Korea’s Post-American Alliance Choices (1): India?

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This will be an occasional series. The US is entering a period of decline. Its ability and willingness to meet its alliance commitment to South Korea is waning. So Korea is, quietly, beginning to poke around in Asia. It is setting up preferential trade areas where possible, signing up whomever it can for ‘strategic partnerships,’ and generally branching out in the region. This serves both its desire to be a more regional player (rather than be permanently trapped in its peninsular ghetto with NK) and its growing need for friends beyond the US. The US has neither the money nor the domestic will to fight another Korean war. So it makes sense for Korea to look around, even if no one will admit that that is what it is doing.

On Monday, I spoke on the radio about this. Last week, the president of Korea had a state visit to India. India is a good choice for several reasons. Like Korea, India is

1. a liberal democracy with a lot of religious diversity.

2. worried about China’s rise.

3. an American ally.

4. Bonus: India is not Japan.

While more common than in the past, stable democracy is still hard to find in Asia. It makes sense for Korea and India to hang together. Of course, the closest democracy to Korea is Japan, but the mutual loathing is so severe, that Japan is a last ditch alliance choice for Korea. Further, both have a good tradition of internal tolerance based on their religious diversity. Everyone knows of India’s of course, but Korea too is one of the most religious fragmented states in Asia (sizeable minorities of Catholics, Buddhists, born-again protestants, and agnostics, with no dominant bloc).

This commonality of values is complemented by a commonality of interests, or rather an interest: China. Both are edgy about its quick rise (no surprise there), and both continue to hedge it and ally with the US in order to do so.

The downsides though are high. India is far away. It does not have the two-ocean fleet necessary to project serious power into Northeast Asia, and it is still losing the race with China.

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TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

February 1, 2010

Petra:

So President Lee went off to India last week. What happened? Why is this important?

REK:

Two reasons. First, Korean has a trade relationship with India. Second, Korea is slowly poking around Asia for other friends and possible partners.

Petra:

Ok. Is Korea’s trade with India significant?

REK:

Middling. Korea is India’s 9th biggest trading partner. That is ok. But there are 1.3 billion Indians, and they are getting wealthier. So it makes sense for Korea to try to push into this market. This is similar to the growth of China. As China and India both develop and get wealthier, their huge internal markets will attract interest from around the world.

Petra:

So if this was basically a trade mission, why did President Lee go?

REK:

Well, it was more than that. President Lee was a guest of honor for India’s big national holiday. It was an official state visit. Such trips fit President Lee’s style of diplomacy. First, the president has increasingly used his position to act as a salesman for Korea industry. You may recall his earlier bout of commercial diplomacy in the United Arab Emirates regarding Korean-designed nuclear power plants. Second, the pursuit of trade agreements has grown into a major Korean foreign policy tool in the last decade or two.

Petra:

Can you explain that a little more?

REK:

Sure. The bedrock of Korean foreign policy is the security alliance with the United States. But increasingly Korea has looked for an autonomous economic foreign policy. And Korea’s chosen manner of reaching out, especially in Asia, is trade deals. Korea has sought all sorts of preferential and free trade areas, and President Lee has made this a regular focus of his trips abroad.

Petra:

Has it been successful? I thought Korea belonged to the World Trade Organization which organizes global trade rules.

REK:

That’s true. But the WTO is stuck right now. The current round of trade negotiation, begun in Doha in Qatar in the Middle East, has been bogged down for years. With the Doha round frozen, Korea has turned to bilateral and regional trade deals in its foreign policy. This trip to India, as well as the recent sale of nuclear reactors in the Middle East is a part of this process.

Petra:

So the WTO is stuck, and President Lee is trying to push Korean exports on his own on these trips?

REK:

Yes, that’s right. In international relations, we call this commercial diplomacy, and President Lee is getting quite good at it. The big prize, an FTA with the US, is still out of reach though.

Petra:

Ok. Let’s stay with India. You said something about Korea looking for other friends and partners. What does that mean?

REK:

Well Korea is a tight neighborhood. It is surrounded by three big countries – Russia, Japan, and China – who have traditionally bullied or informally dominated the Korean peninsula. Korea’s political geography, or geopolitics, is quite poor; it is encircled. This is the great benefit of the US alliance. The US is too far away from Korea to dominate it, but the US alliance does help Korea prevent itself from being dominated by others. As long as US troops are in Korea, Korea can push back any encroachment by China, Japan or Russia.

Petra:

So what does this have to do with India?

REK:

Well, the US is in trouble now. The US deficit is gigantic. The US public debt is too. The US is fighting two hot wars in the Middle East, and several clandestine conflicts there as well. It is eight and a half years now since 9/11, and Americans are exhausted with all these wars and conflict.

Petra:

Does that include Korea?

REK:

Not really, but Americans certainly don’t want to get pulled into a big conflict here. As most Koreans know, the US military footprint in Korea is shrinking, and the US will officially relinquish wartime authority of the Korean military in 2012. In short, the US is increasingly looking for ways to lower the costs of the Korean alliance.

Petra:

So Korea is shopping for other friends?

REK:

Probably, quietly. I certainly would be. The US looks at Korea, and it sees a wealthy modern country that it believes should be able to defend itself without much US assistance. So Korea is wise to begin to think about friends and possible allies beyond simply the US.

Petra:

So can India be an ally to Korea?

REK:

Maybe. India has some definitely upsides for Korea. Like Korea, India is a democracy. Democracy in Asia is still somewhat rare, so Indo-Korean cooperation on security makes good sense. India also worries a lot about China’s rapid growth. India has an ongoing border dispute with China, much as the two Koreas and China do over the ancient Koguryeo role’s in history. So there is a community of values between India and Korea – liberalism, democracy, religious tolerance – as well as a community of interests – careful observation and response to China’s rise. Finally, both Korea and India are American allies.

Petra:

So how is the Korean government proceeding?

REK:

Well President Lee and the Indian prime minister agreed to upgrade Indo-Korean ties to a ‘strategic partnership.’ That implies that the two see each other as more than just trading partners or friends. President Lee pursued the same approach with US President Obama in the summer 2009. But for observers, it is hard to know the details of this new partnership. There will be regular meetings between officials of the two countries’ ministries, but it is hard to know how serious this will be.

Petra:

So there is no Indo-Korean alliance in the offing?

REK:

Probably not. Better to see this another sign that Korea is aware that the US is in trouble because of the long war on terrorism and the huge financial burden of the crisis. Korea is wise to start poking around for new friends, if not trade partners, and India is a good choice.

Petra:

Thank you coming again, Professor.

Republican SotU Response: Vote for Me because I Read the Bible and my All-American Sons Love Football – Bleh…

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Part one of this post, on Obama’s State of the Union address, is here.

If Obama’s speech seemed tired and rather boring, I must say I found the Republican Response simply atrocious – Vote for me because my all-American sons love sports just like you! It was Palinism; i.e., decadent, late Bushism.

The Democrats cheering at just about every line was sycophantic and annoying. Just saying flim-flam like, ‘I want America to be the best at future technologies,’ got Obama mawkishly long applause, and after awhile it got really tiresome. Agreed.

But the GOP response was downright disastrous. Here the applause really was scripted as syncophantic. What is it with the GOP and her0-worship? Ech! They even hooted and ho-yahed for McDonnell. And did you catch the unbelievably ‘diverse’ cast of worshippers behind the governor –  a soldier, a black,a policeman, an Asian, an old woman? This is supposed to be the contemporary GOP? Of white protestant tea partiers in Virginia of all places? Good lord. I laughed out loud the first time they panned the backstop audience.

It all reminded me of the GOP 2004 convention, a) with its painfully overchoreographed image of diversity for a party whose voter base is overwhelmingly white, born-again protestant, and b) the hero-worship of W as just a regular good ole boy who rose to greatness by his wholesome American gut values. Only in Virginia, this guv made sure to tell us his beaming daughter served in Iraq, and his snappy young sons like Sportscenter. Hah! What unbelievably smarmy crap! Do Americans really fall that?

If you thought Bobby Jindal was bad last year, at least he didn’t ask his family to perform the family-values  swimsuit competition for the religious right: ‘the Scriptures say families and America are great, so vote for me!’

The riposte captured all the banality and policy bankruptcy of the current GOP. The US economy nearly melted down, and there is wide consensus that massive government intervention scarcely averted another Depression. Yet the GOP response told us only that government is going to stifle America. That’s it?! When corporate and private spending is down all over the place, and the only big source of demand in the economy right now is government? That is your answer? Government is the problem when the only reason unemployment isn’t worse is government? C’mon. How can I take this seriously as policy?

On foreign policy, McDonnell was just as bad. He could only complain that we mirandized Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. I take it to mean that we should torture the hell out of him or otherwise deny him any rights. When did torture become a litmus-test for status as a conservative?! Creepy…

I was once again struck by the utter failure of the GOP to respond seriously to Obama’s election and the scope of the financial crisis. This is still the GOP of the W years. Governor McDonnell told us nothing we haven’t heard before, and he did it in the worst Rovian fashion – a highly controlled, hyper-scripted environment filled with sycophantic, awestruck faces, the shameless exploitation of his family, an even more shameless diversity ploy, Bible citations – excuse me, ‘Scripture,’ the recitation of same points again and again, now matter what the topic of discussion, and a bullying tough guy approach on foreign policy. They should have just let Palin do the response; she really believes W was one of America’s greatest presidents ever.

If Obama came across as exasperated or tired, McDonnell broadcasted unreconstructed Bushism. Stick with the former until the GOP can finally figure out how to move on.

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Finally I must add one professorial, intellectual barb to the whole proceedings:  it was remarkably, staggeringly shallow at almost all times for anyone with a serious knowledge about or education in the big issues in American life. I spent 2-3 hours watching the State of the Union, the GOP response, and some of the punditry on CNN. I was amazed at how little genuine expertise, technical detail, or serious, apartisan/non-spin, cost-benefit analyses of policy choices were included. It was almost all just campaign spin (how will this or that play in the red states?; speaking of, will Maitlin and Carville please finally go away?!), agonizingly cheese-y anecdotes (tell the woman making brake fluid in Des Moines that America has lost its edge), inspirational vacuities (America’s promise for the future), and shameless partisan positioning (my daughter went to Iraq, and my handlers made sure to place a black and Asian behind me – look! don’t miss ‘em!).

What junk! I mean really. How unbelievably insulting. Can’t our public officials treat us as reflective, deliberative voters, instead of dupes who think you’re great because you quote the Bible? How gratingly, offensively shallow. Grrr. WE ARE NOT CHILDREN.

If you have any kind of serious education in politics and economics, this was 3 hours of your life wasted. You learned almost nothing serious about the coming year’s policy debates – other than unintended signals that the GOP is lost in time, Obama doesn’t know what to do with health care, and no one is serious about the deficit.

Most of my day is spent reading technical work in political science and economics, so I imagine this is why it seemed so jarringly childish and evasive of serious issues. But honestly, if you had read even a few articles in the Economist or Financial Times about US politics, you would have learned more. I could have given a better talk than any of those guys, and in less time. This is why we have the democratic legitimacy crisis Obama mentioned. If you treat the population like idiots, they become disaffected.

Obama’s State of the Yawn-nion

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My thoughts on the Republican response are here.

Interpreting the State of the Union (SotU) address is kremlinology on par with deciphering what the North Korean regime really thinks, what Sarah Palin’s honest policy preferences are, or what Paris Hilton fans actually see in her. American politics is not my academic area, but I worked for Congress for a bit and teach US politics regularly (almost all political science professors do). So here are a few take-aways…

1. SotUs as a tonic for US democracy’s legitimacy crisis.

SotUs are of course more about the drama and symbolism of the US Constitution in all its majesty. Just about everyone of any significance manages to show up – all 3 branches in their entirety, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the cabinet, the First Lady and all the top staff of those assorted figures. As an object lesson to the citizenry this is helpful, as you get a chance (only once a year unfortunately) to see all the people who are representing you, crafting decisions in your name, and spending your money. In fact, this is rather healthy as exercise of democratic practice. John Q Citizen gets a chance to see his government in action and its trappings of glory (or not). Obama mentioned the crisis of legitimacy of American government (the idea that Americans unheathily loathe their government for its extreme partisanship, constant gridlock, and chronic capture  by special interests). Seeing the full retinue of government doing its thing on national TV for all to watch is a good antidote to that. Foreign Addendum: It is also an excellent ‘teaching moment’ for foreigners who a) find the US government unbelievably disaggregated and complex, and/or b) live in an authoritarian society.

2. The speech seemed listless and grab-baggy, or maybe just down-to-earth after W.

I didn’t leave with any one overriding idea. Bush 2 had three really memorable SotUs with easy-to-take-away one-liners: 2002 (axis of evil), 2003 (African yellowcake), 2005 (the US world-historic mission to spread freedom). Obama did not scale to those heights. Instead, it was a mish-mash of ideas and small-beer policy proposals, none of which really gripped me (more tax credits to make the tax code yet more indecipherable – bleh).

My guess is that the lawyer in him is wary of Bush-style extravagance. And it is true that Bush’s rhetorical flights were indeed memorable, but mostly because they were terrifying – a global long war for freedom and wildly unsubstantiated charges about Iraq, jihadism, etc. It is evidently Obama’s style to dial down expectations. But nevertheless, it drifted, and it felt tired. Like the Afghan surge speech in December, it didn’t rouse or convince me of much of anything. It glided through a series of topics without much serious discussion, and there was no central theme.

3. Another chance at serious debt/deficit discussion was passed up.

The ‘spending freeze’ has gotten much press, but honestly, it’s a gimmick. If the prez leaves out Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Defense (plus interest on the debt), he is left with less than 20% of the entire budget to ‘freeze.’ This is not serious. Forcing the FBI to hire one less secretary or pushing HHS to use fewer paperclips is pleasant but meaningless budgetarily. For decades presidents have tried to find budget savings in ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ (Reagan’s preferred locution), but to no avail. Clinton closed the budget primarily by keeping the big 1990 tax hike of Bush 1 and then pushing through his own in 1993. He also controlled the government’s size and used pay-as-you-go to force Congress to fund any new spending. W dropped all this and just borrowed while cutting taxes. The only way Obama can get the budget back in line is with a tax increase, unless he will go after the programs he excluded from his spending freeze. Particularly Defense needs to go on a diet.

In fact, Obama suggested a flippantness about the looming fiscal disaster when he deployed the disturbingly casual locution, ‘and while we’re at it, let’s cut this other tax too!’ Sure! Why not just chop all sorts of taxes? Wth difference does it make? When are we going to talk seriously in the US about the need to a tax hike as the only realistic way to balance the budget? One of the biggest idiot lines of the Bush presidency was when he said we could reduce the deficit without raising taxes. If you want to have functioning government, you can’t just keep voting yourself tax cuts and spending expansions. Otherwise you’ll look like California. In fact, in the 15 minutes or so devoted to the budget deficit, the only serious proposal was the restoration of ‘pay-as-you-go.’

4. Foreign policy’s a throw-away.

For all the folks who claim the US is an empire, we sure are an introverted one judging by this talk. Foreign policy got less than 10 minutes, despite the ongoing GWoT that is in fact in increasing under Obama. About the only thing useful was the oblique hint that Obama will push for more trade (cleverly repackaged for the speech as ‘more exports’) with Korea and Latin America. But even this too has obvious problems, as just about everyone today is trying to export more as a route out of the crisis. If Obama thinks that he can pull the US into a current account surplus, he’s dreaming. Most of America’s big trading partners (Germany, Japan, India, Korea, China, Taiwan) run a surplus on the back on the voracious American consumer. Understandably, Obama now wants them to return the favor (his ‘National Export Initiative’), but if he thinks mercantilists in the Asia are going to suddenly import more, forget it. If there is one thing I’ve learned living in Asia, it’s that governments out here are like the Spanish Habsburgs on trade. They’d rather brutally punish their own citizens through higher and higher trade barriers than tolerate any serious trade deficits with the US. Is this unfair to Americans? Absolutely. But it is also how they play the game here, so forget some export promoted US recovery with Asians buying our stuff.

Beyond this, Obama gave us nothing new on the Middle East or NK – just more ‘I’m tough’ schtick to keep the right-wing blogosphere from exploding.

Why the Haitian Earthquake will Change Nothing about Development

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Haiti is pretty far outside my competency, so have only a few thoughts. This is the abbreviated version of my thoughts in the radio transcript below.

1. Natural disasters change nothing in international relations, because they are essentially one-off events. Everyone reads their favorite theory into the mess that follows. Even ever-dependable Pat Robertson managed to find a Christian fundamentalist interpretation in which the earthquake is divine payback for a vodoo pact with the devil to help Haitian independence. The point is that for all the destruction and death, there is little ‘learning,’ but a  great deal of reconfirmation of whatever your pet theory is. It is then easy to forget these catastrophes. Recall that the even Asian tsunami was promptly forgotten in a few months. So will this.

2. Given the above, let me add my ‘real’ interpretation of what happened. The deep cause of the tragedy in Haiti is state failure. Natural disasters are not ‘blameable.’ They simply are, just like gravity or the rain. The issue is what do we do about them. And the public sector is how we cope with such public goods as building codes. Given the staggering incapacity of the Haitian government, very little was done to provide that in Haiti. By contrast, I mention in the transcript below how well Japan deals with its many earthquakes.

3. The US military is still the order-bringer of last resort. It is funny how much the Euros, Chinese, or Arabs loathe US power until something like this happens and only the US military has the global transportation network to actually rapidly move volume in tens of thousands of people or millions of tons of cargo. Call this the upside of the military industrial complex. And it provides good evidence of Mandelbaum’s thesis that the US government provides a lot of ‘world government’ services.

4. Development assistance is woefully underfinanced, and the extra tragedy on top of this tragedy is that even the high Haitian death toll won’t change how much the rich states give in development aid. The UN asks for 0.7% of GDP. Only the green Nordics (Canada, Scandinavia) even come close to that. For readers of this blog, both the US and Korea give less than 0.1% The numbers didn’t budge after the even more cataclysmic tsunami. There is no reason to expect that to change.

5. In part, I attribute this lack of change on the bigger issue of development to the way the media covers these events. Instead of providing investigative journalism on why Indonesia or Haiti were so vulnerable, the only story-line is the awfulness of it all. As Juan Cole pointed out, no context is provided; its all just solemn headshaking and pseudo-‘action journalism’ by show-boaters like Anderson Cooper running about in highwater boots or something.  Where is the story about how the Suharto family looted Indonesia for decades leaving it with a weaker infrastructure than its growth rate would have dictated? Where is the story about the long (and somewhat shady) involvement of the US and France in Haiti? I am an East Asia IR guy, and even I know some of the basics on the US relationship with the Duvalier family of Haitian dictators. But I haven’t seen that once in the coverage. Good lord, the US media is shallow…

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…this week we are going to discuss the tragedy in Haiti and Korea’s role in development assistance. Hi, Dr. Kelly.

REK:

Hi, Petra. Thanks for having me

Petra:

 

Thanks for being with us again today.

REK:

 

It’s my pleasure.

Petra: 

The earthquake in Haiti was a terrible disaster. How did this happen?

REK:

That is a good question, because earthquakes are in fact quite common on the tectonic fault lines around the world. Japan, for example, sits right on intersection of tectonic plates in western Pacific. It is hit by earthquakes regularly, but with nowhere near this level of devastation.

Petra: 

Why?

REK:

Well for starters, as countries become wealthier, they can afford better infrastructure. That is, they build stronger, more resistant buildings that rely on seismological and topographical information. For example, in New York City, you will notice that the taller buildings are concentrated at the southern part of Manhattan island, where the bedrock is deepest and hardest. Similarly in Korea, the most attractive and most architecturally sound buildings are concentrated on the outskirts of Korea’s cities, which developed later, when Korea was wealthier. But it costs lots of money and requires lots of trained technicians to do the necessary physical measurements for this kind of sophisticated building. Many poor countries do not have these kinds of resources, so people simply build whatever they can. Such shantytowns are inevitable easily damaged by extreme weather or other disasters. That is what happened in Haiti.

Petra: 

 

So Haiti lacks the wealth to build modern, structurally sound buildings?

 

REK:

It does, and this is one area where medium-term aid can really make a difference. But the quality of Haiti’s building codes is really derivative of its continuing political problems, an issue of development that many Koreans should easily remember.

Petra: 

What does that mean?

REK:

Well, quite honestly, Haiti is not very well-governed. Haiti is what we call in political science a ‘failed state.’ Because governance in Haiti is so poor, there is very little economic growth. No one wants to invest in a country where his investment might be stolen by gangs, thieves, or corrupt state officials.

This story should sound familiar to Korea, because Korea went through something like this in the 50s and 60s. Under President Lee Syngman, Korea too was desperately poor, but a functioning government was slowly built from the wreckage of the Korean war. Later, under President Park, that coherent, reasonably efficient Korean state was able to provide a framework for Korean economic growth. So as Korea modernized in the 60s and 70s, it was able to afford luxuries like better building codes. And better building codes mean extreme natural events don’t create tragedies like Haiti right now.

Petra:

So Korea’s position was similar to Haiti’s 50 or 60 years ago?

REK:

Kind of. Korea was extremely poor; illiteracy was high; growth was low. Had a massive earthquake struck a Korean city in 1948, the devastation would have been terrible. The point is that good governance allows growth. Growth means more money. More money means better, stronger infrastructure. And better infrastructure means natural disasters, which are a regular feature of the planet, will be less devastating. In fact, as global warming accelerates in the coming decades, this will become a more and more pressing issue. Especially populations that live on the coasts in warm water areas will see more and more typhoons.

Petra:

So what about Korea’s role in helping these countries? What is Korea doing in Haiti?

REK:

Well initially of course, these countries need massive amounts of quick aid and money. And the world has responded. Korea has donated $10 million dollars and sent a team of 100 medical personnel. Korea is now in the OECD, the club of rich countries, so there is a global expectation that when disasters like this or the Asian tsunami strike, Korea will also respond.

Petra:

What can Koreans do right now if they want to help?

REK:

Give money. The biggest problem in natural disasters is usually transportation and infrastructure. There is more than enough food in the world, so the required volume of calories is out there. The real issue, as we saw in the tsunami relief effort also, is getting this assistance to people. Such disasters usually wipe out the transportation network, so actually moving food, water, tent-housing, etc., becomes the big problem. And that is what you see right now in Haiti. The airport, seaport, and roads were all badly damaged. So much of the aid is being flown in by US military helicopters. That is excruciatingly slow.

Petra:

So why does money help? And to whom should one give it?

REK:

Well money is more flexible than donated food or bottled water. Money allows the UN and aid agencies on the ground in Haiti to buy the resources they need specifically for this crisis. So in Haiti, there is a clear need to construction equipment to clear debris so that all the assistance can get through. Money can help the aid groups to buy that sort of thing.

As for whom, I would recommend a nongovernmental organization. Smaller, private aid organizations tend to be faster and more nimble than the big bureaucracies of the United Nations.

Petra:

What is Korea’s longer-term role?

REK:

In Haiti, it is probably very little. Once the situation in Haiti is stabilized in the next month, the reconstruction effort will slowly shift to regional players like the United States, the Organization for American States, and the big Latin American countries like Brazil. This is quite common. Korea development aid, for example goes mostly to Southeast Asia countries like the Philippines.

Petra:

I was also thinking more broadly about Korea’s role in development.

REK:

Well Korea is a good case of a country that emerged from African levels of poverty in the 40s to a typical wealthy country by the 90s. Much of the world would like to emulate that. Korea is powerful example case to be studied and possibly imitated.

Petra:

Is there something more concrete?

REK:

Yes. Korea now sits on what we call the Development Assistance Committee, or DAC, of the OECD. The DAC tries to coordinate all the official development assistance given by rich countries to the poor ones. Korea recently joined the DAC. The UN requests that rich countries give 0.7% of GDP to the DAC. Korea gives about 0.1%.

Petra:

That seems low.

REK:

It is, but this is common. Most rich states give far too little, especially if you note that more than one billion people live on less than 1$ a day. Try to imagine how harsh such an existence must be. The US gives an even smaller percentage than Korea. This is a shame actually. The best long-term thing Korea could do is publicly budget more aid, but this is unlikely.

Petra:

Thank you, professor, for coming again.

Why do Asian Legislators Punch Each Other?

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One of the most amusing aspects of democracy in Asia is the brawling that regularly breaks out in its parliaments. Taiwan and South Korea are the worst. A recent story in Foreign Policy captured this; money quote: “a Taiwanese minister proposed that legislators be made to take a breathalyzer test before entering debate.” Hah!!

And here are a few You Tube vids that will make you laugh. Be sure not to miss the Taiwanese legislator who gets a trash can put on his head. Great stuff.

TAIWAN

 

SOUTH KOREA

 

 

A good question though is why this happens. We all giggle about it when we teach out here, but still it is a good empirical question that no one answers. So after so discussion with my PNU colleagues in public administration and political science, here are three hypotheses. Some enterprising grad students should test them and write this paper.

1. Institutions: Asian legislature are institutionally weak, so who cares what they do?

2. Culture: Confucianism’s strong stress on social harmony means that politics is understood as a one-shot, zero-sum game. Democracy allows losers to come back and play the game another day. Confucian desires to present public harmony mean that losers perceive their defeat to be permanent, hence they fight to the bitter end.

3. Utility: Opposition riots help discredit the government. The Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party apparently used to stage its brawls as tool to embarrass the Kuomintang.

 

To Koreans’ credit, when I went to the Korean Political Science Association conference in August 2009, two of the highlight speakers addressed this issue. Korean political science seems genuinely and increasingly concerned the Korean democratization seems to be stagnating. Korean parties do not appear to be maturing into stable, serious alternatives. Nor does Korean political culture seem to be moving beyond parliamentary brawling and corruption as fast as Koreans would like.

The Latest Bogus North Korean Peace Offering

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Once again, North Korea asked for a peace treaty last week to formally end the bizarre stand-off on the DMZ. This was the topic of my weekly radio chat on Busan’s English language radio station. As you might imagine, every tremor from the North is felt in the South, no matter how small or gimmicky. The CW is that last week’s offer was not serious. Both the US and SK quickly rejected it. But nevertheless, it is amazing to see how ‘keyed in’ SK is to NK. That must be a great, albeit perverse, joy to Pyongyang. Whenever they want to make a fuss, they have a captive audience in the South who will jump whenever they pull the strings. His own country may be falling apart, but at least Kim can keep South Koreans jittery and jumpy year-in, year-out. Awful. In fact, there is probably a good master’s thesis in there about how states in a highly integrated region have massive side-effects (lateral pressure) on each other. Think about how inter-linked where Europe’s militaries before World War I. Once one mobilized in 1914, everyone else had to. It is the same here.

The interview below is mostly a review of how we got here. The inter-Korean border is the most militarized in the world, and the most irregular. The DMZ is technically an armistice space, not a border. (And it’s downright surreal to visit.) Legally, the war is still on. But no one really quite knows what that means. In practice of course, it means that the SK and US militaries are on a hair-trigger. The UN has long since been sidelined.

I don’t buy it at all that last week’s treaty offer was serious. My best guess is that now that NK has demonstrated that it is a nuclear weapons state, it is on a charm offensive. As I argued on air, I think NK is pursuing an ‘Indian strategy’ on nuclearization. The US told India not to go for nukes in the late 90s. They did anyway. The US and the other nuclear states complained and sanctioned for awhile, but after a few years, everyone just gave up. India hung tough, and eventually, it came back into international society with no serious damage for nuclearization and a nice new toy to prove it is a great power.

I think the same bargaining logic is occurring here. NK has changed the ‘facts on the ground.’ It is now a nuclear weapons states. It can now reconfigure the ‘status quo’ in any negotiation to include its nukes. The US will see the status quo ante is the baselines, but NK will not, and the reality of its functioning nukes will implicitly change the game. As always, NK proves to astonishingly successful and canny at brinksmanship.

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Petra:

So last week, North Korea suggested a peace treaty be brokered to officially end the Korean War.

REK:

That’s right. North Korea is really struggling under the weight of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. A lot of experts think North Korea is desperate.

Petra:

I see. Why do we need a peace treaty at all? The war is long since over…

REK:

That’s right. The active, shooting war ended in 1953, but amazingly, a formal treaty was never signed. Technically North and South Korea are still in a state of war. What exists today between them is simply a pause, what we technically call an armistice. But this has never actually been formalized in a signed document. So it would be technically legal for both sides to start shooting again.

Petra:

Yes, that’s right. So why don’t they?

REK:

Well, by 1953, everyone was exhausted from the war. Everyone wanted the peace, and over time, the armistice hardened into this long-term stalemate that we see today at the demilitarized zone. Indeed, the inter-Korean border and its strange war-like status is unique in world politics. Not even the two Germanies in the Cold War had this sort of relationship. In Korea, neither side has wanted a formal treaty, because neither side wants to officially recognize the other. Both claim to be the legitimate government of the whole Korean peninsula, so the war devolved into this unfinished stalemate. As I said, it’s a strange, unprecedented situation.

Petra:

So why is North Korea proposing a peace treaty now? What does this mean?

REK:

The North Koreans have sought a treaty for about 15 years now. In the early 90s, North Korea was badly hurt by major changes, including the withdrawal of Soviet support, China’s diplomatic recognition of South Korea, and the death of Kim Il Sung. Then of course came the brutal famine. Given all this difficulty, Pyongyang has repeatedly tried to get a peace treaty to bolster its own existence. North Korea has basically lost the race with South Korea, and it is desperate to get the US and South Korea to recognize it officially. Pyongyang fears that the continuing stalemate is helping to slowly destroy the country. A peace treaty would open the door for aid money.

Petra:

So why did the US and South Korea so quickly reject the offer last week?

REK:

Two reason. First, US official policy is that North Korea must negotiate with South Korea primarily, and North Korea has not made clear if the peace treaty would include South Korea. Excluding South Korea from Northern diplomacy is a longtime Northern trick. It prefers to negotiate directly with the US. The second reason is nuclear weapons. Last year, the North clearly demonstrated to the world that it is a nuclear weapons state. But the US and South Korea do not want to recognize that nuclearization. So any progress on the peace treaty is linked to denuclearization.

Petra:

Is that likely?

REK:

Quite honestly, I don’t think so. North Korea has endured staggering levels of poverty and deprivation to get nuclear weapons. Even as its people starved, the regime continued nuclear development, and 2009 was a banner year in which all that work came to fruition. After so much hardship it is almost unimaginable that the North will go back – unless there were some kind of amazing deal of aid and support from the US, South Korea, and perhaps Japan. But this is terribly unlikely.

Petra:

The North already know most of your argument about giving up its nukes right?

REK:

We think so. It is terribly hard to read Northern intentions, but US secretaries of state have been saying basically the same thing for almost twenty years now.

Petra:

So why are they proposing the peace treaty now if they already know it is unlikely to advance?

REK:

Again, no one knows for sure, but probably because of the weight of UN sanctions on the regime. Last year, after the nuclear test definitively proved North Korea was a nuclear power, the US, South Korea, and Japan pushed a tough set of trade and economic sanctions though the UN. These newest sanctions more than ever target the foreign enterprises and wealth of the North Korean elite. The sanctions are beginning to bite not just the long-suffering population, but also the ruling clique, especially the military, and that is dangerous for Kim Jong Il.

Petra:

So the treaty is just a trick or a gimmick?

REK:

No, I don’t think so. They genuinely want it, because they are so fearful of the South’s superior economic and military power. North Korea faces a perpetual legitimacy crisis, because South Korea is so obviously more successful and happy. Few Koreans would choose to live in North over South Korea, so the regime desperately wants Southern recognition and money.

Petra:

Bu nuclear weapons make that so much harder to achieve.

REK:

It does, which is why the decision to nuclearize is somewhat puzzling. I think the nukes are to prove that even though North Korea is economic inferior to South Korea, it is military superior. I think the regime hoped that it could stall and obscure the negotiations long enough to get nuclear weapons, and then the US – and South Korea and Japan – would be forced to recognize its nuclear status.

Petra:

So the negotiations would ‘reset’ after the achievement of nuclear weapons…

REK:

That is exactly right. Before nuclearization, North Korea’s cards in its poker game with the South were weaker. But now, the nukes are huge new ace. I think North Korea wanted to mimic the success of India with nuclearization in the 1990s.

Petra:

What happened there?

REK:

Well, the US told India not to pursue nukes. They did anyway – to have the global prestige of being a nuclear power. The US responded with sanctions, but not really with much commitment. A few years later, America gave up, and its normal relationship with India resumed. In other words, India hung tough through a few years of US-led sanctions, but eventually the US dropped the issue. So India got to keep its nuclear power, and have its relations with America.

Petra:

And North Korea is trying to do the same?

REK:

Basically yes. They know the US and South Korea are furious over the nukes, but they guess that if they can weather that dislike for a few years, they will be able to keep them, just like India. The peace treaty is just a way to signal that they are nice now they achieved nuclear weapons.

“Avatar”: Blue Ewoks Save the Amazon from Blackwater Inc.

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I have seen it twice now, both times in 3D. The following contains spoilers.

1. Its technical prowess is undeniable. For all the hype, I do think that Cameron has revolutionized the action movie. Note that I do not say films in general. 3D will help action, and to a lesser extent, horror and children’s, films, but I doubt it will add much to dramas or comedies. Consider if you think the Godfather, Airplane!, Schindler’s List, or Casablanca  would be much better in 3D. I don’t really think so. On the other hand, think of the chariot race in Ben-Hur in 3D. Now that would be something! So I think we should give credit to Cameron for his revolution. But we should also realize that its best impact will be limited in scope. This revolution is not on par with the transfer from silent to spoken films in the 30s, but rather more on the level with the move from frontal stereo to surround sound that began in the 80s.

2. Cameron also deserves credit for integrating 3D in a non-gimmicky way. Back in the 80s, 3D was tried, but it was always cheesy. Third films in bad series showed up with titles like Jaws 3-D or Friday the 13th 3-D, but usually the only thing 3D was a gimmick like a spear flying straight out at the screen. To Cameron’s credit, his 3D is integrated throughout to generate a richer, more immersive  environment for the viewer. In that way, he has matured the technology, which is now over 30 years old. That too is major feat, especially given the decadence of CGI in the last decade or so. CGI is now so ubiquitous, that it enables laziness. Cameron has helped return CGI to an exciting enhancement to a movie, rather than a replacement for it (300, Star Wars prequels, Matrix sequels). Cameron’s visual advance in technique rivals the the size of the steps forward made by Star Wars (1977), Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park. Visually, this film is the most important advance since Return of the King.

3. But the story… It is so politically correct postcolonial/environmental, that you just writhe in its painful predictability (kinda like Kingdom of Heaven with its blessedly pleasant Muslims and wretchedly imperialist Christians – yawn.) Indeed, in my second viewer, I found myself rooting for the “Sky People” just to upset the all-too-comfortable and easy PC moralism of it all. And there is no doubt that the bad-guy mercenary is the most enjoyable character in the movie. In the same way Lawrence Olivier or Darth Vader were the most fun to watch in Spartacus  and Star Wars, here you can’t help but love the watching the bad guy marine drink coffee in his ship (hah! ripped straight out of Apocalypse Now), while his machines wipes out the beautiful, harmonious, nature-loving, athletic Californians, I mean, Ewoks, I mean Navi! I wish they had made him a smoker too.

If you make a farce of tragedy, it becomes comedy. The Navi are so wonderful, that you kinda want to see them get smacked around. You’re not as muscular and virile and beautiful as they are; you’re sitting in that theater right now with a half-gallon of popcorn in one hand and a 64-ounce gulper of Jolt cola in the other. And how come they don’t commit human sacrifice like the Aztecs? The point is that if your story simply recites platitudes with no moral complexity, then its easy to ignore. Hollywood usually does this from the right actually. Usually Hollywood movies are unthinking vehicles for US patriotism (Michael Bay, Rambo, e.g.), but movies like Avatar and Kingdom of Heaven show you just how easy it is for the left too. By contrast, consider a difficult movie like Apocalypto, whose moral categories are all mixed up for the viewer and is consequently a richer, more challenging intellectual experience.

4. The best political reviews I read of the film are here, here, and here. Cameron deserves all the criticism IMO, from both right and left. Ironically, both the left and the right are correct about the film. Most of the political commentary I have read on the film is excellent – rapidly deconstructing its facile morality and easy ‘white messiah’ storyline, which is just ripped-off from Dances with Wolves and the Last Samurai.

5. Conservatives found it a simplistic story of PC platitudes: nature=good, technology=bad; white people=destructive rationalists, native peoples=harmonious pantheists; fossil fuels=bad, crying after the hunt=good. The blue people are a hodge-podge of the Vietnamese, Native Americans, and the Ewoks; the bad guys are a cross between Blackwater and Caterpillar; and Cameron even gives you throwaway references to the GWoT with dialogue about shock-and-awe or martyrdom. Too easy!

6. The left finds it a white man’s guilt trip, only without much of pain of actually being like the oppressed indigenous people. So the main character can find how good and wholesome and nature-loving  the natives are, and he can play at being one of them. But if it gets too weird, he can always go back and get his legs fixed. So he can pretend he is a native, in order to assuage his guilt for destroying the Amazon, I mean Endor, I mean Pandora!, but he doesn’t actually really want to be oppressed like real Native Americans, so he can always head back to his white body. This is the fantasy of a rich white man living an highly technologized culture about what it might be like to give all that up. The reality of course would be if Cameron moved onto a contemporary US Indian reservation and confronted the problems of cultural dislocation, alcoholism, and poverty. But who wants that? Better to fantasize about riding dragons and hooking up with the hot native babe. Ridiculous.

7. Avatar is strange film to review given the wildly unbalanced mix of revolutionary style and banal substance. On the upside, I think it is the most important film of 2009, although obviously not the best. Everyone should see it. It’s the most important step-forward in visual presentation since Lord of the Rings, if not Jurassic Park, and 3D is coming to home theater this year. I do agree with Cameron that this is the future of visual entertainment (look for it in video games too soon), albeit for only for certain genres of film. On the downside, Avatar proves once again the long-standing rule that no amount of razzle-dazzle can cover an abysmal story. For all the money Transformers 2 or Phantom Menace made, I don’t know anyone who really likes them. By contrast think how great were Hitchcock’s one-room drama Rope or Linklater’s let’s-just-walk-around-Paris couplet Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I think the latter cost maybe a million dollars, but I’d rather re-watch that than Avatar.

Why Korea is going (back) to Afghanistan, or how Middle Powers get Muscled by their Patrons

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So Korea will head back to Afghanistan this summer. I spoke on this today in my radio slot on Busan’s English language station. The transcript is below.

The obvious question is why. The provincial reconstruction team Korea will send is pretty small. They won’t be able to do much. They won’t be in a particularly dangerous part of the country. And the Korean public is awfully skeptical.

So why go? The short answer is because the US wants Korea to go; they are part of the ally round-up of the Obama administration to reach McChrystal’s 40,000 soldier figure for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Korea’s geopolitics are awful. It is surrounded by 3 larger powers with whom it has terrible relations, plus bizarro North Korea. So SK is terribly dependent on the US to help it maintain its autonomy in such a bad neighborhood. And the US has repeatedly (ab)used this asymmetric dependence to push Korea into things it doesn’t want to do.

It’s also a nice way for Korea to strut its stuff as an emerging global player – something Koreans desperately want to be.

But I don’t think Koreans are ready for the blowback that comes with participation in the GWoT. As Greenwald and Walt have both noted repeatedly, it is ridiculous to assume that if you kill Muslims in the ‘war,’ they won’t hit back – e.g., in the Christmas bombing attempt. Koreans have already been targeted in the GWoT. The more Korea gets sucked into this thing, the more they will be targeted.

Further, Korea is an increasingly Christian society. Islamic radicals have traditionally avoided Asian religions. They worry about ‘backward’ monotheisms (Christians and Jews haven’t ‘updated’ to Mohammed, the last and definitive prophet of the God of Abraham) and polytheistic irreligion (i.e., Hinduism). But the more metaphysical/non-theistic faiths of East Asia don’t really activate them. Look at Malaysia, whose large minority of Buddhists have never been targeted. But as Korea christianizes (due to heavy proselytization here), expect the al Qaeda types to start eyeing it, especially if its soldiers use force in Muslim countries.

__________________________________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT

BUSAN E-FM

MONDAY, 8 AM

January 11, 2010

Petra:

So in the last few weeks, the government has agreed to redeploy Korean forces to Afghanistan, but not very many. So why is this important?

REK:

You’re right that the numbers are small – less than 500 people – in what we call a provincial reconstruction team. But it is important for Korea for at least three big reasons – beyond the obvious costs and risks to personnel.

Petra:

And those reasons are what?

REK:

First, Korea has almost no record of overseas force deployments. The Republic did send a few peacekeepers to East Timor and Iraq, but these were very controversial. Under the left-leaning Kim and Roh administrations, the Korean government disagreed badly with the US over Middle East policy, and one way to show that displeasure was avoid overseas deployments

Petra:

So why is Korea going to Afghanistan now then?

REK:

The conservative Lee administration wants a more mature, or ‘global,’ profile for Korea. President Lee wants Koreans to become accustomed to thinking of themselves globally, and peacekeeping is a part of that role. If Korea is to cut a larger role on the global stage – a deeply held Korean political goal – then it must also carry more of the burden. For the same reason, Korea is expanding its foreign aid programming.

Petra:

Ok. So what are the other reasons Korea is going?

REK:

Sure. The second big reason is because the US is asking Korea to go. Before President Lee, the Korean government was distancing itself from the US. President Roh particularly liked to use his flirtation with China to tweak the Bush administration. President Bush was deeply unpopular in Korea, as was the Iraq war.

Petra:

So President Lee is trying to mend fences with America by sending us to Afghanistan?

REK:

Basically, yes. President Lee is staunchly pro-American in a way his predecessors were not. Unlike South Korea’s drift toward China earlier in the decade, President Lee is strongly committed to returning the US alliance to centrality in Korean foreign policy…

Petra:

And going to Afghanistan is way to show that.

REK:

Exactly.

Petra:

You said there was a third big issue stemming from this deployment.

REK:

Yes, as Korea’s global profile and global intervention accelerate, it will eventually become a target of those forces that resent globalization, global governance, and the United States.

Petra:

I don’t understand.

REK:

Sorry. If Korea joins world politics more explicitly, if it moves beyond simply East Asia – its regional home for decades – then eventually it will encounter the turbulence of big international relations issues, such as terrorism or piracy.

Petra:

That’s right. I have heard before about Korean aid workers killed in the Middle East.

REK:

And Koreans have been increasingly pulled into the problem of Somali piracy.

Petra:

So what does this mean for Korean foreign policy?

REK:

Well, on the one hand, it means that Korean is increasingly becoming a mature global player. Its foreign policy is no longer dominated solely by North Korea. This is a deep desire of the current Lee administration – to pull South Korea out of the local ‘ghetto’ of peninsular politics, where everything in Korean foreign policy is dominated by erratic Pyongyang. President Lee and most Koreans want Korea accepted globally – as a wealthy, prestigious, functional, responsible democracy.

Petra:

And going to Afghanistan shows that. I get it. But you sound like you see a downside.

REK:

Yes, there is. The more Korea gets pulled into the US-led war on terror, the more likely Koreans are to become targets too.

Petra:

That’s unfortunate. Why?

REK:

Well, for two reasons. One, Korea is a US ally. And al Qaeda and similar groups target not only Americans but close allies, like Great Britain, too. Second, Korea has a growing Christian population.

Petra:

Why is that important?

REK:

Because for al Qaeda, the war on terror is really a clash of civilizations or a religious conflict. Islamic radicals are, in their mind, defending the faith against aggressive, imperialistic Christians, Jews, and to a lesser extent Hindus.

Petra:

But Korea’s heritage is mostly Buddhist and Confucian.

REK:

That’s right. Which is why East Asia has generally been spared the effects of 9/11. Islamic radicalism is just not as worried about Asian religions. But as Korea’s Christian population expands, and as its role in the war on terror expands also, al Qaeda attacks on Koreans are more likely.

Petra:

Those are the costs of global profile for Korea?

REK:

Yup.

Petra:

Do you think it’s worth it?

REK:

I don’t know, and I worry sometimes that Koreans don’t know either. Koreans are so concerned to achieve global status, that they haven’t really thought too much about its costs. You know, it’s not so bad to be the Austrias or the Canadas of the world.

Petra:

Is that what Korea is in East Aisa?

REK:

Kind of. And it could be if you wanted it that way. I even wrote a paper once saying that Korea might consider trying to be like Finland, instead of Japan – small, rich, and neutral – with lots of good skiing.

Petra:

But that’s not really what Koreans want right now, is it? So off we go to Afghanistan.

REK:

Basically, yes. You have decided to be an American ally, and so you get pulled into stuff like this.

2010 Asian Security Predictions

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This is always a useful exercise, if only to see how wrong you are next year. So let me go on record.

These are in no particular order.

1. There will be some kind of power-sharing deal in Iran before the end of the year.

Why: Andrew Sullivan’s superb coverage suggests to me that the regime is increasingly facing a mobilized population pushing for something like a color revolution. Given the the regime is divided too – which is a strong hallmark that it may lose the gathering contest – it seems highly unlikely the troika dictatorship of Ahmedinijad & cronies, the clerics, and the Basij can survive entirely intact. The won’t be swinging from the lamposts, but look for something shaky and transitional like Zimbabwe’s messy on-again-off-again coalition government.

2. Israel will not bomb Iran.

Why: I have always found this possibility wildly overrated. The logistics are atrocious, the military value is mixed at best (b/c Iran has de-concentrated its nuclear program, unlike Iraq’s Osarik), the Americans oppose it, the Palestinians will go ballistic, it would save the mullahs from the own currently rebelling people.

3. Japan will disappoint everyone in Asia by doing more of the same – more moral confusion over WWII guilt and wasteful government spending that does nothing meaningful to reverse its decline.

Why: The DJP did not really get elected to change things, but more to make the status quo work again. The Japanese growth model was great until 1988, and then the Japanese locomotive just went off the rails. But I’ve seen no evidence of the socio-cultural revolution in attitudes toward consumption, education style, the construction industry, lifetime employment, government debt, etc. that means the Japanese public actually wants to reform Japanese social structures.  In fact, Hatoyama wants to roll back the one big change of the LDP in the last 20 years – the privatization of postal service cum government slush fund. On education, e.g., various Japanese figures have said for decades that the Asian mandarin system of memorization is rigorous and suffocating. (Koreans say the same.) But nothing has happened.

As for the apology tour everyone in Asia wants from Hatoyama? Forget it. Again, there is no public opinion data from Japan that suggests that Japanese really want a Willy Brandt-style Asienpolitik to heal wounds with China and Korea. East Asians still retain 19th C notions of race, and the Japanese are still tempted by the rightist spin on WWII that it saved Asia from white imperialism and brought modernity to Korea, China, and SE Asia. If Japan really apologizes – particularly to Koreans on whom they look down as weaker and backward – then a central myth in the conservative pantheon of Japanese race and history will shatter. The Japanese elderly and conservatives are not even close accepting this normative shift; there’d be riots in the streets.

4. North Korea won’t change at all.

Why: If there is one thing we all seem to expect all the time, but never happens, it’s this. Everyone has predicted the implosion of North since the early 1990s. The end of Soviet aid, the Chinese recognition of SK, the death of Kim Il Sung, the weakness of the playboy son Kim Jong Il, the famine, the placement on the axis of evil, Jong Il’s stroke – all were supposed to bring the much-prophesied end.

I see only one faint shred of evidence of movement –the pushback on the currency reform of December 2009. The regime sought to reign in private markets – emergent as an alternate food source after the 1990s famine – by dramatically shrinking the money supply. There has been resistance, especially in the Chinese border regions. But that Kim felt that he could simply roll back 10 years of under-the-radar marketization suggests how strongly the regime feels it is entrenched.

5. The US drawdown from Iraq will be softened, hedged and qualified to be a lot smaller than Obama seemed to promise.

Why: If there is one thing post-Saddam Iraq has always needed, its more US troops, not less. I agree that we seem to have turned a corner there. But Thomas Ricks seems worried, and I think he scoped Iraq’s problems better than anyone, including DoD under Bush. We are supposed to leave by August 31, 2010, but are they taking down those mega-bases we put up? Are the contractors pulling up stakes? If more contractors simply fill the US hole, isn’t that cheating? A fairer way to put it is that the US will be there in a different capacity – training, protecting, arming, flying, fighting (semi-publicly and less though) – kinda like the way we stayed in Vietnam even after Nixon and Laird declared Vietnamization. So, I will agree that US combat troops will shrink somewhat, but the US presence will stay massive, and I bet that combat troops will hang on for awhile under various escape-hatch provisions about ‘conditions on the ground’ and what not.

2010 Predictions for Korea on the Radio

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Busan e-FM

 

One of my nice new gigs in 2010 in Busan is a role as a ‘foreign affairs expert’ – please don’t laugh too much 🙂 – on a local English radio station. It is kinda flattering to be asked. The show is “Morning Wave” on Busan’s English language radio station. I speak on Monday mornings for about 8 minutes.

Today was my first contribution. I made a couple of quick predictions about Korea in 2010. The transcript is below. But here is the condensed version:

1. Korea will grow well, having sloughed off the Great Recession with little trouble.

Korea is a fairly small economy globally, even regionally. But it is fairly advanced, and it is a top 15 economy in GDP size. It is quite impressive how well Korea moved through the Great Recession. Unemployment did not spike. There was no capital flight, as there was in 1997. The contrast with the US is striking. There was a little nervousness last year, and the currency slipped for about 8 months as everyone sprinted to the dollar haven, but that’s it. Things never really got un-normal, in contrast to the West. There were not huge banking collapses, etc. So in 2009 things rolled along pretty smoothly, and they should in 2010.

2. The Korea-US free trade deal won’t go through.

What a shame. Just about every business and political official I know in Korea, from both countries, want the FTA to go through. But I don’t see any movement at all from the Democrats in Congress. The Great Recession stirred up all the old protectionist impulses of the Democratic Party. Hillary and Obama even competed to undo NAFTA. Amazing! The Democrats still haven’t made their peace with NAFTA 20 years later, so I see no trade deals at all going through this year. This is too bad, as the conservative Korean president could probably push the FTA through the legislature here if US movement was likely. Ironically that hurts us, the South Korean consumer more, because South Korea is a much more protected, and smaller, economy. Price differentials between foreign and domestic products are marked. The deal actually matters more here, but the US Congress cares more.

3. North Korea won’t change a bit.

NK is odd in so many ways. It is a closed to being a failed state, yet extraordinary stable for a stalinist hole. Everyone is terribly desperate to find change in NK. We look ceaselessly for any shred of movement, especially the doves who thought that putting it on the axis of evil was a mistake and that the sunshine policy was a good idea. But 10 years after sunshine, little has changed. NK is still the same awful repressive place it was, only now it is has nukes. We should stop predicting that NK is going to imminently collapse and strategize on those grounds, and we should start accepting that it has learned from the fall of communism in Europe and is going to hang around for awhile.

4. Japan won’t really come around on Korea.

This is probably the biggest disappointment coming to Koreans in 2009. The new, leftish Democratic Party of Japan government has really raised hopes in Korea for a meaningful apology (finally) over Japanese colonialism in Korea (1910-45) and a pro-Korean (naturally) settlement of a territorial issue (the Liancourt Rocks). The Lee government is even trying to finagle a Japanese Imperial visit. But I am with Jennifer Lind on this: the Japanese are just not there yet. The public doesn’t really care much about Korea, although Koreans care a great deal about Japan. Korean opinion is a nuisance most don’t care about; most voters want good relations with the US and China, which would compel Korea to come around anyway. But for the one group in Japan that really does think about Korea, it is firmly against the apology. Korea is ground zero for all the old rightist pretensions in Japan about WWII – that was defending Asia against the whites, that brought modernity to backward places, etc. To admit that Japanese was simply a rapacious colonialist here would definitively strip the Japanese right of a deep prejudice about Japan’s ‘proper’ place in Asia history. It will take more than the election of Hatoyama to get the Japanese to climb down from that one. But at least he is not visiting the Yasukuni shrine. That’s progress.

 

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TRANSCRIPT:

Petra (the host):

Hello everyone and welcome to …..

Today we have a new foreign affairs contributor at Busan e-FM. Dr. Robert Kelly teaches in the Political Science and Diplomacy Department at Pusan National University. He came to Korea about 18 months ago.

So good morning Professor Kelly. Please, tell us a little about yourself.

REK:

Good morning Petra. Let me first start by thanking you and the producers here at e-FM for inviting me. It’s an honor to speak on Busan’s only English radio station.

As for me, I am a professor of international relations at Pusan National University. I grew up in the US. I am originally from the city Cleveland in the state of Ohio. Cleveland lies about midway between New York City and Chicago, on the south coast of Lake Erie.

One of my areas of study is the foreign policy and political economy of northeast Asia, so I am happy to join the Busan e-FM team in that capacity.

Petra:

Well, we’re happy to have you, and we hope are enjoying living in Korea.

REK:

I am indeed. I enjoy Korea very much. And Busan is wonderful place to live; the city is very vibrant and enjoyable.

Petra:

That’s great to hear.

So let’s turn now a bit to the future. It is the first full week in 2010. Would you like to hazard any big predictions about Korea or East Asia in the coming year? We can always check up on them next year to see how you did.

REK:

Sure. Well, first, I would say, looking ahead, that Korea’s economy will almost certainly be a growth leader in Asia in 2010 – after China of course. Korea has done a remarkable job bouncing back from the nasty recession of the last 18 months. Economists are now calling this the ‘Great Recession.’ Korea’s performance through the Great Recession has in fact been extremely instructive, and it has justified many of the Seoul’s policies since the last big economic crisis in 1997-98, the Asian Financial Crisis.

Petra:

That’s reassuring to hear. What did we do right that helped so much this time around?

REK:

Well, first, Korea’s growth is a lot more balanced now than it was a decade ago. In the 1990s, the large chaebol conglomerates like SK or Samsung represented a larger share of Korea’s economy. So when they had trouble, the whole Korean economy got in trouble too. They were, in the language of today’s Great Recession, ‘too big to fail.’ Today, small and medium enterprises are healthier and more diversified in Korea’s economy. This gives Korea some insurance if chaebol exports fall, as they briefly did last year.

Petra:

What else?

REK:

Korea’s economy is also cleaner and more transparent than it was. Before the elections of the 1990s, Korea’s biggest companies had preferential and politicized access to national budget. This helped spur the reckless borrowing of the 1990s that fed the Asian financial crisis. This time around however, Korea’s biggest companies are more exposed to financial accounting standards, so there are no hidden ‘toxic assets,’ as in the US. In fact, it is ironic, that just as Korea learned and implemented good lessons from its 1990s crisis, the US ignored those same lessons, and we are seeing the fallout today. American unemployment is over 10%; Korea’s is somewhere around 4%. That is quite an achievement.

Petra:

Hmm. It sounds like it. So much for Korea’s economy. I like those reassuring words. What about Korean foreign policy? There are a lot of big issues coming up, right? Like the FTA with the US, North Korean nuclear weapons, a reconciliation with Japan…

REK:

Yes, that’s right. 2010 has the potential to be a big year for the Republic of Korea. But here my predictions are gloomier.

First, on the FTA with the US, I must say that I cannot see it passing. The Korean National Assembly could probably be pushed into ratifying it, if the Blue House really thought the US was going to move on the treaty too. But quite honestly, this is unlikely. The American Democrats control both parts of the US Congress, as well as the White House. For several decades, the Democrats have been skeptical of the economic benefits of globalization, and I see no shift in that attitude. It is unlikely the US Congress will ratify the FTA.

Petra:

But I thought the business communities in both Korea and the US really support the deal?

REK:

That’s right. They do. But that is just not enough. Globalization and trade are met with a lot of skepticism in the US right now, even towards close partners in Europe and Asia, like Korea. So I think the probability is low, and that means higher prices for all of us.

Petra:

How about North Korea? Our previous foreign affairs expert, Brian Myers of Dongseo University, was pretty skeptical.

REK:

I am afraid I am too. Brian is right about most things North Korean. I share his pessimism.

Of course, we all hope for change in North Korea, but the regime has remained remarkably impervious to reform or renewal. Despite 20 years of hardship, including a brutal famine and Kim Jong Il’s stroke, the regime continues to hang on. I see no reason to expect that to change. In fact, the North’s nuclear weapons only serve to strengthen the government in this difficult period. So I see meaningful movement on the nuclear question as almost impossible. To me, the government’s repression and its nuclear weapons go hand-in-hand.

Petra:

How unfortunate. How about Japan? President Lee extended an invitation to the Japanese emperor to come to Korea. That would be quite a breakthrough.

REK:

Your third issue – Korea’s relations with Japan – is the most likely for progress, but again I am pretty pessimistic. What Korea really wants from Japan is a sincere, heartfelt apology for the colonial period of 1910-1945, and an admission that Dodko is, in fact, Korean, territory.

I don’t see either as likely. Just in the last two weeks, another round of Japanese textbook reform missed the chance to narrow the distance. The election of the Democratic Party of Japan is a major event. It has promised better relations with Japan’s neighbors, and above all, that means Korea.  But any apology,  much less an imperial visit, will require a major shift in Japanese popular attitudes toward Korea. An election is simply not enough. And right now, the Japanese persist in old attitudes toward Korea, as a dependent or a little brother. Its apologies continue to be mixed and half-hearted. And they seem unable to formally relinquish claims to Dokdo, even though they already have in substance.

Petra:

How gloomy for your first day on our show! Why did we invite you here? Can you at least close out with something positive?

REK:

Sure, I think the biggest under-appreciated international story in Northeast Asia is enduring peace. For all today’s troubles with China’s growth, Japan’s historical ambivalence, and North Korea’s nukes, East Asia is more peaceful now than it has been in centuries, and wealthier and more contented too. This is a huge achievement – bigger even than Yuna Kim. No one wants to jeopardize that, so one happy prediction for 2010 is the continuation of military peace and of economic growth, both in Korea and the region. This is a good time to live in East Asia. Enjoy it.