**THE 6th GLOBAL ISSUES COLLOQUIUM **

Monday, April 2nd, 2012
#1002 Seminar Room, International Education Building

Beyond Bilateralism in Northeast Asia:

Is Security Community Possible?

Presenter: Prof. Ihn-hwi Park (Division of International Studies, Ewha)

Ihn-hwi Park is an Associate Professor of the Division of International Studies at Ewha Womans University. Prof. Park’s area of expertise lies in international security, U.S. foreign policy and Northeast Asian international relations. He is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade since 2011, and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Unification since 2009. Prof. Park edited many books and most recently he published a book with the title of Korea’s National Security in the age of Globalization: Key Subjects and Significances in 2010. Prof. Park has written many articles on international relations in leading journals including Journal of East Asia Affairs, Korea Journal of Defense Analysis, Korea Political Science Review, the Korean Journal of International Relations, National Strategy, and etc. Some of his publication includes “Sino-Japan Strategic Rivalry and the Security of the Korean Peninsula” in The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis (in English, 2007), and “Politics of Security and Insecurity on the Korean Peninsula: the Contradictory Combination of the Korea-U.S. and Inter-Korean Relations” in the Korean Political Science Review (in Korean, 2011). He receives his Ph. D. from Northwestern University in 1999. Prof. Park can be reached at ihpark@ewha.ac.kr.

Abstract

After the World War II, the United States, overcoming its geographical identity as merely a continental state of North America, moved to bolster its position as part of the Northeast Asian regional order by consolidating its military security relations with Northeast Asian allies: the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Consequently, the two alliances, the ROK-U.S. alliance and the U.S.-Japan alliance, served as key mechanisms to advance U.S. strategic national interest in the Northeast Asian region. However, new changes in the Northeast Asian regional security complex are forcing the United States into pursuing new alliance strategies. Currently, these changes are taking shape in two dimensions: first the U.S. no more shares the military goals of the alliances

with their Northeast Asian allies as they did during the Cold War period, and, second, the U.S. has faced a new trend of regional integration among Northeast Asian countries in the post-Cold war era.

The contested concept of security has been under a serious reformation by every security referent since the Cold War ended. In the age of globalization we witnessed a general move to broaden the security agenda. One approach was to move from a strict focus on the security of state (national security) toward a broader or alternative focus on the security of people, either as individuals, regions, or as a global community. Security refers to guarantee or a certainty of something. Security is then understood as assuring particular arrangements into the future. This usually implies stable political arrangements; social change that might upset these arrangements is then easily targeted as a threat to security.

At this juncture it is indispensable for analysis purposes to provide a theoretical framework within which to review the possibility of regional security community in East Asia; this framework needs to take into account various scenarios concerning the so-called the rise of China, the North Korean nuclear issue and related issues regarding the future of the East Asian power structure, as well as the asymmetrical regional structure that exists between economic development on the one hand and the security framework on the other. While considering both the possibilities and problems to transplant the idea of security community it is necessary to review the institutional development of NATO after the end of the Cold War. In particular, this work concludes that the national identity and national interests of Korea more harmoniously correspond to the security exercise beyond the current bilateral architecture.

* This colloquium is supported by the Ewha Global Top 5 Grant 2011 of Ewha Womans University and Ewha GSIS