Theorizing East Asian International Relations in Korea

Abstract

This article discusses the analytically unbalanced theorizing in International Relations (IR) when it comes to a region, or subsystem. The tension is between theoretical universalism and contextual exceptionalism, and it is present in the IR community in Korea. If the former group is loyal to the general principles of scientific inquiry of social research, the latter group emphasizes the unique historical experience of Korea and its theorizing efforts to reflect such uniqueness. The author argues that for the IR community in Korea to develop its own name brand, the Korean as an independent and influential force like the English School, it should collectively seek to bridge its perceptual representation concerning historical uniqueness with scientifically theorizing efforts while simultaneously incorporating the general theories of IR with unique regional independent variables. Key words: Korea, international relations theory, East Asia Introduction Science creates knowledge, and scientists constantly doubt knowledge. They derive research puzzles1 from what appears to be inconsistent with expectations of the existing theories.2 And the process of constructing an alternative argument, proposing a new theoretical framework and examining evidence for testing its validity is difficult, if not tortuous. Such venturous conjecture, called theorizing, defines the identity of International Relations (IR) as social science, and none can deny that the crux of the field's ontology rests upon its endless efforts to theorize about world politics. IR creates knowledge about international politics. Without a doubt, theorizing in International Relations essentially determines the ways that world politics is debated, studied, and taught. The bottom line is this: Theory is a set of ideas about how the world works or should work, and lays the conceptual foundation for creating knowledge that can be tested again by more theorizing. This is how social science progresses. IR theorists3 have concentrated primarily on great-power politics under the singular assumption that power politics should shape the general landscape of world politics. This is one of the reasons why many doubt the explanatory utility of Western International Relations theory applied to subsystems. On the other hand, theorizing about regional IR has been neglected due to the stereotype that the peripheral zone of international politics may not critically affect great-power politics. Non-Western regions in this vein have been considered generally as part of area studies, whose scholarly interest may be far from theorizing their regional interactions; its logic of inquiry is grounded in discovering a region's distinctive characteristics. However, with the end of the cold war, the increasing significance of regional politics, and the strong drive toward regionalization, regional IR theorizing has attracted much more scholarly attention from the IR community in order to bridge analytical gaps between area studies and IR theorizing.4 In this regard, there exists an unequal distribution between theoretical universalism and contextual exceptionalism when it comes to theorizing about a subsystem (i.e., region) apart from a whole system (i.e., world politics). Whereas IR theorizing requires much more deductive reasoning for theory construction in order to explain systemic IR phenomena, area specialization generally demands inductive investigations of history, language, and culture focusing on a limited area. This article generally illuminates such tension, and argues that the principle of universalism should still guide us when theorizing about a subsystem. The article deals with East Asia, whose importance has been rising very rapidly, inviting major scholars' attention and much heated current-affairs debates virtually from all around the world. While the region offers empirical richness, theoretical rigor in theorizing about East Asian IR still has a long way to go. …