New York; Chicester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2018. xiv, 355 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-18548-6.
Every state has its own schools of foreign policy situated within that state’s own political, historical, social, and cultural context. Naturally, the foreign policy of a nation originates from its geographical situation, historical experiences, and diverse political, social, and cultural background. For example, without understanding the geographical features and modern history of China over the last century, there would be many limitations in explaining Chinese foreign policy today since historical experiences, and even trauma, have strongly influenced its foreign policy towards the world. Similarly, without understanding the Korean Peninsula’s geographical features and twentieth-century history, it would be difficult to understand the nature and essence of Korean foreign policy today.
South Korea at the Crossroads examines Korea’s foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century within the framework of the country’s foreign policy school vis-à-vis the coming-of-age power struggle between the US and China. This book is both timely and significant as it closely examines the foreign policy of each South Korean president, and helps shape the framework of Korea’s foreign policy school. This book creates a map of South Korea’s foreign policy orientation in two categories: one international (outwardly oriented) or parochial (inwardly oriented); the other, alliance or autonomy centred. Many Korean Peninsula experts and international relations scholars have explained South Korea’s foreign policy school according to the frameworks of alliance (internationalists) and autonomy (nationalists). In these works, Korean internationalists include presidents Syngman Rhee (Princeton PhD and English speaker) and Park Chung-hee to Lee Myung-bak (officer corps, government officials, and diplomats who were largely educated in the US and corporate employees and bankers), while Korean nationalists include Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun (both former student protesters, liberal intellectuals, and human rights lawyers who fought military authority). Thus, this book adds a new standard: international vs parochial. This book well explains the strategic choices of former presidents in different geographical and international contexts, and shows a deep understanding of the complexities of Korean history of the late twentieth century.
Nonetheless, this book has limitations, similar to those experienced by many political scientists endeavoring to explain South Korea’s foreign policy schools. First, setting “international” vs. “parochial” as a standard is a fresh framework since it goes beyond the traditional alliance vs. nationalist framework; parochial, however, is a term that should be changed. Each South Korean president chose his own foreign policy based on the power and national wealth of the country at an international level. Thus, more recent Korean presidents have naturally pursued international values and interests based on alliances, in contrast to the strategic choices made by earlier presidents when South Korea was a much poorer country. Thus, it is unfair to explain the foreign policies of Syngman Rhee in the 1950s, Park Chung-hee in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chun Doo-hwan in the 1980s as parochial foreign policies.
Secondly, while this book offers many explanations concerning the strategic and political situation of South Korea, these explanations are still insufficient in explaining South Korea’s foreign policy within its historical, political, social, and cultural context. Korea’s post-colonial period was a continuation of its colonial one. Problems related to the legacy of pro-Japanese collaboration continued with the formation of South Korea’s political parties and the division of the peninsula in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Syngman Rhee was a heroic independence movement leader, but his political partners were largely land owners who had worked closely with the Japanese government during the colonial era, and easily transferred their allegiances to the US military government in South Korea as befitted their wealth, English-speaking abilities, Westernized customs, Protestant religion, and Western-educated backgrounds. Thus, even today, the primary defining features of the two main South Korean political parties are how they interpret early post-colonial Korean history and whom they look to as political models, for instance Syngman Rhee vs. Kim Ku/Yo Un Hyoung. For example, without an understanding of the US military administration’s policy of rehiring former Korean-Japanese military officers, police officers, and judges who had worked for the Japanese government, it is difficult to explain the complexities of South Korea’s foreign policies during the late 1940s and 1950s. Within such political, historical, and social contexts, it is difficult to say that Syngman Rhee was simply a pro-American politician and Kim Ku was a narrow-minded idealistic nationalist. The foreign policies of Kim Dae-jung, Park Chung-hee, other presidents also originated from the political, historical, and social contexts of their respective times.
This book deeply touches upon modern Korean history and shapes a significant new framework for explaining South Korea’s schools of foreign policy, and will prove a great guidebook for general readers seeking to understand South Korea’s foreign policy map. However, this book still needs a more careful understanding of Koreans’ own perspectives on their country’s foreign politics, in terms of the views of historians, anthropologists, and sociologists within historical, political, social, and cultural contexts. For instance, many Koreans consider the foreign policies of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee as being part and parcel of their respective political circumstances and identities within Korea’s complex historical legacy.
Youngjun Kim
Korea National Defense University, Seoul, South Korea