The emergence and evolution of International Relations studies in postcolonial South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jungmin Seo ◽  
Young Chul Cho
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Colonial Mentality ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Current State ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Colonial Legacies

Abstract This study investigates how International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline emerged and evolved in South Korea, focusing on the country's peculiar colonial and postcolonial experiences. In the process, it examines why South Korean IR has been so state-centric and positivist (American-centric), while also disclosing the ways in which international history has shaped the current state of IR in South Korea, institutionally and intellectually. It is argued that IR intellectuals in South Korea have largely reflected the political arrangement of their time, rather than demonstrate academic independence or leadership for its government and/or civil society, as they have navigated difficult power structures in world politics. Related to this, it reveals South Korean IR's twisted postcoloniality, which is the absence – or weakness – of non-Western Japanese colonial legacies in its knowledge production/system, while its embracing the West/America as an ideal and better model of modernity for South Korea's security and development. It also reveals that South Korean IR's recent quest for building a Korean School of IR to overcome its Western dependency appears to be in operation within a colonial mentality towards mainstream American IR.

Individuals in International Relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-45
Author(s):  
Peter Hägel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Discipline Formation

Chapter 2 reviews how International Relations (IR) scholarship has been treating individual agency, especially within the dominant theoretical frameworks, Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. Various analytical perspectives, such as the “levels-of-analysis,” foreign policy analysis, and the transnational relations approach, have reserved room for the analysis of individuals in world politics. But concerns about academic discipline formation and real-world relevance have led to a widespread neglect of individual actors. While James Rosenau’s research and the integration of social theory into IR offer fruitful ways of thinking about individual agency, they often overemphasize the structural situatedness of actors fulfilling social roles. Revisiting the structure–agency debate, the chapter takes inspiration from Margaret Archer’s sociological insights in order to propose that agency should be analyzed as a variable with an intrasubjective and an intersubjective dimension, which always requires contextual specification. Power, it is argued, should be seen as a disposition, and its exercise vis-à-vis other actors as an intentional project.

The Prison and the Postcolony: Contested Memory and the Museumification of Sŏdaemun Hyŏngmuso

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Russell Burge
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Run Up ◽  
A Site

Abstract Seoul’s Sŏdaemun Prison is famous in South Korea today as a site of heroic resistance where Korean anticolonial activists were martyred at the hands of Japanese colonial officials. This narrative is complicated, however, by the fact that the prison continued to be used after the fall of the Japanese Empire as a tool to suppress political dissent, right up until its final decommissioning in 1987. This study inquires into the political context surrounding Sŏdaemun Prison’s decommissioning and finds that the decision was made by the Chun Doo Hwan administration in the run-up to the Seoul Olympics and was more concerned with the erasure of contemporaneous political excesses than the preservation of colonial memory. Sŏdaemun Prison’s transformation into a site of colonial tourism in the following decade was carried out as part of a larger move in urban planning to overwrite the memory of the postcolonial authoritarian past, a process that reveals much about the limitations and contradictions of South Korean democratization.

Underdevelopment of American Studies in South Korea: Power and Ignorance

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 274-294
Author(s):  
Jooyoung Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
English Language ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Studying Abroad ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Institutional Legacies

AbstractThis article asks why the disciplines of American Studies and U.S. history are so markedly underdeveloped in South Korea (Republic of Korea) and what this underdevelopment implies about U.S.-South Korean relations. Under Japanese colonial rule, the study of English in Korea was important for studying abroad, but few students studied America itself. Under American occupation and the following military rule in South Korea, American studies were not attractive to nationalist youth even though the English language remained useful. American cultural diplomacy fostered a small group of Americanists, but university enrollments were small. In the 1980s, Americans were blamed for their support of authoritarian rule. Japanese-trained historians saw American history as too short to be significant, and Japanese institutional legacies were an obstacle. Americans have also been too constricted in imagining who Koreans were, where Korean ambitions lay, and how Korean society worked. In a sense, the very differences between the two nations hindered them from realizing what those differences were.

scholarly journals Chaos Theory: The Case of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Wuhan, China from the perspective of international relations

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (68) ◽  
pp. 369-384
Author(s):  
Natalia Vladimirovna Kovalevskaia ◽  
Iuliia Alexandrovna Fedoritenko ◽  
William Leahy
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Chaos Theory ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Critical Essay ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

The objective of the article was to reveal the international imbalances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through the coordinates of chaos theory. Methodologically it is a critical essay based on documentary observation. To understand the current state of world politics and the balance of power in international relations, it is appropriate to use chaos theory. At the beginning of the article, the origins of chaos theory are an interdisciplinary study, and its basic concepts are introduced. The value of using chaos theory and its great potential for analysis and applications in the study of international relations is shown in the example of the 2019-2020 events in Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China (PRC). associated with the onset of a COVID-19 viral infection that has spread around the world. At the end of the article, conclusions are drawn and the strengths and weaknesses of the use of chaos theory in dialectical relation to international relations are revealed, both as a field of study and at the same time as geopolitical reality.

scholarly journals WORLD REGIONAL STUDIES AS A RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AND ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

2016 ◽  
pp. 63-69
Author(s):  
E. V. Koldunova
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Research Framework ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
Academic Debate

Dynamic development of international processes at the regional level, various trajectories of regionalization in Europe, Asia, Latin America and other parts of the world created a complex and multidimensional picture of the contemporary international relations. However Social Sciences and IR retained a distinct eurocentrism. This eurocentrism only partly meant that students of IR did not take into account non-European or non-Western realities. Thus, a German Scholar J. Vullers from German Institute of Global and Area Studies analyzing in 2014 three leading International Relations journals (International Organization, World Politics, European Journal of International Relations) diagnosed a serious geographic imbalance in the international studies, which meant a very limited number of articles based on the nonWestern empirical data.Even with such geographic imbalance in IR studies more important for preserving eurocentrism there was the absence of non-Western IR theories or IR theories originating from non-Western political context. The collective monograph edited by Barry Buzan and Amitav Acharya focused exactly on this problem. The title of the book was provocatively asking why there is no non-Western IR theory. Thus, the book in question provoked a lively academic debate on the topic. Russia was not covered in this book. Therefore, this very fact gives one some reasons to reflect on how Russian research in the field may face a double challenge of a changing international environment and an inappropriate level of its intellectual assessment. Against this background this article analyzes World Regional Studies, a research framework and discipline, which is rapidly developing in Russia and may to some extent contribute to a more correct understanding of the international processes.

Beyond “imagined” nostalgia: Gunsan's heritagization of Japanese colonial architecture in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Hyun Kyung Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Korean History ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract In South Korea, romanticization of the era of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945) has long been taboo: the period is widely regarded as one of the most painful and shameful parts of South Korean history. However, during the past decade unexpected cracks have appeared in established national narratives on the colonial period. This paper explores the dissonance between long-standing national narratives and the commodification of local heritage sites for tourism, by examining the heritagization of Japanese colonial architecture in the city of Gunsan. Despite the Gunsan Municipal Government positions the city's colonial stories in ways that largely align with national official narratives on Japanese colonial history, such efforts have unexpectedly generated feelings of imagined nostalgia in three ways: (1) through clashes between official colonial history and the means by which colonial daily life is depicted in Gunsan's Modern Cultural Belt; (2) through the interwoven colonial and post-colonial stories presented in the city's Modern Historic Landscape District and (3) through the commercialized colonial and post-colonial stories articulated by private businesses in Gunsan. This paper suggests that productive nostalgia can help to overcome the limit of the current form of Gunsan's heritagization, and to construct Gunsan's diverse local memories

scholarly journals CAN FEMINISM BE CONSIDERED A MAINSTREAM THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS?

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Mita Yesyca
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The World

The growth of Feminism which has given rise to a new study in the International Relations (IR) field is worth to follow. Not only since it is able to contribute to the academic discipline of IR in theoretically challenging the traditional approach to understand the world politics, but also since it is able to contribute practically because of its nature as a socio-political movement. Nevertheless, in the IR itself there is always a question concerning the possibility of Feminism to be considered a mainstream theory. This article tries to discuss the theoretical contribution of, as well as some issues followed, the development of Feminism in the study of international relations all this time. It finally argues that Feminism can be considered a mainstream theory of international relations so long as there are conversations between traditional theories of international relations and feminists theories of international relations.   Keywords: Feminism, International Relations, mainstream theory     Abstrak   Perkembangan Feminisme yang telah melahirkan suatu kajian baru dalam ilmu Hubungan Internasional (HI) layak untuk disimak. Tak hanya karena ia mampu menyumbang secara teoritis kepada disipilin ilmu HI dalam menantang pendekatan tradisional untuk memahami politik dunia, tetapi juga karena ia mampu menyumbang secara praktis mengingat bahwa sejatinya ia merupakan sebuah gerakan sosial-politis. Meski demikian, dalam HI sendiri selalu ada pertanyaan mengenai peluang Feminisme untuk diterima sebagai sebuah teori yang lazim. Tulisan ini mencoba mendiskusikan sumbangan teoritis dari, sekaligus perdebatan-perdebatan yang mengikuti, perkembangan Feminisme dalam kajian hubungan internasional selama ini. Argumen yang dibangun pada akhirnya ialah bahwa Feminisme dapat dianggap sebagai sebuah teori tentang hubungan internasional yang lazim sepanjang terdapat percakapan antara teori tentang hubungan internasional tradisional dan teori feminis tentang hubungan internasional.   Kata kunci: Feminisme, Hubungan Internasional, teori mainstream    

1. International Relations and Social Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki ◽  
Colin Wight
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

This chapter focuses on the major debates within International Relations (IR) theory with regard to the philosophy of social science. The philosophy of social science has played a key role in the formation, development, and practice of IR as an academic discipline. Issues concerning the philosophy of social science are frequently described as meta-theoretical debates. Meta-theory primarily deals with the underlying assumptions of all theory and attempts to understand the consequences of such assumptions on the act of theorizing and the practice of empirical research. The chapter first provides an historical overview of the philosophy of social science in IR before discussing both the implicit and explicit roles played by meta-theoretical assumptions in IR. It then considers the contemporary disciplinary debates surrounding the philosophy of social science and concludes by analysing how theoretical approaches to the study of world politics have been shaped by meta-theoretical ideas.

scholarly journals The Transition from Traditional Infrastructure to Living SOC and Its Effectiveness for Community Sustainability: The Case of South Korea

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10227
Author(s):  
Yeonsoo Kim ◽  
Jooseok Oh ◽  
Seiyong Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Community Sustainability ◽  
Balanced Development ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Current State ◽  
Metropolitan Cities ◽  
Leisure Facilities ◽  
Community Facilities

In 2018, the South Korean government began promoting a “livelihood-improving” social overhead capital policy based on the concepts of an inclusive city, smart shrinkage, and the balanced development of metropolitan and provincial cities. Based on a review of the extant literature and relevant policies from South Korea, this study explores this policy’s implementation and makes some suggestions for its sustainability. This study compares the current state of South Korea’s urban facilities’ and the balance of their supply between metropolitan and provincial cities. To discern which type of facility central and local governments should prioritize, this study conducts a stepwise regression analysis and identifies which preexisting facilities influence the facility type proposed by the current policy. Results show that South Korea’s living infrastructure is well distributed among metropolitan and provincial cities. However, urban planning shows little consideration for minimizing the distance between facilities and residential zones. In terms of facility types, the supply of education and local community facilities was adequate throughout the country, while culture and art facilities were inadequate. In metropolitan cities, the supply of sports and leisure facilities was insufficient.

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