Strategic Culture of the Republic of Korea

Abstract

The strategic culture of the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) is based on three pillars: attaining prosperity and strength as an enduring national purpose and objective; countering the existential North Korean threat; and maintaining a strong alliance with the United States. This strategic culture is grounded in history, especially in Koreans' sense of themselves as an ancient and homogeneous people, the minjok, and in a constructed martial heritage. Keepers of strategic culture include the national security establishment, the National Assembly, the media, the public, and the United States, but the most important keeper is the president, who ultimately defines South Korea's strategic interests and how they should be attained or guarded. Contemporary illustrations of South Korean strategic culture in action include defence reform measures, shifts in the American alliance, and the ‘crisis of 2013', which included a North Korean nuclear test and extreme threats of war. This article reinforces the view that while strategic culture may be a universal concept, in its operationalized and practised form, the true value of the concept is that the unique and particularistic characteristics that define each specific strategic cultural tradition are placed at the centre of analysis. South Korea's strategic culture is unique, but if there is an aspect that can be applied to other nations it is that shared historical memory and public historiography are crucial factors that inform that nation's strategic culture.

Notes

1. Jiyul Kim, Cultural Dimensions of Strategy and Policy (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2009), pp. 6–9, 22–3; Jack L. Snyder, ‘The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations’, R-2154-AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, September 1977); Colin S. Gray ‘Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture’, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 31 October 2006, at http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dtra/stratcult-out.pdf, see also Alan Macmillan, Ken Booth, and Russell Trood, ‘Strategic Culture’, in Ken Booth and Russell Trood (eds), Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2009).

2. ROK Ministry of National Defense's Defense White Paper 2012 provides official discussions on the North Korean threat, alliance with the United States, and national security policy, at http://www.mnd.go.kr/user/mnd_eng/upload/pblictn/PBLICTNEBOOK_201308130553561260.pdf (accessed 14 June 2014).

3. Mingi Hyun, ‘South Korea's Blue-water Ambitions’, The Diplomat, 18 November 2010.

4. Korean names are written with family name first. Romanization is based on the McCune-Reischauer (M-R) convention except for a few prominent names that are widely known and used in a non M-R romanized version, such as Park Chung Hee and Kim Il Sung. When the non M-R format is used the M-R version is given in parentheses.

5. For history of the slogan, see Jiyul Kim, ‘War, Diplomacy, Mobilization, and Nation-building in South Korea, 1968′, Seminar paper, Harvard University, May 2004, p. 17 (author's copy).

6. The Asia ‘pivot’ was announced in Department of Defense, ‘Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense’, January 2012. For South Korean concerns, see Chaesung Chun, ‘US Strategic Rebalancing to Asia: South Korea's Perspective’, Asia Policy, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2013), pp. 13–17.

7. For example, the prominence of Korean automotive, ship, and electronic products; the ‘Korea Wave’ phenomenon; Korean deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan; and personalities such as Ban Ki Moon (UN Secretary General), Korean-American Jim Yong Kim (president of the World Bank), bi-racial Korean-American football player Hines Ward (2006 Super Bowl Most Valuable Player [MVP]), female golfer Inbee Park (ranked number one in the world in 2013), and figure skater Kim Yuna (2010 Olympic champion and 2013 world champion).

8. E.J. Hobsbawm and T.O. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

9. For the best account in English, see Stephen Turnbull, Samurai Invasion: Japan's Korean War, 1592–1598 (London: Cassell, 2002).

10. For the most recent study of Park in English, see Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra Vogel (eds), The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

11. Three have expired: Angola, East Timor, and Haiti. As of October 2013, South Korea had 321 personnel in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and 275 in South Sudan (UNMISS). See http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/contributors/2013/oct13_1.pdf (accessed 10 November 2013).

12. On Zaytun, see http://www.centcom.mil/en/about-centcom-en/coalition-countries-en/republic-of-korea-en (accessed 14 June 2014). On the Afghan PRT, see http://www.mnd.go.kr/mbshome/mbs/mnd_eng/subview.jsp?id=mnd_eng_020300000000 (accessed 12 September 2013). For a detailed study of the South Korean PRT, see John Hemmings, ‘The ROK Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan’, in Scott A. Snyder (ed.), Global Korea: South Korea's Contributions to International Security (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2012), pp. 45–60; on counter-piracy and counter-proliferation operations, see Terence Roehrig, ‘South Korea's Counterpiracy Operations in the Gulf of Aden’ and Scott Bruce, ‘Counterproliferation and South Korea: From Local to Global’, both in Snyder, Global Korea, pp. 28–44, 61–77.

13. The most recent, comprehensive, and balanced account of the history of the two Koreas' struggle for legitimacy is Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (New York: WW Norton, 2013; London: Profile Books, 2013).

14. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, ‘Which is the Real Korea?’, Boston Globe, 30 June 2013.

15. Mitchell Lerner, ‘“Mostly Propaganda in Nature”: Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and the Second Korean War’, North Korea International Documentation Project Working Paper #3, December 2010.

16. Kim Young-sik, ‘A Brief History of the US–Korea Relations Prior to 1945', Paper presented at the University of Oregon, 15 May 2013.

17. For a detailed history of South Korea's involvement in the Vietnam War, see Jiyul Kim, US and Korea in Vietnam and the Japan–Korea Treaty: Search for Security, Prosperity and Influence, MA thesis, Harvard University, 1991 (Defense Technical Information Service AD-A237 979).

18. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter (eds), Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

19. For discussion of specific betrayals, see Jiyul Kim, ‘Pan-Korean Nationalism, Anti-Great Powerism and US–South Korean Relations’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 13 December 2005, www.japanfocus.org/-jiyul-kim/1679 (accessed 30 October 2013).

20. National Security Council, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002; Victor D. Cha, ‘Korea's Place in the Axis’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 3 (2002), pp. 79–92.

21. Joseph Coleman, ‘Seoul Paid N. Korea before Peace Summit’, Associated Press, 14 February 2003.

22. Kim Dang, ‘Kim Dae-jung Attacks US Neo-cons’, OhmyNews, 15 September 2006, http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=360217 (accessed 10 September 2013).

23. The Wikileaks Cablegate collection contains summaries of SPI meetings 11 (6 March 2007), 13 (19 June 2007) and 17 (28 April 2008).

24. ‘Agreement between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea for the Land Partnership Plan’, 29 March 2002 amended 26 October 2004; R. Slade Walters, ‘US Forces Korea Transformation Update’, 12 January 2010, http://www.army.mil/article/32794/ (accessed 16 September 2013).

25. For a good introduction to South Korean politics, see Soong Hoom Kil and Chung-in Moon (eds), Understanding Korean Politics: An Introduction (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).

26. Yong-duck Jung, Yoon-ho Lee, and Hyun-Jong Yoo, ‘The Institutionalization of the Presidential Secretariat in Korea, 1948–2011', The Korean Journal of Political Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2012), p. 89.

27. Jiyul Kim, ‘The Crisis of 1968–1972 and South Korea's Modernity: Crisis, Ideology, Mobilizations, and Diplomacy in South Korea's Quest for “National Restoration”’, Draft doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2009, pp. 19–24.

28. Choe Sang-Hun, ‘Ex-South Korea Leader Haunts Presidential Bid’, New York Times, 29 September 2012; Kang Hyun-kyung, ‘Park Chung-hee Admired for Making Something Out of Nothing’, Korea Times, 25 October 2009; Eugene Yi, ‘Why Late SKorean Dictator Park Chung-hee is the Most Popular President Ever’, KoreAm, March 2013.

29. For an account of this process, see Jinsok Jun, ‘South Korea: Consolidating Democratic Civilian Control’, in Muthiah Alagappa (ed.), Coercion and Governance: The Declining Political Role of the Military in Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 121–42.

30. Park Geun-hye, ‘A New Kind of Korea: Building Trust between Seoul and Pyongyang’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 5 (2011), at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68136/park-geun-hye/a-new-kind-of-korea (accessed 14 June 2014).

31. Defense White Paper 2012 (note 2), pp. 142–75.

32. Ibid., pp. 147–58.

33. Michael Raska, ‘Transforming South Korea's Defence Capabilities’, East Asia Forum, 28 May 2012, p. 1.

34. Defense White Paper 2012 (note 2), pp. 8–23. John Feffer, ‘Ploughshares into Swords: Economic Implications of South Korean Military Spending’, Korea Economic Institute, Academic Paper Series, Vol. 4, No. 2 (February 2009), p. 5.

35. The CIA's estimate of birth rate for 2013 at 1.24 is the lowest in the OECD. This is an improvement over 1.08 for 2005. The replacement birth rate is 2.1, at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html (accessed 8 June 2013).

36. Feffer, ‘Ploughshares into Swords’ (note 34), pp. 5–7.

37. ‘North Korea “restarts” nuclear reactor, UN says’, The Telegraph, 28 November 2013, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10480843/North-Korea-restarts-nuclear-reactor-UN-says.html (accessed 14 June 2014).

38. Donna Miles, ‘Sharp: Korea Plan Synchronizes Capabilities’, American Forces Press Service, 17 September 2010; USFK Strategic Digest 2010: The New Korea, US Forces Korea, October 2010, pp. 24–5.

39. Craig Whitlock, ‘Handover of US Command of South Korean Troops Still under Debate’, Washington Post, 29 September 2013, p. 1.

40. Shaun Tandon, ‘Strong US, S. Korea Support for Alliance: Polls’, Agence France-Press, 16 October 2012.

41. Max Fisher, ‘Anti-American Countries Can Become Pro-American. Here's How South Korea Did It’, Washington Post World Views, 7 May 2013, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07/anti-american-countries-can-become-pro-american-heres-how-south-korea-did-it/ (accessed 25 September 2013); ‘Opinion of the United States: South Korea’, Pew Research Center, 2002–2013, http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/country/116/ (accessed 25 September 2013); ‘South Koreans Remain Strongly Pro-American’, Pew Research Center, 6 May 2013, at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/05/06/south-koreans-remain-strongly-pro-american/ (accessed 25 September 2013).

42. The eight active missions are: UNMOGIP (India/Pakistan); UNMIL (Liberia); UNIFIL (Lebanon); UNAMID (Darfur); MINURSO (Western Sahara); UNOCI (Ivory Coast); MINUSTAH (Haiti); and UNMISS (South Sudan), at http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/factsheet.shtml (accessed 10 September 2013).

43. The Kaeso˘ng industrial zone was established in 2002 and hosts over 100 South Korean companies employing more than 50,000 North Koreans.

44. Timeline of events from the New York Times, BBC, and CNN. The text of Park's speech can be found at http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Policies/view?articleId=106019 (accessed 1 September 2013); for Park's ‘new start’ comment reported by CNN, see ‘North, South Korea Agree to Reopen Kaesong Joint Industrial Zone’, 14 August 2013, at http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/14/world/asia/koreas-kaesong/ (accessed 1 September 2013).