Conference Program

The Indo-Pacific has emerged as a region of significant geostrategic importance amid the ongoing Sino-U.S. competition. The geopolitical and security dynamics in the region have undergone rapid changes in recent years, particularly following government transitions in countries such as the Philippines, Taiwan, and Korea.

Korea forged an alliance with the U.S. after the Cold War, facing various challenges over the years, including North Korean provocations, China's ascent, and the intensification of Sino-U.S. competition. Korea endeavors to maintain a power balance between China and the U.S. through its foreign policy. The 2022 presidential election saw Yoon Suk-yeol from the People Power Party emerge victorious. The Yoon goverment's foreign policy diverges notably from its predecessor, with a heightened focus on ROK-U.S. and ROK-Japan relationships. Furthermore, the three nations advocate for trilateral cooperation to bolster stability and security in the Indo-Pacific. Korea, aspiring to assume a more vital role in the region as a global pivotal state, unveiled its Indo-Pacific Strategy in December 2022.

This article seeks to elucidate the decision-making process behind the Yoon government's Indo-Pacific Strategy. It aims to explain the domestic and international variables influencing this process, exploring the relative importance of each in shaping Korea's evolving foreign policy. By delving into these factors, the research aims to provide insights into whether domestic or international considerations play a more pivotal role in the decision-making process.

If foreign policy can be understood as a ‘boundary-producing performance’ (Campbell 1992) that works to constitute the state in whose name it operates, how to understand media representations of other states? This paper examines how representations of Taiwan by conservative Japanese media have discursively constructed a role model for contemporary Japan informed by its idealized past. Our research focuses on Sankei Shimbun, which has its own correspondent in Taipei. Specifically, we look at Sankei’s reporting of the Tsai Ying-wen administration’s responses to the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 and the newspaper’s admiration for Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s former president who oversaw the island’s democratization in 1988-2000. While the Tsai administration’s swift epidemic control measures were made possible by various contingent factors, including her re-election as a popular mandate for strict travel restrictions across the Taiwan Strait right after the pandemic’s outbreak, Sankei portrayed Tsai and her officials as rational and efficient leaders with a strong resolve to defend Taiwan’s interest. Moreover, the newspaper attributed Taiwan’s ‘success story’ to the public’s great discipline and observation of the government’s instructions, together with a fine public health infrastructure laid by the Japanese a century ago. The image of Taiwan thus overlaps with that of the prewar Japanese self. The overlap becomes more apparent in Sankei’s representations of the Japanese-educated Lee as a philosopher-statesman and Bushido practitioner, who gave birth to a Taiwan that can say no (to China). Sankei’s reporting, then, illustrates as much about Taiwan as the Japanese conservatives’ pursuit of a ‘normal’ Japan.

In December 2022 Japan adopted the so-called Three Security Documents that were hailed as major shift in Japan’s foreign and defense policies. The presentation will examine the Three Documents in the context of Japan’s security policy changes since the end of the Cold War focusing on main reforms. The main question is, whether the new Security Documents constitute a fundamental change or rather a continuity. Methodologically, the presentation adopts the neoclassical realist approach that emphasizes on one hand, the importance of international/ systemic factors in shaping foreign policy, and on the other hand, the significance of domestic factors that determine the final policy output. And furthermore, to access the policy change, the article employs the concept of a critical juncture borrowed from historical institutionalism as defined by John Hogan (2006). The main argument at this stage of the research is that, first, Japan’s security policy has been changing incrementally since the end of the Cold War with the tactics of “the salami slicing” despite strong pressure of international factors, due to domestic constrains of the pacifist sentiments. And second, under Prime Minister Abe the accumulation of these changes and the newly introduced ones reached a critical juncture that moved the foreign policy in fact away from the post-war Yoshida doctrine towards a policy that could be labeled as “Abe Line.” The Three Security Documents of 2022 constitute thus a continuation of the policy shift that occurred under Prime Minister Abe.