Korea: divided nation, divided allegiances

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude Woodward
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Economic Benefit ◽  
Mutual Economic ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
North And South

This chapter looks at South Korea’s response to the US ‘pivot’. It takes stock of the post-war division of the peninsula and its consequences for the international alignment of both North and South. It considers how the ‘economic miracle’ in South Korea led to growing competition with Japan and greater synergies with China. It looks at the degree to which North Korea threatens stability in the region, and to what extent its demonisation justifies a major US presence in close proximity to China. The chapter discusses whether resurgent China is seen as a threat to South Korean interests or chiefly viewed through the prism of mutual economic benefit; and contrasts alleged concerns about China with those provoked by Japan. It concludes that while South Korea has continued to step up its military collaboration with the US, it has not become a cheerleader for pushing back against China and has not signed up to a US strategy to contain China.

HEIGHT AND WEIGHT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL SCHWEKENDIEK
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
School Children ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
Anthropometric Data ◽  
South Korean ◽  
North And South

SummaryThis paper investigates height and weight differences between the two Koreas by comparing national anthropometric data published by the South Korean Research Institute of Standard and Science with United Nations survey data collected inside North Korea in 2002. For socioeconomic reasons, pre-school children raised in the developing country of North Korea are up to 13 cm shorter and up to 7 kg lighter than children who were brought up in South Korea – an OECD member. North Korean women were also found to weigh up to 9 kg less than their Southern counterparts.

Four new species and further contributions to the Leuctridae (Plecoptera) of the Korean Peninsula

Zootaxa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4282 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
DÁVID MURÁNYI ◽  
JEONG MI HWANG
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
North Korea ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Two New Species ◽  
Far Eastern ◽  
First Time ◽  
North And South ◽  
Unknown Male

Two new species of Korean needleflies, Perlomyia koreana sp. n. and P. lamellata sp. n. are described from North and South Korea. Additionally, two species, Paraleuctra paramalaisei sp. n. and Perlomyia baei sp. n. are described from South Korea. The previously unknown male of Perlomyia martynovi (Zhiltzova, 1975) is described from South Korean specimens associated with females. Leuctra fusca tergostyla Wu, 1973 comb. n. is proposed for the Far Eastern populations of the Eurosiberian L. fusca (Linnaeus, 1758). Three Leuctridae genera and species are reported from North Korea for the first time and three species are new country records for South Korea. The number of stonefly species known from the Korean Peninsula is increased to 82. A key is presented for the Leuctridae species known from Korean Peninsula including taxa that are expected to occur. Distributional maps are presented and additional notes on the habitats of Korean Leuctridae are given. 

South Korea’s ties with key countries will worsen

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
Content Type ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
The Us

Subject South Korea's international relationships. Significance South Korea’s government is celebrating the success of its response to COVID-19, but the country’s four key foreign relationships all face difficulties -- those with the United States, China, Japan and North Korea. No other countries or regions are vital to Seoul, despite vaunted ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ initiatives. Impacts A prolonged deadlock on funding the US military presence in South Korea could push Seoul closer to Beijing. If President Xi Jinping visits South Korea later this year, Washington could easily misread this. Substantial fence-mending with Japan may have to await new leaderships in both countries. South Korean President Moon Jae-in may have tacitly given up on North Korea, which has visibly given up on him.

Different Cinematic Interpretations of Ch’unhyangjŏn: The Same Korean Identity

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-188
Author(s):  
Gabor Sebo
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The South ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Identity ◽  
Korean Film ◽  
Film Style ◽  
North And South

The article examines the classic Korean folklore fable, 춘향전 (春香傳), Ch’unhyangjŏn (The Fragrance of Spring), The Tale of Ch’unhyang, through the lens of three different successful movie adaptations produced in North and South Korea. Respectively, Yu Wŏn-chun and Yun Ryong-gyu portrayed The Tale of Ch’unhyang (1980) in its modest “Juche realist” North Korean film style, whereas Im Kwŏn-t’aek depicted his work, Ch’unhyang (2000), in a contemporary liberally and daringly revised version, while the romantic portrayal produced in North Korea by the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok, in Love, Love, My Love (1984), is performed from a human-oriented and entertaining perspective filled with musical ingredients and brave images of love. The study aims to demonstrate how the story is diversely interpreted through the two divided film cultures by highlighting differences between collectivism and individualism, noting also that all three interpretations emerge from similar roots of cultural and national identity.

scholarly journals North Koreans’ Public Narratives and Conditional Inclusion in South Korea (In Press)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hough ◽  
Markus Bell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The North ◽  
North And South

This article draws on the public testimonies of North Koreans living in South Korea (t’albungmin) and analyzes the role that these narratives play in South Korean society as mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. North and South Korea technically remain at war, with South Korea claiming sovereignty over the entire Korean peninsula. While t’albungmin are eligible for South Korean citizenship, they describe feeling excluded from full social membership. Although some t’albungmin seek anonymity, this paper considers those who gain social status by speaking publicly about their lives and denouncing the North Korean regime. In so doing, they distance themselves from North Korea and align themselves with the “good” discourse of human rights. However, their actions reinforce a logic of exclusion, implying that t’albungmin who prefer anonymity are “sympathizers,” and consequently restricting their access to social benefits and resources. This case of conditional inclusion illuminates tensions that arise when a sovereignty claim entails the incorporation of people from an enemy state. It also highlights the carefully delineated boundaries of publicly acceptable behavior within which “suspect” citizens must remain as a condition for positive recognition.

Gurye

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-100
Author(s):  
Suhi Choi
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Southwestern Part ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Us ◽  
Memorial Sites

The term “Yŏsun Killings” refers to a prewar atrocity in which the US-allied South Korean forces killed numerous civilians who were accused of being either communists or communist sympathizers in the cities that had been occupied by rebels in the southwestern part of South Korea. As one of the sites of these atrocities, Gurye became the first town in South Korea to erect a public memorial in 2006 for the victims of the Yŏsun Killings. Gurye presents a case that demonstrates how democratized South Korea has continued to negotiate a strong legacy of anticommunism, even at its subversive memorial sites. In a land that has long muted the memories of an old atrocity, suppressed mourners in Gurye are still struggling to reclaim their fundamental yet long-deprived rights to mourn the loss of their loved ones.

scholarly journals Monitoring River Basin Development and Variation in Water Resources in Transboundary Imjin River in North and South Korea Using Remote Sensing

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donghwan Kim ◽  
Hyongki Lee ◽  
Hahn Chul Jung ◽  
Euiho Hwang ◽  
Faisal Hossain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
South Korea ◽  
River Basin ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Water Storage ◽  
Transboundary Rivers ◽  
Water Release ◽  
Basin Development ◽  
River Basin Development ◽  
North And South

This paper presents methods of monitoring river basin development and water variability for the transboundary river in North and South Korea. River basin development, such as dams and water infrastructure in transboundary rivers, can be a potential factor of tensions between upstream and downstream countries since dams constructed upstream can adversely affect downstream riparians. However, because most of the information related to North Korea has been limited to the public, the information about dams constructed and their locations were inaccurate in many previous studies. In addition, water resources in transboundary rivers can be exploited as a political tool. Specifically, due to the unexpected water release from the Hwanggang Dam, upstream of the transboundary Imjin River in North and South Korea, six South Koreans died on 6 September 2009. The Imjin River can be used as a political tool by North Korea, and seven events were reported as water conflicts in the Imjin River from 2001 to 2016. In this paper, firstly, we have updated the information about the dams constructed over the Imjin River in North Korea using multi-temporal images with a high spatial resolution (15–30 cm) obtained from Google Earth. Secondly, we analyzed inter- and intra-water variability over the Hwanggang Reservoir using open-source images obtained from the Global Surface Water Explorer. We found a considerable change in water surface variability before and after 2008, which might result from the construction of the Hwanggang Dam. Thirdly, in order to further investigate intra-annual water variability, we present a method monitoring water storage changes of the Hwanggang Reservoir using the area-elevation curve (AEC), which was derived from multi-sensor Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images (Sentinel-1A and -1B) and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model (DEM). Since many previous studies for estimating water storage change have depended on satellite altimetry dataset and optical images for deriving AEC, the method adopted in this study is the only application for such inaccessible areas since no altimetry ground track exists for the Hwanggang Reservoir and because clouds can block the study area for wet seasons. Moreover, this study has newly proven that unexpected water release can occur in dry seasons because the water storage in the Hwanggang Reservoir can be high enough to conduct a release that can be used as a geopolitical tool. Using our method, potential risks can be mitigated, not in response to a water release, but based on pre-event water storage changes in the Hwanggang Reservoir.

Japan’s Reconciliation in the Issue of Comfort Women with the Netherlands and South Korea: Pragmatic and Reflective Reconciliation

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Naoko KUMAGAI
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Comfort Women ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Core ◽  
Korean Comfort Women ◽  
Post War

Reconciliation among states tends to be pragmatic, based on cost/benefit national interest calculation. But it can be reflective, involving the perpetrator’s responsibility and remorse and the victims’ forgiveness, thus enhancing their mutual confidence. Japan’s moral compensation for the former Dutch and South Korean comfort women was pragmatic, based on the post-war legal agreements, but its scheme with atonement projects for each survivor had reflective elements. The Netherlands mostly accepted and South Korea mostly rejected Japan’s moral compensation for their distinctive historical and political reasons. However, Japan’s occasional excuse-like denial of coercive recruitment of comfort women based on the absence of public documents significantly reduced their confidence in Japan. This shows that the vindication of the victims’ dignity, anchored with the perpetrator’s consistent acknowledgement of its offense, is at the core of reconciliation. Reflective reconciliation is difficult to achieve but pragmatic reconciliation leaves room for dialogue among all parties concerned toward genuine understanding of the victims and thus to the restoration of their dignity.

Departure and Repatriation as Cold War Dissensus: Domestic Ethnography in Korean Documentary

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-457
Author(s):  
Jinhee Park
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Private Realm ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Given

Abstract This article examines autobiographic documentaries about families that expose “dissensus” in the mapping of transborder migration and diasporic desire that were the results of the Cold War in North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. Jae-hee Hong (dir. My Father’s Emails) and Yong-hi Yang (dir. Dear Pyongyang and Goodbye Pyongyang) document the ongoing Cold War in their fathers’ histories through their position as a “familial other,” who embodies both dissensus and intimacy. Hong reveals that anticommunism in South Korean postwar nation building reverberated in the private realm. Yang documents her Zainichi father, who sent his sons to North Korea during the Repatriation Campaign in Japan. The anticommunist father in South Korea (Hong’s) and the communist father in Japan (Yang’s) engendered family migration with contrasting motivations, departure from and return to North Korea, respectively. Juxtaposing these two opposite ideologies in family histories, as well as juxtaposing the filmmakers’ dissonance with the given ideologies in domestic space, provide the aesthetic form for “dissensus.” The politics of aesthetics in domestic ethnography manifests in that the self and the Other are inextricably interlocked because of the reciprocity of the filmmaker and the communist or anticommunist subject.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document