• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.27-48
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• 2022

In the past decade, Korea and Japan have increasingly exhibited different strategic priorities in trade in face of China's rising global economic prowess and worsening US-China trade conflict. Japan's trade policy decisions have worked to reinforce its economic and security ties with the US as a means to counter China. Japan has used both bilateral and multilateral means to secure its ties with the US against China. In contrast, Korea's trade policy positions have been one of 'strategic ambiguity'. Korea has been more conciliatory towards China, reluctant to take actions that would counter China's interest. Korea has mainly resorted to bilateral channels to maintain favorable relations with both China and the US. Korea's reluctance to clearly ally with the US against China has been observed across different administrations with opposing political orientations. This paper examines Korea and Japan's diverging strategic priorities in trade through the 2017 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference; the 2017 US imposition of Section 232 on steel; the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Korea-US FTA renegotiation and the Korea-China FTA Phase Two Negotiation; and the 2019 Japan-US Trade Agreement.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.669-687
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• 2010

Critical scholarship has shown itself much more adept at identifying and analyzing the content of religious geopolitics than its impacts or effects. This article suggests ways in which the concept of social performance can be used to more carefully consider the effects of religious geopolitics. Judith Butler's identity-oriented notion of performativity is usually geographers' point of entry into issues of performance. But its strong poststructuralist distrust of agency limits its power among those who question poststructuralism's grounding beliefs. This article illustrates the added utility of other theories of performance-particularly the recent pragmatic, dramaturgical, and non-poststructuralist theorization of social performance by the cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander-in evaluating the impact of religious geopolitical action. It does so through the case of a recent, particularly geopolitically laden Mormon General Conference. It concludes, through Butler and Alexander, that this General Conference likely accomplished significant geopolitical work. But it also, mainly through Alexander, argues that this work likely had limited capacity to motivate new or additional geopolitical action. Its power was more to reinforce than transform.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.133-162
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• 2017

The Bering Strait crossing would link the entirety of Eurasia to the entirety of the Americas, and it can be seen as a natural extension of the historical Silk Road. There are some immense geopolitical benefits to such a project. It would bring about a profound and lasting change to the global economic and political outlook. The most valued function of the Bering Strait crossing and the extension of the associated railroad network would be to release the massive natural resources trapped underneath the tundra and permafrost for the benefit of Russia and the world. Moreover, the railroad project(s) would also build development corridors in those underdeveloped parts of the Russian Federation. The development of the resources and their rapid transportation to the global markets would contribute not only to the overall development of the region but also would be valuable for the resource-poor countries of Northeast Asia such as Japan, Korea, and China (relative to its economic size). This paper will explore the possible impact(s) of the Bering Strait crossing as a formidable infrastructure project for the economic development of the Russian Far East (RFE) from the Russian perspective under the frame of geopolitics. Furthermore, it will equally scrutinize the implications for the adjacent countries in the region.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.267-289
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• 2010

Nationalism endorses a collective movement to establish an authentic position in the international cultural and political arena. Arguably the dialectic of nationalism and geopolitics bears a reassuring similarity to the philosophical lineage going back, at least, to Hegelian dialectic of universality and particularity. This dialectic platform has been concerned with sustaining, among other things, the dynamics between the universal and the particular. In practical terms, nationalism prompts increased sensitivity to socio-political pressures coming from abroad to cancel the national particularity into geopolitical, so-called universal, anonymity. Drawing suggestively from psychoanalysis, Lacanian ethics in particular, this discussion articulates the ethics of nationalism. Recounting Kantian self-determination as a reference point for responsible morality, Lacan suggests the problematics of desire as an alternative index for ethics. As individual desire flows from the unfathomable abyss of misrecognition, Lacanian ethics dissuade individuals to unlearn the fantasy that their own real desire, a residue produced by the Symbolic process, can be satisfied with that very socio-cultural Symbolic. Subjecting nationalism to Lacanian implications, Zizek illuminates nationalism as a small screening object which obscures as much as displays the circuits to the individual desire. Psychoanalytic ethics addresses that the ethical base should be found upon the particular, individual, real desire. As far as the nationalist cause also puts emphasis upon particularity rather than universality, nationalism is logically positioned to exert reflective efforts on empowering its constitutive individuals. Lacanian ethics persuades us to challenge the universal claim and to work through to regenerate nationalism in presenting its final contribution towards individual particularities.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.131-148
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• 2022

While much has been written about Imperial Japan's encounter with geopolitics and developing ideas about Geography as a political and cultural discipline, little if anything has been written about relational and research Geographies between Japan and Silk Roads both ancient and modern. Memories of the ancient Silk Road were revivified in the late 19^th century in tandem with the Great Game of European nations, as Japan modernized and sought new places and influence globally following the Meiji restoration. Imperial Japan thus sought to conquer and co-opt spaces imagined to be part of or influenced by the ancient Silk Road and any modern manifestation of it. This paper explores a particular process in that co-option and appropriation, research collaboration between institutions of the Empire. In particular it considers the exploration of Mengjiang/Inner Mongolia after its conquest in 1939/1940, by a collaborative team of Korean and Japanese Geographers, led by Professor Tada Fumio. This paper considers the making knowable of spaces imagined to be on the ancient Silk Road in the Imperial period, and the projecting of the imperatives of the Empire back into Silk Road history, at the same time as such territory was being made anew. This paper also casts new light on the relational and collaborative processes of academic exchange, specifically in the field of Geography, between Korean and Japanese academics during the Korean colonial period.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.35-54
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• 2020

China's 'One Belt One Road' initiative has had a profound impact on China's relationship with Central Asia, which shares borders at North-western region. Central Asia plays an important role in securing the export market of Chinese products, supply of raw materials, and transportation route to Europe. The inland port is of significance to facilitate the development of logistics, trade and industry in the surrounding areas by enabling the distribution and import and export clearance in the region by performing the role of the seaport on the hinterland. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of the development of inland ports in central and western China on the geopolitical relationship between China and Central Asia. To this end, we analyze the status of inland port development in China's Midwest by employing the SWOT-PEST analysis method to analyze the current status as well as prospects of trade, investment and transportation routes with Central Asia in terms of geopolitics. As a result of the analysis, the relations between China and Central Asian Countries are becoming more politically and economically close, but it has brought about serious challenges by domestic and foreign environmental changes. Therefore, the development of the inland ports in central and western China are determined by the geopolitical relations under 'One Belt One Road' initiative between China and Central Asia, while the development of the inland port is also expected to serve as a catalyst for the development of both regions.

• STI Policy Review
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.13-34
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• 2011

This paper investigates the interaction among the paradigm of Low-Carbon Society (LCS) and the megatrends in field of population, environment, geopolitics, and energy. The paradigm of LCS is regarded as a 'social will' trend, distinguished from other 'phenomenal' trends. The qualitative analysis shows that the megatrends and the LCS paradigm have positive/neutral/negative impacts on one another, while some impacts can be reversed to other types of impact with the conditions having ripened. In quantitative analysis, the correlation between the LCS paradigm and the economy is traced with our Integrated Assessment Model, looking into such response options as population control, increase in labor force participation, and productivity enhancement to maintain utility level despite the pursuit of LCS paradigm. The future challenges in national strategy and S&T policy are suggested, based on the interaction analyses.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.138-156
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• 2021

The aim of this article is to describe direction of Sino-Russian relations toward a new epoch - as the decision-making centers of both countries define them - indicating the commitment to building the future international order. It includes the synthesis of evolution of relations, descriptions of cooperation building of mutual confidence by both sides in variety of institutions; analyses of geo-economic relations emphasizing their geostrategic dimension and finally dynamics showing how two great powers want to achieve new areas of cooperation focused on building multipolar world order which is the essence of "new epoch". The argument goes towards recognizing the relationship as a "hhybrid alliance". This hybridity is a structural factor that can constrain the use of new dimensions of asymmetric interdependence as political leverage especially by United States against the two non-western powers but also facilitate to use it against West.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2020

The paper discusses how the new EU Strategy towards Central Asia issued in May 2019 might be analyzed through the lens of the intensely debated transformations from the liberal to a post-liberal international order. The author claims that the EU's normative power is transforming from the post-Cold War predominantly liberal/ value-based approach, with democracy and human rights at its core, to a set of more technical tools and principles of good governance and effective management of public administration. The paper problematizes a nexus between the dynamics of the EU's nascent post-liberalism and the geopolitical challenges of the EU's growing engagement with illiberal regimes, focuses on direct encounters between the post-liberal EU and the illiberal elites in Central Asia, and seeks to find out the impact of these connections upon the EU's international subjectivity. In this context geopolitical dimensions of EU foreign and security policies, along with the specificity of the EU's geopolitical actorship in Central Asia, are discussed.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.119-140
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• 2021

Relations between Ankara and Washington, which have hardly been harmonious, recently became extremely tense, especially when Turkey decided to deal with Kurdish enclaves nearby its border. Russia naturally took advantage of the tension by providing Turkey with advanced S-400 missiles and by trying to play a peacemaking role in contested regions within Syria. Ankara's dealings with Moscow alienated it from NATO and the USA, and complicated relations with Russia and its allies in Syria, where Turkey's interests collided with those of Tehran and Moscow. While these aspects of the Ankara/Moscow relationship are well known, this article explores how the discovery of natural gas in the Mediterranean has increased Ankara's importance to Moscow, as a means of sowing dissension within NATO and helping Moscow hinder the emergence of alternative gas suppliers to Europe.