu ban, a ban on tourism, non-tariff measures, the shutting down of Lotte Marts, and the fomenting of anti-Korean sentiment in its official media. There is however insufficient evidence to prove that these boycott movements and reductions in direct investment on the part of Chinese companies are government-mandated sanctions and not simply the choice of individual actors. Our findings indicate that due to its asymmetrical interdependence on China, South Korea was more vulnerable to economic sanctions and thus more likely to make political concessions.

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