East Asian States Research Articles

Geopolitics and geospatial strategies: the rise of regulatory supply chain controls for semiconductor GPN in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract In this article, we present an analysis of how East Asian states (specifically, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) are adapting to the emerging geopolitical contexts of the ‘great powers competition’ between the United States and China. To the extent that the previous literature on GPN/GVC governance included the state as one of the extra-firm actors, geopolitics has not been explicitly dealt with in its role in shaping GPN/GVC governance. We build on the existing research on GPN/GVC governance and propose a shift in perspective, from one of cost-driven to diplomacy-driven governance. Taking the case of the semiconductor industry, we conduct an analysis of native language sources and examine how regulatory supply chain controls are shaping East Asian industrial and trade policies. Specifically, we focus on how East Asian states are negotiating their dependence on the world’s two largest markets, the United States and China, and developing new policy strategies in order to navigate the dual hegemony. The analysis reveals that, while varying strategies are adopted, multilateral alliances of the states are gaining prominence in GPN/GVC governance. We conclude that a more state-centric analysis of GPN/GVC is in order.

Effect of EVAR on International Ruptured AAA Mortality-Sex and Geographic Disparities.

Background: We sought to investigate the differential impact of EVAR (endovascular aneurysm repair) vis-à-vis OSR (open surgical repair) on ruptured AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm) mortality by sex and geographically. Methods: We performed a retrospective study of administrative data on EVAR from state statistical agencies, vascular registries, and academic publications, as well as ruptured AAA mortality rates from the World Health Organization for 14 14 states across Australasia, East Asia, Europe, and North America. Results: Between 2011-2016, the proportion of treatment of ruptured AAAs by EVAR increased from 26.1 to 43.8 percent among females, and from 25.7 to 41.2 percent among males, and age-adjusted ruptured AAA mortality rates fell from 12.62 to 9.50 per million among females, and from 34.14 to 26.54 per million among males. The association of EVAR with reduced mortality was more than three times larger (2.2 vis-à-vis 0.6 percent of prevalence per 10 percentage point increase in EVAR) among females than males. The association of EVAR with reduced mortality was substantially larger (1.7 vis-à-vis 1.1 percent of prevalence per 10 percentage point increase in EVAR) among East Asian states than European+ states. Conclusions: The increasing adoption of EVAR coincided with a decrease in ruptured AAA mortality. The relationship between EVAR and mortality was more pronounced among females than males, and in East Asian than European+ states. Sex and ethnic heterogeneity should be further investigated.

The emergence of “soft power” as a tool of the Republic of Korea's foreign policy

Over the past few years, the East Asian states, notably the Republic of Korea, have been effectively implementing soft power strategies. The concept's founder J. Nye himself draws the attention of the scientific circles to the fact that “the potential of the countries (note – the East Asian region) is rising year by year. The research of soft power of the Republic of Korea is of utmost interest, as the Republic of Korea managed to revamp its economy and political institutions in a very short period of time, establishing its position in the international arena and becoming one of the “significant” cultural exporters of today. The purpose of this paper is to outline the specifics of soft power development as one of the foreign policy and public diplomacy mechanisms of the Republic of Korea. For a more accurate understanding of the use of soft power as an instrument of foreign policy of the state under study, historical and socio-cultural methods were involved. The research also included the following approaches to the study of soft power: structural and functional, discourse analysis, and the institutional approach. The scientific novelty lies in the elaboration of the author's definition of “soft power”. “The Korean Wave” provided an additional opportunity for the government of the Republic of Korea to take advantage of soft power as a foreign policy strategy to promote Korean cultural values in a globalizing world. The Republic of Korea's emergence as a cultural power on the world stage has been facilitated by the phenomenon known as the Korean Wave or Hallyu. This phenomenon is characterized by the extensive spread of Korean popular culture, including music, TV series and films. Hallyu brought with it cultural and social implications, especially for Asia, as the Republic of Korea changed its role from a recipient to a donor of popular culture in the region. The Republic of Korea is a prime example of the effective use of culture as its soft power, showing that global presence through creative products can significantly influence a nation's economy and international position.

Identity, Participation, and Democracy in East Asia

This essay reviews three outstanding books that reconceptualize the interplay of national and political identity with democracy and peace in East Asia. Aram Hur’s Narratives of Civic Duty and Eunbin Chung’s Pride, Not Prejudice challenge the notion that a strong national identity undermines democratic participation and international cooperation, using East Asian states’ complex history as a backdrop. Using survey experiments, Hur examines how nationalism can facilitate civic engagement, while Chung shows it fosters international trust. Yoonkyung Lee’s Between the Streets and the Assembly expands the dialogue by showing the diverse motivations for civic participation in South Korean democracy. Collectively, these works prompt a reevaluation of the role of national identity in shaping political behaviour and civic participation, and call for further scholarly inquiry and investigation into its role within East Asian states.

Индо-Тихоокеанский регион между вызовами конфронтации и возможностями взаимодействия

The article examines the priorities of China and the United States in the Indo-Pacific, examines the current trends of the US-Chinese strategic confrontation in the Indo-Pacific region, expressed, among other things, in the formation of new international institutions reflecting primarily the economic rivalry of regional leaders. The key features of the policy of the Chinese leadership led by Xi Jinping in the Pacific are highlighted. The course of Pacific diplomacy of the administration of J.P. Blavatsky is compared. Biden’s Indo-Pacificist policies pursued by previous American governments in the 21st century. The official regional strategies of China, the United States and American allies are compared, and the multivariance of U.S. partnerships with Indo-Pacific countries is assessed. The balance of positive consequences and risks in the relations between the United States and China with the countries of the region is analyzed, as well as the readiness of the East Asian states to follow in the wake of American and Chinese diplomacy. In this context, the potential and prospects of the subjectivity of the countries of the region in the context of the American-Chinese rivalry, their possible role as a stabilizer of political and economic processes in the Indo-Pacific are investigated.

Політика США щодо франко-корейського конфлікту 1866 р.

In the article comprehensively examines the process of formulating the Korean policy of the USA in the 1860-s, aimed at the «opening» of the Joseon state to foreign commerce. It is noted that this course was a direct continuation of the strategy, which passed the initial public test in the middle of the ХІХ-th century, during the violent «opening» of Japan. Examining the process of formulation of Washington's policy towards the Korean state of Joseon, the author proves that the reason for interference in Seoul's internal affairs was oppression and persecution by the «isolationist» government of the East Asian state. This problem became particularly acute in 1866, when the Joseon government massively persecuted the country's Christian community, which was developing under the patronage of the French Catholic mission. As a result of the conducted research, the author came to the following conclusions. The Korean policy of the USA became significantly more active in the 1860-s. Under the pretext of protecting French Catholic missionaries from repression by the Korean authorities, the White House advocated, along with other states (in particular, France) for the «opening» of Joseon to foreign trade. The latter was considered as a universal recipe for the spread of «civilized» rules of coexistence to the previously «isolated» countries of East Asia. The actions taken by Washington during this period can be interpreted as a «test of strength» in order to determine the further strategy of «opening up» Korea.

State Obligation in the East China Sea: Unilateral Activities and Countermeasures

Abstract Maritime disputes among the East Asian States have garnered increasing attention worldwide with expanding offshore activities in the East China Sea. To avoid confrontation and potential conflict, unilateral maritime claims in the East China Sea usually have been non-explicit. While maritime boundary disputes remain unresolved in the region, changes have taken place because of resource shortages, the rise in military assertiveness from Tokyo, and increased alliances with the United States. This article explores the limits of unilateral activities within the disputed maritime area under current international law and how East Asian States should behave when they encounter unilateral activities conducted by other States, including analysis on sovereign entitlement and the limits of unilateral activities in the region. A code of conduct among the East Asian States is needed to ensure peace and prosperity in the region.

‘Getting Asia right’: de-essentializing China's hegemony in historical Asia

AbstractInternational Relations (IR) scholars have taken China's presumed hegemony in pre-modern East Asia as an ideal case to ‘undermine’ the field's Eurocentrism. If Eurocentric IR is guilty of ‘getting Asia wrong’, do students of historical Asia ‘get Asia right’? Analysts should avoid exotifying differences between the West and the East and ‘exchanging Eurocentrism for Sinocentrism’. This article tries to ‘get Asia [more] right’ by ‘disaggregating’ and then ‘reassembling’ taken-for-granted concepts by time, space, and relationality. When ‘Confucianism’ is understood to justify both war and peace in competition with other thoughts, it does not dictate peace among East Asian states or conflicts across the Confucian–nomadic divide. When ‘China’ is unpacked, it does not sit on top of an Asian hierarchy. When Korea's, Vietnam's, and Japan's views of their relations with China are examined rather than presumed, cultural legitimacy is thinned out. When ‘Asia’ is broadened to cover webs of relations beyond East Asia to Central Asia, Confucianism recedes in centrality and pan-Asian phenomena including Buddhism and the steppe tradition come to the fore. The article concludes that a better challenge to Eurocentrism is not to search for cultural differences but to locate Eurasian similarities that erase European superiority.

Urban entrepreneurialism 3.0 and the export of urban expertise: The case of South Korea’s international information and telecommunication technology program

Several modes of urban entrepreneurialism, variously composed of central-local, state-market, state-civil society, and domestic-international relations, have been apparent since the 1970s. Drawing inspiration from East Asian developmental states, we argue that it is under the most recent mode of urban entrepreneurialism 3.0 that the urban sources of exports and national economic development have been most fully mobilised by states. We illustrate this export of urban expertise with the case of South Korea’s International Information and Telecommunication Technology Program (ITTP), offered by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which trains future ICT and city leaders from developing countries. We trace the history and effects of the ITTP through original empirical research involving interviews and a survey of graduates from the program. The ITTP is revealing of state intrapreneurialism in the export of sector-specific urban expertise with effects on national brands, new markets and the formation of new institutions. The case of the ITTP is one among a variety of means by which East Asian states in particular have projected urban expertise internationally. It also points to these states’ struggle to coordinate institutions involved in, and generate consensus around, national models of urban expertise to be exported.

Populism in Taiwan: Rethinking the Neo-liberalism–Populism Nexus

Contemporary scholarship on populism, albeit involving divergent approaches and polarised diagnoses of populism’s political impacts, commonly attributes the recent populist surge to the peril of neo-liberal encroachment. However, such a neo-liberal–populist proposition encounters discrepant experiences when applied in non-Western contexts, including in East Asia. To recalibrate the conceptual framework, this article employs Gramsci-inspired scholarship on hegemony and populism – the notion of “the integral state” and non-reductionist class politics in particular – and utilises Taiwan as a case to expound upon the entanglement of democratisation, neo-liberalisation, and various forms of populist politics. Situating the post-2000 surge of multiple popular movements in Taiwan’s hegemonic restructuring since the 1980s, this article identifies a course of bifurcated development between “liberal populism of the bourgeois hegemony” and the “neo-liberal populism of the multitude” that embodies various ways in which neo-liberalism intersects with populist politics. Highlighting the constant boundary-redrawing of the integral state and its associated class politics along the hegemonic restructuring processes, Taiwan’s case exemplifies a critical approach to rethinking the over-determined relations between populism and neo-liberalism for other East Asian states and beyond.

Tethered to Sanctions to the Nth Degree: The Rise and Fall of South Korea in Iran

Although the contemporary trajectory of South Korea’s rather multifaceted connections to Iran is a six-decade-long narrative, a great deal of its staggering successes and sobering setbacks took place just over the past decade and a half, coinciding with the ebbs and flows in the Iranian nuclear issue. The Korean policy response toward the sundry international sanctions levied against Iran in the wake of its contentious nuclear program played an indispensable role in the East Asian nation’s substantially fluctuating relationship with the Iranians in political, economic, technological, and cultural areas. The Koreans could outstrip almost all of their Western and Eastern rivals in Iran when they made it possible for the latter to secure parts of its badly needed economic and technological requirements denied to Tehran because of certain international impediments and restrictions, but the Korean omnipresence throughout the Iranian society set on a swift downward slope as soon as the East Asian state was no longer able to keep serving those sanctioned interests.

아프리카의 발전국가모델에 대한 연구

This study analyzed the similarities and differences between countries achieving high economic growth in Africa and the East Asian model, and examined the implications of developmental states in Africa through comparison. Today, African states share many similarities with the developmental states of East Asia in the past, and express their willingness to follow the development experience of East Asia. However, in the past, developmental states in East Asia did not follow the Western and Japanese models as they were, but made successful developments by applying them according to the characteristics of each country. Developmentalism contributed to growth in East Asia, but inequality between classes remains a serious problem to this day. Considering the diverse ethnic composition and long colonial experiences of African states, the follow-up of the East Asian model is likely to lead to other problems, such as increased corruption. African states need to consider the limitations and side effects that have emerged in East Asian states through flexible “application” rather than “reconstruction” existing models.

Forgotten and Invisible Laborers: Domestic Workers in Singapore and Taiwan

This paper is about legal yet unjust systems of domestic servitude; the oppressive circumstances that ‘foreign maids’ the world over face as unappreciated, unrecognized, and undervalued workers in the invisible domestic space. Regardless of political culture and regime - liberal democracies to authoritarian governance – ‘maids’ are excluded from normal labor standards. The author explains and discusses the legal blind spots, loopholes, and oversight of labor clauses for foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in the East Asian states of Singapore and Taiwan. This paper aims to spark critical conversations about the public/private divide, also the feasibility of enacting home-based legislation for private household workers. It uses the reviewed literature – relevant research studies, government websites, and news sources – and interview findings to advance its main claims. Between May 2021 and July 2022, the author conducted online semi-structured interviews on WhatsApp/Zoom with 61 people who were directly or indirectly involved in eldercare provision: FDWs, domestic employers, recruitment agency managers, unpaid family caregivers, and NGO workers. The author’s analysis shows that FDWs, called ‘maids’ in the local parlance, face a myriad of shocking abuses by sending/receiving governments, unscrupulous recruitment agencies, and host employers who view them as private property (owned) rather than human beings with needs. This paper argues that FDWs deserve to be respected and included in formal labor laws like the rest of the workforce, to better safeguard their physical safety, mental wellbeing, and personal dignity

The rise of GCC‐East Asian trade: A cointegration approach to analysing trade relationships

AbstractThe economic relationship between the Gulf Cooperation Council states and the countries of East Asia has grown in significance in recent years at the expense of the European Union and the USA. Empirical analysis of GCC‐East Asian trade indices shows that East Asian states now dominate GCC trade flows and a number of GCC‐East Asian Free Trade Agreements are cementing the long‐term economic ties between the two regional blocs, which are based on the complementarity of their economic structures and comparative advantage. Within East Asia, Japan is increasingly having to compete with China and India for both security of energy supplies from the GCC and to supply GCC markets with their manufactured exports. Using a new approach to analysing trade relationships, we utilise cointegration techniques to analyse GCC trade patterns over time. We find econometric evidence of a long‐term trade relationship between the GCC states and those of East Asia, in particular China, whose continued economic growth has allowed the GCC bloc to diversify its economic and political dependence away from North America and ‘look East’ for new strategic alliances.

Changes in Interdependence, US-China Strategic Competition, and the New Dynamics of the East Asian Regional Order

The immediate cause of the East Asian states’ pursuit of new economic statecraft, which has led to changes in the regional order, was the rise of US-China strategic rivalry. However, one structural factor behind the adoption of this statecraft is the economic network formed in East Asia. The emergence of new economic statecraft has had systemic effects, such as the spread of network sanctions, the adoption of divergent strategies, and the dual dynamics of cooperation and competition between states.

Whose Responsibility? The Protection of Refugees in East Asia

Abstract Many states in the East Asian region (including Northeast and Southeast subregions) are moving away from traditional state-centric governance notions towards accepting a localised variant of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ that allows for criticism of domestic policies and limited diplomatic pressure in the event of humanitarian crises. There has been acceptance of the cosmopolitan governance principles of human security and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Despite convergence on the R2P however, East Asian states maintain a pluralistic understanding of what it implies and its relationship with human security. Furthermore, refugees form one of the most vulnerable groups in the region precisely because of an ongoing resistance in recognising responsibility for their protection. This paper addresses the performance of different agencies of governance (at the national and international level) in fulfilling their R2P obligations towards North Korean refugees and the Rohingya, the two most prominent (and controversial) regional refugee groups.

East Asia’s strategic positioning toward China: identifying and accounting for intra-regional variations

ABSTRACT Relatively few systematic and categorical studies have been conducted on the variant responses by East Asian states to the rise of China, and even fewer dealt with reasons for such intra-regional variations. This study seeks to fill the void by examining the strategic responses by 15 East Asian states for the period of 2011–2016. This period merits close scrutiny because China became more explicitly assertive. The research proceeds in two phases. First, by way of reading into the expert assessments in academic journals, the strategic responses of the 15 states are categorised into balancing, hedging, or bandwagoning. Second, statistical analyses are conducted to see how the intra-regional variations are related to unit-level factors. Of the seven variables analyzed, three – geographical proximity, democracy, and identity – turn out to be crucial in determining the East Asian states’ strategic responses.

Trade Openness, Inequality, and Democracy in East Asia

Has trade openness made East Asian countries more or less democratic? Although numerous studies have explored the economic effects of market integration in the region, few have systematically examined the political consequences of trade liberalization. This research extends previous work by empirically investigating not only direct but also indirect links between trade globalization and democracy in East Asia. I find that the direct negative effect of trade integration on democracy is mitigated by its indirect positive impact via inequality. Empirical evidence is provided by the three-stage least squares method and pooled time-series data from 1975 to 2015 for 13 East Asian states.

South East Asian countries’ policies toward a rising China: lessons from Vietnam’s hedging response to the Belt and Road Initiative

ABSTRACT The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) not only marks a significant change in Chinese foreign policy but also brings benefits and challenges to countries in its region, especially those South East Asian states that have long existed under Beijing’s influence. This article argues that South East Asian countries have followed different policies in response to the BRI because of their different levels of economic development and each state’s political and strategic calculations regarding their relations with China. The article also points out that having bordered China for more than 2000 years, and having experienced ups and downs in their bi-lateral relations, Vietnam has hedged against the BRI by showing support to the initiative but limiting its participation in it. Vietnam has pushed back against BRI investments due to the fear of falling into China’s debt trap and the consequent adverse impacts on security and sovereignty, and it has enhanced cooperation with other states in infrastructure investments to avoid depending on Chinese capital. Vietnam’s hedging policy towards the BRI also offers lessons for regional countries about diversifying relations with other powerful states and avoiding dependence on or opposition to an emergent power.

INTERDEPENDENCE OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY BETWEEN KOREA AND ASEAN-5 COUNTRIES: ASIAN INTERNATIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS

The purpose of this study is to analyze the interdependence of the manufacturing industry between South South Korea and ASEAN-5 countries. To conduct an international analysis for the manufacturing industries, an interregional input-output (IRIO) model is applied. The Asian International Input-Output Table (AIIO) provided by IDE-JETRO (2017) is employed and the spillover effects of manufacturing industry are compared in terms of inducement production, value added and backward/forward linkages. The results indicate that the production inducement outcome between Malaysia and South Korea and the effect of forward and backward linkage industry are high, and the dependence on industry is high. On the other hand, in terms of decomposition of value added exports to ASEAN from South South Korea in the manufacturing sector; Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia are the states where South South Korea's domestic value-added exports are high. The result shows that South South Korea is necessary to diversify economic cooperation between East Asian and ASEAN member states.