Stanford University

Asianism and Korea's Politics of Identity

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This article examines Korea's politics of identity in the form of Asianism in the modern period, especially since Korea's incorporation into the modern world system in the late nineteenth century. Asianism, and regionalism generally, has become a salient policy strategy for the current South Korean government. However, Asianism has been a primary ideological current in modern Korea whose most recent incarnation should be understood in the larger historical context. This study traces the development of Asianism in four different periods: precolonial, colonial, Cold War, and postCold War. Initially emerging as a bulwark against Western encroachment, the Asianism narrative became irrelevant upon Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 and only survived as a discourse about a glorified cultural past during colonial rule. Upon liberation, Asianism rescinded as the Japancentered regional order was replaced by a new Cold War alignment, capitalist (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) versus communist (China and North Korea). Although discussion about Asianism and a new East Asian regional order have recently resurfaced, the historical legacy of colonialism, war, and national division has added much complexity to the debate. Explicating how the Asianism narrative emerged and evolved through these various historical contexts sheds light on the complexities and difficulties inherent in the current attempt to forge an Asian regional order. By looking at Asianism from a historical perspective, we can also better appreciate the continuity and discontinuity in Korea's politics of identity. While it is still uncertain what the foundation of a new Asianism will be, it is equally obvious that regional interactions will continue to be an important part of the global world order. This study concludes with policy implications of how a historically sensitive understanding of the development of an Asian regional identity can further interaction and integration of East Asian nations.

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
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Gi-Wook Shin
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A Better Korea Strategy

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David Kang
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The problems in this alliance are not a result of emotion, naivete or ingratitude. Indeed, even if none of those emotional and cultural issues existed, the alliance would still be in dire need of revision. To find the best path forward for both the United States and South Korea, we need to focus on the real issues.

One of the less publicized but perhaps most important matters before President Bush on his recent trip to South Korea for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit was that of relations between the United States and the host country. Although South Korea has long been a close ally of the United States, relations between the two have cooled in recent years, and the alliance has come under great strain. Bush's trip did not set a new direction for the alliance, which has been drifting for the past few years.

There is a way to reverse this cooling in relations, I believe -- to promote U.S. strategic interests in the region, including denuclearization of North Korea; to retain U.S. influence there; and to strengthen a long-standing alliance. What is needed is an effort to widen the "North Korea problem" from one of nuclear weapons to one of unification.

Controversy over the fraying U.S.-South Korea alliance focuses almost exclusively on cultural or emotional issues. In the United States there are some who feel that South Koreans are insufficiently grateful for the steadfast U.S. support to South Korea, particularly for the American lives lost in defense of the South during the Korean War of 1950-53 and for the extensive economic and military aid since. Others feel that rising anti-American sentiment in South Korea reveals the naivete of a younger generation of Koreans who are insufficiently worried about the North Korean threat.

But the problems in the alliance are not a result of emotion, naivete or ingratitude. Indeed, even if none of those emotional and cultural issues existed, the alliance would still be in dire need of revision. To find the best path forward for both the United States and South Korea, we need to focus on the real issues.

The main factor straining the alliance is the unresolved Korean War and the continued division of the peninsula. This has created differing long-term strategic concerns for the United States and South Korea.

For South Korea, the key issue is not North Korean nuclear weapons -- it never was. South Korea's overriding concern is how to resolve the issue of national unification and integrate North Korea back into the world's most dynamic region, whether or not there are nuclear weapons. All other South Korean foreign policy issues take second place.

In contrast to Korea's regional issues, U.S. concerns are global and military. For at least the next several years, the United States will be mainly concerned with countering potential terrorist threats. Distracted by the overwhelming focus on anti-terrorism, homeland security and other issues, the United States has viewed its Korea policy as a narrow extension of its anti-terrorism policy, focusing almost exclusively on denuclearizing the North. These different strategic priorities have led to severe strains between the two allies, despite the desire of both to maintain a close relationship.

The United States can improve its position in East Asia, as well as solidify its alliance with South Korea, by widening its focus beyond North Korean denuclearization and coming out strongly and enthusiastically in favor of Korean unification. Although the United States rhetorically supports unification, it has been noticeably passive in pursuing policy to that end.

Such a policy shift would achieve many U.S. goals and would strengthen our alliance with South Korea in the process.

First and foremost, denuclearization is far more likely to occur with a change in North Korea's regime and a resolution to the Korean War than it is without resolving that larger issue. Until now the United States has put denuclearization first, without making much progress. Folding the nuclear issue into the larger issue would provide far more leverage on both questions and potentially create new or broader areas for progress.

Second, such a policy would provide grounds for agreement between U.S. and South Korean policymakers from which they could cooperate and work together, rather than against each other. Exploring the best path toward unification will require both economic and military changes in the North -- changes that will provide the United States with more flexibility to rebalance its own forces in the region.

Finally, it would put the United States in a solid position to retain goodwill and influence in Korea after unification -- something that is far from ensured today, when many South Koreans are skeptical about U.S. attitudes and policies toward the region. If the United States is seen as a major source of help for unification, it is far more likely that the post-unification orientation of Korea will be favorable to Washington.

This would be a major policy change for the United States, but given the importance of the region and of the Korean Peninsula, it is the best path to follow.

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Siegfried S. Hecker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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A Tale of Two Crises: The Past, Present, and Possible Future of US-DPRK Nuclear Dynamics

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This talk is based on chapter 4 of the speaker's dissertation, "North Korea," provided in the link below.

Alexander H. Montgomery is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He has a BA in physics from the University of Chicago, an MA in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in sociology from Stanford University, and will be receiving his PhD in political science from Stanford University in fall 2005. He has worked as a research associate in high energy physics on the BaBar experiment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a graduate research assistant at the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests include political organizations, weapons of mass disruption and destruction, social studies of technology, and interstate social relations. His dissertation was on post-Cold War U.S. counterproliferation policy, evaluating the efficacy of policies towards North Korea, Iran, and proliferation networks.

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207 Encina Hall

Alex Montgomery Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC; PhD, Department of Political Science, Stanford
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Why China's Rise Will Be Peaceful: Hierarchy and Stability in East Asia

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Realpolitik pessimists, power transition theorists, and others see China's rise as inherently destabilizing. However, China has already been growing rapidly for almost three decades, and there is little evidence that the region is devolving into balancing, nor that China's rise is causing undue alarm in the region. China's expected emergence as the most powerful state in East Asia has been accompanied with more stability than pessimists believed because hierarchy, not balancing, is emerging in East Asia. Dr. Kang explains the relationships between dominant and secondary states in a hierarchic system. Furthermore, on the one hand, China has provided credible information about its capabilities and intentions to its neighbors. On the other hand, East Asian states actually believe China's claims, and hence do not fear -- and instead seek to benefit from - China's rise. This shared understanding about China's preferences and limited aims short-circuits the security dilemma.

David Kang has scholarly interests in both business-government relations and international relations, with a focus on Asia. His book Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002), was named by Choice as a 2003 Outstanding Academic Title. He is also author of Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, co-authored with Victor Cha (Columbia University Press, 2003). Kang is a Stanford alumnus (B.A. 1988, anthropology and international relations) and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

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David Kang Visiting Professor, Shorenstein APARC and Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College Speaker
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Response to "Light Water Reactors at the Six Party Talks: The Barrier that Makes the Water Flow"

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Chaim Braun comments on the essay "Light Water Reactors at the Six Party Talks," which appeared as Policy Forum Online 05-78: 21 September 2005, published by the Nautilus Institue. Braun agrees that it is unlikely the U.S. will approve sending any nuclear-sensitive technology to the DPRK before a complete and verifiable de-nuclearization process takes place and produces results in the field. He surveys other possible sources of nuclear power for North Korea, including building a Russian reactor as suggested in the initial essay.

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CISAC's 2005-2006 fellows seek global security solutions

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David Hafemeister is a physics professor at California Polytechnic State University, but this academic year he's at Stanford University studying ways to keep the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty viable for the U.S. Senate to consider ratifying. Jonathan Farley, a professor in the mathematics and computer science deparment at the University of the West Indies, is here this year as well, conducting a mathematical analysis of counterterrorism operations. They are among seven science fellows now visiting the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

With fellowships in the sciences and social sciences, CISAC, directed by political science Professor Scott Sagan, brings top scholars to campus to find solutions to complex international problems.

This year's fellows "are a select and exciting set of scholars doing innovative work on important issues of international security--which now includes homeland security," said Lynn Eden, CISAC's associate director for research. "All of us at CISAC are very much looking forward to having our new crew on board."

The other CISAC science fellows are:

  • Manas Baveja and Yifan Liu, both doctoral candidates at the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, who use mathematical models to study homeland security;
  • Chaim Braun of Altos Management Partners, who is working on a United Nations nuclear energy project;
  • Belkis Cabrera-Palmer, a physics doctoral candidate from Syracuse University, who is studying nuclear energy issues in Latin America; and
  • Sonja Schmid, a lecturer in Stanford's Science, Technology and Society Program, who is working on a book aimed at understanding the decisions that produced and sustained the civilian nuclear energy program in the Soviet Union from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Charles Perrow, professor emeritus of sociology from Yale University, is among seven pre- and postdoctoral fellows in social science disciplines who are also visiting CISAC. Perrow is working on a project to reduce homeland security vulnerabilities. CISAC's other postdoctoral social science fellows are:

  • Tarak Barkawi, a lecturer at the Centre for International Studies at the University of Cambridge in England, who is examining why small wars have big consequences, and
  • Alex Montgomery, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, whose project deals with U.S. post-Cold War nuclear counterproliferation strategies.

CISAC's predoctoral fellows in social science are:

  • Dara Cohen, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, who will examine the efficacy of post-9/11 domestic security legislation;
  • Matthew Rojansky, a law student at Stanford, whose project explores the legitimacy of international institutions and legal instruments in the war on terror;
  • Jacob Shapiro, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, whose project looks at the organizational consequences of terrorist motivation; and
  • Jessica Stanton, a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University, who is examining compliance with international laws of war during civil war.

CISAC also is hosting Robert Carlin of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, a visiting scholar whose project addresses U.S.-North Korea relations, and Laura Donohue, who is writing a book, Counterterrorism and the Death of Liberalism, while completing a law degree at Stanford Law School. Patrick Roberts, who comes to Stanford from the University of Virginia, where he earned a doctorate in politics, will examine bureaucratic autonomy and homeland security reorganization.

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The real nuclear threat is to America's bases

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The six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons raise public concerns about whether Pyongyang will indeed dismantle its nuclear weapons program or whether it will pursue long-range nuclear missiles that could destroy Seoul, Tokyo or an American city. Overlooked is the threat to U.S. military capabilities, write CISAC's Michael M. May and colleague Michael Nacht in this Financial Times op-ed.

Amid uncertainty over the outcome of the six-party negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons development, public concern is likely to focus on whether Pyongyang will live up to commitments it made to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme (already questionable) and whether it will pursue long-range nuclear missiles that could destroy an American city or, more immediately, Seoul and Tokyo. But the latter concern is not the most effective nuclear threat North Korea or other potential adversaries could pose.

A nuclear threat to American cities, if implemented, would certainly provoke massive US retaliation. There are better options for opponents: credible, cheaper and more suited to the US capabilities that adversaries would face. Since the cold war, the top US military priority, as stated in congressional testimonies, has been to deploy the world's most effective power projection forces. These forces have been used in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and central Asia. A power projection force operates in or near hostile territory. It must rely on superior training, tactics and equipment. Joint force training, mobile communication and control, soldiers capable of individual initiative and precision-guided munitions have been key to US success.

Any power projection force needs air bases and ports of debarkation and logistics centres for sustained operations. These facilities must be rented or conquered. Their number is limited - a handful in Iraq, and not many more in east Asia, seven or so in Japan, some bases in South Korea, and a few others. These facilities are highly vulnerable even to inaccurate nuclear missile attacks. They are "soft targets", not "hardened" against nuclear weapons.

North Korea, with a couple of dozen warheads mounted on its intermediate-range No Dong missiles, or its longer-range Taepo Dong missiles, could threaten all the US assets mentioned above and have weapons left to threaten Tokyo and Seoul.

The US could destroy those North Korean military and nuclear assets it could locate. North Korean forces could retreat into the mountains and position for a protracted ground war. But would the US then launch a massive attack against North Korea with the threat still hanging over Japanese and South Korean cities?

The Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review envisages a force structure better suited to counter-terrorism and control of the seas and the sky, rather than focused on fighting two land wars simultaneously. The nuclear threat to essential US force-projection assets largely counterbalances the advantage provided by US conventional forces, without necessarily consigning whole cities and industrial bases to destruction. That latter threat can still be held in reserve by our adversaries.

Should this threat mature, it would undercut the credibility of US security guarantees in east Asia that have been the hallmark of US strategy in the region for more than half a century. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all depend heavily on these guarantees for their security. This credibility has dissuaded each government from acquiring its own nuclear force. Such restraint, in turn, has permitted China to proceed at a more measured pace in its own nuclear weapons development programmes.

If key political and defence officials in Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei no longer believed in US guarantees because of the vulnerability of US military assets in the region to a North Korean nuclear missile attack, the consequences for their own security and for US national strategy could be profound. Although circumstances are quite different in the Middle East-Persian Gulf region, similar consequences could materialise if Iran or another hostile country developed a comparable nuclear missile capability.

A great deal is at stake in constraining the missile and nuclear weapons capabilities of North Korea and other rogue states. The US thus must utilise all the resources at its disposal, working constructively with its allies and other interested parties, to deny these states the capabilities they almost surely seek to acquire. A more resilient forward defence and deterrent posture is essential to an effective American global strategy.

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David Kang

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-6392 (650) 723-6530
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Visiting Professor
David_Kang.jpg PhD

David Kang is associate professor of government, and adjunct associate professor and research director at the Center for International Business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He has scholarly interests in both business-government relations and international relations, with a focus on Asia. At Tuck he teaches courses on doing business in Asia, and also manages teams of MBAs in the Tuck Global Consultancy Program that conduct in-country consulting projects for multinational companies in Asia.

Kang's book, Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002), was named by Choice as one of the 2003 "Outstanding Academic Titles". He is also author of Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (co-authored with Victor Cha) (Columbia University Press, 2003). He has published scholarly articles in journals such as International Organization, International Security, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and Foreign Policy. He is a frequent radio and television commentator, and has also written opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), Joongang Ilbo (Seoul), and writes a monthly column for the Oriental Morning News (Shanghai). Kang is a member of the editorial boards of Political Science Quarterly, Asia Policy, IRI Review, Business and Politics, and the Journal of International Business Education.

Professor Kang has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Yale University, Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), the University of Geneva IO-MBA program (Switzerland), Korea University (Seoul, Korea) and the University of California, San Diego. He received an AB with honors from Stanford University and his PhD from University of California, Berkeley.

Rylan Sekiguchi

616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, C332
Stanford, CA 94305-6060

(650) 725-1486
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Rylan Sekiguchi is Manager of Curriculum and Instructional Design at the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Prior to joining SPICE in 2005, he worked as a teacher at Revolution Prep in San Francisco.

Rylan’s professional interests lie in curriculum design, global education, education technology, student motivation and learning, and mindset science. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University.

He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen curriculum units for SPICE, including Along the Silk Road, China in Transition, Divided Memories: Comparing History Textbooks, and U.S.–South Korean Relations. His writings have appeared in publications of the National Council for History Education and the Association for Asian Studies.

Rylan has also been actively engaged in media-related work for SPICE. In addition to serving as producer for two films—My Cambodia and My Cambodian America—he has developed several web-based lessons and materials, including What Does It Mean to Be an American?

In 2010, 2015, and 2021, Rylan received the Franklin Buchanan Prize, which is awarded annually by the Association for Asian Studies to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university.
 
Rylan has presented teacher seminars across the country at venues such as the World Affairs Council, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and for organizations such as the National Council for the Social Studies, the International Baccalaureate Organization, the African Studies Association, and the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. He has also conducted presentations internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines; for the European Council of International Schools in Spain, France, and Portugal; and at Yonsei University in South Korea.
 
Manager of Curriculum and Instructional Design
Instructor, Stanford e-Hiroshima
Manager, Stanford SEAS Hawaii
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