Routledge Contemporary Korea Series – serie

This book examines the first regional strategy of South Korea toward Southeast Asia and India. At issue is how a middle power (a G20 country with the tenth largest economy in the world) seeks to play a larger and more comprehensive role in regions beyond the Korean peninsula. Hitherto, South Korean foreign policy has focused on nuclearizing North Korea, alliance maintenance with the United States, tricky relations with its most important economic partner China, and difficult ties with Japan marred by historical and territorial disputes. The Moon Administration has sought to diversify South Korean foreign policy by elevating ASEAN and India to the same strategic level as the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. To be sure, the latter countries continue to be most significant to the Korean peninsula. However, this book offers different country and regional perspectives on Seoul’s first regional grand strategy to play a role commensurate with its status as a middle power.

This book examines the first regional strategy of South Korea toward Southeast Asia and India. At issue is how a middle power (a G20 country with the tenth largest economy in the world) seeks to play a larger and more comprehensive role in regions beyond the Korean peninsula. Hitherto, South Korean foreign policy has focused on nuclearizing North Korea, alliance maintenance with the United States, tricky relations with its most important economic partner China, and difficult ties with Japan marred by historical and territorial disputes. The Moon Administration has sought to diversify South Korean foreign policy by elevating ASEAN and India to the same strategic level as the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. To be sure, the latter countries continue to be most significant to the Korean peninsula. However, this book offers different country and regional perspectives on Seoul’s first regional grand strategy to play a role commensurate with its status as a middle power.

This book explores the role played by museums and museum exhibitions in South Korea’s cultural diplomacy and international projection of itself to the world. Based on extensive archival research and fieldwork in cultural diplomatic institutions across South Korea, Britain, and the United States, this book charts the important role played by this form of cultural diplomacy. It considers specific travelling exhibitions including Masterpieces of Korean Art, which was on tour from 1957 to 1962, and 5000 Years of Korean Art, on tour from 1976 to 1985, and permanent and special exhibitions in the Korea Foundation Gallery in the British Museum and the Arts of Korea in the Metropolitan Museum of Art globally. This book goes on to examine the place of museums in South Korea’s cultural diplomacy overall, explores the connections with South Korea’s very successful development of its cultural sector, and concludes by assessing the effectiveness for South Korea of prioritising this form of soft power projection.Analysing the developmental stages of South Korean cultural diplomacy in relation to international museum exhibitions, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Korean history, culture and diplomacy as well as museums studies.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of international attempts to engage North Korea diplomatically with the aim of avoiding a nuclear war.It highlights the difficulty of this task, concluding that the containment of North Korea currently depends more on military deterrence than on diplomatic restraint. It considers the various multilateral attempts at diplomatic engagement over recent decades and explores the different approaches of different countries, examining the domestic factors and the strategic interests which drive different countries’ different approaches. It includes an account of China’s growing estrangement, Russia’s increasing closeness, and the surprising relationship between North Korea and Sweden which has been effective in providing the North Korean people with humanitarian aid.Revealing the story of diplomatic frustrations and failures when engaging North Korea, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies, Asian politics, and international relations.