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1. Biden Must Assist Japan and South Korea with the History Issue

Author:
Tom Le
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The Biden administration’s focus on allies and partners and the inability of democratic U.S. allies Japan and South Korea to move beyond historical pitfalls of apologies and treaties provides President Biden’s team the perfect opportunity to show leadership by taking on a mediator role. By taking an active role, the United States can demonstrate that it is not a passive observer to would-be revisionists in the region, shore up its alliances, and signal to the world that the United States is still the leader in the promotion of human rights. Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945 was brutal. The Japanese military coerced between 10,000 and 200,000 women into sexual slavery and many more Koreans were forced to work in the Japanese war machine, the very one that annexed Korea in 1910. Following the abrupt end of Japanese colonization after World War II, brought about by the only direct use of nuclear bombs on a human population in history, Japan quickly signed treaties and paid reparations to former colonies, recovered its economy, and successfully rehabilitated its image with much of the world. However, it was not until 1965 that Japan-South Korea relations were “normalized.” The new Japan-South Korea relationship included abandoning reconciliation with North Korea altogether, and Tokyo providing grants to an authoritarian South Korean leader who was later assassinated and remains a divisive figure in contemporary Korean domestic politics.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Human Rights, History, Alliance, and Joe Biden
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, South Korea, and United States of America

2. North Korea in Africa: Historical Solidarity, China’s Role, and Sanctions Evasion

Author:
Benjamin R. Young
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
North Korea serves as a mutually beneficial partner for many African governments. Although these ties are often viewed solely through the lens of economic and security interests, this report shows Pyongyang's deep historical connections and ideological linkages with several of the continent’s nations. North Korea–Africa relations are also bolstered by China, which has been complicit in North Korea’s arms and ivory trade, activities providing funds that likely support the Kim regime’s nuclear ambitions and allow it to withstand international sanctions.
Topic:
History, Governance, Sanctions, Democracy, and Solidarity
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Asia, and North Korea

3. Domein Verklaring: Colonial Legal Legacies and Community Access to Land in Indonesia

Author:
Jeffrey Neilson
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
In 1870, the Dutch colonial government established the principle of domein verklaring (free state domain) in its East Indies colony when it enacted agrarian laws to promote private investment. The now-independent Indonesian nation is still trying to resolve the principle’s implications for community access to land, which threaten the long-term sustainability of livelihoods across the country. Further legal recognition of pre-existing customary rights over land is required to prevent exacerbating the marginalization of rural community interests.
Topic:
Agriculture, Civil Society, History, Law, Colonialism, and Land
Political Geography:
Indonesia, Asia, and Southeast Asia

4. Hong Kong’s Escalating Protests: Three Questions

Author:
John J. Chin
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
Hong Kong, once renowned as an apolitical and orderly British entrepôt, is now seething with political discontent, student unrest, and pro-democracy protests. Nothing less than the future of “one country, two systems”—the framework through which China agreed to maintain Hong Kong’s autonomy for fifty years in exchange for British agreement to restore Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997 after more than a century of British administration—is at stake.
Topic:
Government, History, Social Movement, Law, Democracy, and Protests
Political Geography:
Asia and Hong Kong

5. Improving the Role of Intelligence in Counterproliferation Policymaking: Report of the "Speaking Truth to Nonproliferation Project," 2018

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
This report is the culmination of a two-year project sponsored by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, which engaged more than 50 senior, retired and serving policymakers, intelligence officers, and top academic national security analysts. Its findings are based on hours of group discussions and private conversations that helped develop new primary histories of eight nuclear proliferation cases: India, Pakistan, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Libya, and an Argentine and a separate South African nuclear rocket case. Each history was prepared by an academic historian and was based on open sources. Former officials who had direct roles in these cases then critiqued these accounts. Additional private interviews were conducted with participants to fill in historical gaps. The purpose of the case studies was to identify when and how intelligence shaped or prompted nonproliferation policy actions and, if it did not, why. This set of historical conclusions prompted a more general discussion of how policy and intelligence officials might improve their collaboration to prevent and curb further nuclear proliferation and how academics might contribute by enhancing their treatment of such issues. The project addressed three broad, related questions: How can the role of intelligencein the making of nonproliferation policy be improved? How can the nonproliferation agenda get the priority it deserves? How can the nonproliferation community be sustained and strengthened?
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Intelligence, Nuclear Weapons, History, Nuclear Power, and Nonproliferation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Africa, South Asia, Middle East, India, Israel, Taiwan, Asia, South Korea, Libya, South Africa, Argentina, South America, and North Africa

6. Regime Resilience and Civil Resistance in Post-Tiananmen China

Author:
Yang Jianli and Han Lianchao
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
In the 1980s, conflicting patterns of economic liberalization and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dogmatic insistence on unchallenged social control led to a widespread protest movement across the People’s Republic of China (PRC, China). Tensions reached an apex on June 4, 1989 in what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In memory of the 30 year anniversary of the Party’s brutal and lethal suppression of their own people, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the CCP’s post-Tiananmen survival strategy and the enduring tradition of civil resistance in the PRC. Though CCP methods of quelling civil dissent have strengthened in the decades following Tiananmen, the authors identify various indicators of growing discord in the PRC. In evaluating the perseverance of civil resistance in China, the authors conclude that the ongoing struggle against the authoritarian Party apparatus is far from over.
Topic:
Political Violence, History, Authoritarianism, State Violence, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

7. Rethinking Taiwan policy: History, politics, ideology

Author:
Mark Harrison
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The issue of Taiwan has long been one of the most intractable and multilayered in regional political, defence, foreign affairs, trade and security policy. Taiwan is claimed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as part of its territory, and, under its official title of the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan is limited by Beijing to a marginal position in the international system. Political relations between Taipei and Beijing are fractious, but the Taiwan Strait is at the same time a critical link in global supply chains, carrying hundreds of billions of dollars of cross-strait trade in goods and services and investments every year. Hanging over this political and economic relationship is the constant threat of military action from Beijing. Taiwan policy in Australia and internationally is structured around the ‘resolution’ of the Taiwan issue, either through a negotiated settlement or through large-scale military action by the PRC. Australia should reassess its understanding of the Taiwan issue so as to identify alternative scenarios and calibrate its responses accordingly.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Territorial Disputes, History, and Ideology
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

8. Transitional Justice in Taiwan: A Belated Reckoning with the White Terror

Author:
Thomas J. Shattuck
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
From 1949 to the end of the Cold War era, the Kuomintang (KMT)—under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo—ruled the Republic of China (Taiwan) under martial law. The martial law decree gave the government immense power to quash any perceived forms of dissent in society. As a result, the KMT imprisoned, tortured, and executed thousands of people over the course of several decades. Now, President Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party are investigating the atrocities committed during this era. With the establishment of the Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and the Transitional Justice Commission, the Tsai government hopes to bring historical truth and justice to Taiwan’s society and hold the KMT accountable for its actions during the authoritarian period. Despite good intentions, the progress has been slow due to legal delays, a controversy regarding malintent, and the population’s ambivalence. Nevertheless, Taiwan must deal with its history in order to move forward as a democracy.
Topic:
History, Authoritarianism, Transitional Justice, and Repression
Political Geography:
Taiwan and Asia

9. Le récit de vie d’une génération : la trajectoire de Chinois nés avec la Chine socialiste (The life story of a Generation : Chinese born under socialist China)

Author:
Jean-Louis Rocca
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
One of the most striking phenomena of China’s recent history is the singular life trajectory of the generation born in large metropolises between the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s. After having endured with full force their country’s upheavals and ruptures after 1949, the people of this generation occupy dominant positions in most sectors of social life today. Yet despite its importance, the history of this generation—who contributed to build what China is today—has not triggered much academic research. The seven life stories presented in this study provide information and a testimony that help understand how these people elaborate a discourse on their personal experience. Analysing this discourse makes it possible to grasp the connections between individual life paths and events as well as social determinations.
Topic:
Democratization, History, Political structure, Political Science, and Memory
Political Geography:
China and Asia

10. The Rise of Petroyuan

Author:
Dan Steinbock
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
In the late 20th century, U.S. petrodollar dominated the world economy. In the 21st century, we are witnessing the rise of the Chinese petroyuan. This ascent could speed up the erosion of the dollar’s dominance after a century of power. The U.S. dollar still accounts for 39% of international payments – more than the euro (33%), English pound (7%), Japanese yen (3%) and Chinese yuan (28%) – but times are changing.
Topic:
Oil, History, Natural Resources, Economy, and Currency
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

11. Chinese Views of Korean History in the Cold War Era

Author:
Jin Linbo
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
This chapter draws a rough sketch of the evolution of Chinese views on Korean history in the Cold War era in three parts. The first focuses on the formulation of Chinese views of the Korean War in 1950 and the mainstream assessment of the war after Sino-South Korean diplomatic normalization in 1992. The second focuses on China’s attitudes and policies toward the two Koreas in the Cold War years. The third deals with the changes and limits of perceptions on Korean history after diplomatic normalization and their impact on bilateral relations between Beijing and Seoul. For centuries many Chinese have firmly believed that the relationship between China and the Korean Peninsula is like that between lips and teeth, they are not only close to but also dependent upon each other. If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold. From the middle of nineteenth century, the geopolitical proximity and interdependence between the two have become the determining factors in formulating Chinese perceptions towards Korea. Since then the national security concerns symbolized by the sense of lips and teeth had been frequently stressed by some Chinese intellectuals and officials when both China and Korea were exposed to the growing imperialist expansion and geopolitical competition in East Asia. In order to maintain the traditional tributary relationship between China and Korea, China fought the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95. Although it was miserably defeated, and Korea was consequently annexed to the Japanese empire in 1910, the Chinese sense of lips and teeth remained undiminished. Rather, it was further strengthened among ordinary Chinese when the Cold War began and especially when the Korean War broke out in 1950. After the end of World War II, China faced a new situation on the peninsula. Korea was liberated from Japanese rule but soon divided into the Soviet backed socialist North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and the U.S. backed capitalist South Korea, the Republic of Korea (ROK). As a newly established socialist country, China naturally allied itself with the Soviet Union and viewed the DPRK as a close friend while regarding the United States and ROK as hated foes. The intensified Cold War confrontation between the two camps and two Koreas triggered the outbreak of the Korean War. In order to safeguard its own political, ideological, and security interests, China quickly got involved in the war by sending the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (CPVA) to fight together with its DPRK friend against their common enemies. The war ended with a cease-fire armistice and created a friend and foe Cold War framework, which the new China was compelled to face even beyond the Cold War era. Under these circumstances, the majority of Chinese held the view that it was the capitalist enemy rather than the socialist friend who started the Korean War with a view to overthrowing not only the socialist government in Pyongyang but also the similar one in Beijing. Therefore, it was against this background that China’s attitudes and policies toward the two Koreas in the post-Korean War era were doomed to be ideologydriven and DPRK sympathetic.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, History, and Korean War
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

12. Chinese Views of Korean History in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Author:
Kirk W. Larsen
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
In July 2014, Ambassador Qiu Guohong in preparation for Xi Jinping’s visit to Seoul stated that the “relationship between South Korea and China couldn’t be any better.”1 Among the many reasons for this—economic, geostrategic, cultural—was a shared sense of history. China and Korea, officials and commentators in both nations claimed, were close because of their agreement regarding the significance of their experiences as victims of foreign, particularly Japanese, imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. History, that constellation of memories, stories, and notions about the past, has often been deployed to reinforce conceptions of identity, to support certain courses of action, and to demarcate between the in-group and the other. But history is ever malleable and protean. Not only do individuals, institutions, and ideas change but so does the understanding of them. When one draws on the past, one inevitably focuses on a limited set of events or narratives that best serve one’s interests—to the exclusion of potentially equally valid candidates. Their utility can vary over time; one need only think of how figures such as Zheng He or Confucius have been imagined and re-imagined over the last century. This has been the case with the history of relations between China and Korea from the latenineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. For many Chinese, Korea has served first as a subject of contestation as China’s position in Korea was challenged by both Western and Japanese powers. Then, when it became increasingly clear that China (or the Qing Empire) was losing this contest, Korea became an omen of China’s own fate absent significant course changes. As Japan’s growing empire engulfed Korea and subsequently threatened parts of China, resistance served to bring China and Korea closer; many in China celebrated what they saw as courageous resistance to Japan—such as when An Chunggun assassinated Ito Hirobumi in 1909. Shared status as victims of Japanese imperialism in an age of “humiliation” brought the two closer, and the mutually shared memory of “humiliation” has been deployed by contemporary Chinese and South Korean leaders—Xi Jinping and Park Geun-hye—to foster greater levels of cooperation. However, past conceptions of China, Korea, and the Sino-Korean relationship have sometimes ranged far afield from the cherished tropes of humiliation and the struggle for independence. Even seemingly universally agreed upon symbols, such as An’s heroic 1909 assassination, find themselves subject to changing interpretations such as recent emphasis by some on his pan-Asian vision of Sino-Korean-Japanese cooperation rather than his bold anti-Japanese act. As interests and priorities change, so does the utility of any particular historical narrative.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, Imperialism, and History
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

13. The Candlelight Mandate & Moon Jae-in’s Inter-Korean Dilemma

Author:
John Delury
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
The question of the proper relationship between domestic sentiment and foreign policy is a vexed one. Historically, statesmen and strategists have tended to distrust or disparage the role of the demos in the elite enterprise of foreign affairs. In the immortal words of the then vice president Richard Nixon: “If we indulge in the kind of thinking which assumes that foreign policy decisions should be made on the basis of public opinion polls we might as well decide now to surrender our position of world leadership to the communists.” Yet from even the most condescending foreign policy establishment perch, it is hard to dispute the significance of securing public support for key foreign policy moves. Nixon as president was fully aware of this, carefully stage-managing his most dramatic maneuver, the visit to China in February 1972, in a way that would maximize support back home. And of course, Nixon’s loss of public trust over the Watergate scandal brought about the abrupt end of his influence on everything, including foreign affairs. Nixon’s impeachment, after years of public opposition to the war in Vietnam, strengthened the view in the United States that unsupervised elites were in fact the worst possible stewards of the instruments of national power, and that popular, democratic checks were critical ingredients in wise and prudent foreign policy. Once the public is accorded a decisive role in foreign affairs deliberation, we have to grapple with the problem of determining what “the public” thinks in the first place. Who represents “the public”? How can we assert “it” thinks one way or another? What do we mean by expressions such as “the public seems to have changed its mind”? French theorist Pierre Bourdieu, for example, challenged the validity of statistical representations of “public opinion” based on polling data. Bourdieu argues that public opinion so constructed is an “artefact” of the pollsters, rather than a reflection of an actual thing in the world. Polling data creates a false sense of certainty about public preferences—the illusion of a static and knowable thing, “the public,” where one does not exist. Despite the epistemological limitations and political biases embedded in the art of polling, public sentiment must be brought into the equation of foreign policy analysis. Particularly in a South Korean context, given the highly participatory nature of political culture, it would be foolish to adopt an elitist premise that the public factor can be ignored. South Korean president Moon Jae-in, for one, emphasizes the critical importance of democratic legitimacy and public input in all aspects of governance, including foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Governance, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

14. The Peripheral Protagonist: The Curious Case of the Missing Trans-Himalayan Trader

Author:
Nimmi Kurian
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
It is intriguing that despite a liberal economic narrative of borders as bridges, the transHimalayan trader has remained a rather forlorn and forgotten metaphor. This absence has however neither been voluntary nor anticipated but instead can be traced to fundamental flaws in India’s subregional discourse with its bias toward state-led formal institution building. Far from being marginal, the trans-Himalayan trader was in fact the central protagonist, as can be seen from a reading of the social and economic history of India’s borderlands. While this is not an attempt to read back into history a larger-than-life role for the border actor, it is a cue for India’s subregional discourse to imaginatively re-engage with the expertise and rich form of social capital that the transborder trader represents.
Topic:
Economics, History, Borders, and Trade
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, Asia, and Himalayas

15. Land Acquisition in India: A Review of Supreme Court Cases (1950-2016)

Author:
Namita Wahi, Ankit Bhatia, Pallav Shukla, Dhruva Gandhi, Shubham Jain, and Upasana Chauhan
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Context: India faces serious challenges in creating development processes that generate economic growth while being socially inclusive, ecologically sustainable, politically feasible, and in accordance with the Rule of Law. Equitable and efficient acquisition of land by the state for economic development projects, including infrastructure and industry, lies at the heart of these challenges. Simultaneously, securing constitutionally guaranteed land rights to the poorest and most vulnerable communities in India against the state and other dominant communities, has been considered crucial to their economic and social empowerment. Land is not only an important economic resource and source of livelihoods, it is also central to community identity, history and culture. Unsurprisingly then, throughout India, dispute over state acquisition of land that deprives people of their land rights spans various dimensions of economic, social, and political life. How do we mitigate this conflict? The CPR Land Rights Initiative report on ‘Land Acquisition in India: A Review of Supreme Court cases from 1950-2016’, offers some preliminary answers to this question. Not only is this report the first comprehensive country-wide study of land acquisition disputes since India's independence, but also for the first time ever analyses these disputes along various metrics, such as i) public purpose, ii) procedure for acquisition, iii) compensation, iv) invocation of the urgency clause, v) pendency of claims, and vi) tracks trends with respect to distribution of disputes across geography and time, and central and state laws. The Report also analyses litigation under the newly enacted Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR Act) for the three year period, 2014 to 2016. A detailed presentation of the findings from the report can be accessed here. Key findings: Reasons for inequity between state and land losers: The Report concludes that the political and social contestation over land acquisition stems from the inherently coercive nature of the land acquisition process, which creates a severe imbalance of power between the state and land losers. While much of this imbalance was created by the text of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, a considerable part of it could also be attributed to executive non-compliance with the rule of law. The result is a situation of great inequity for the land losers. Legal reform under the LARR Act should be implemented by government, not subverted to redress these inequities: The Report finds that specific provisions of the LARR Act are steps in the right direction to redress the imbalance of power that was built into the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 in so far as: i) they empower livelihood losers along with title-holders to bring claims for compensation and rehabilitation, ii) bring compensation requirements in accordance with existing reality, and iii) introduce requirements of consent and social impact assessment. The Report shows that litigation helps channelise political contestation of state action into legal as opposed to extra legal disputes. Therefore, by empowering hitherto disempowered land losers to bring claims under the LARR Act, the Act will help preempt extra-legal conflict. Since conflict inevitably stalls or derails legitimate development projects, it is in the interest of the government to comply with, and not subvert the LARR Act. Legal reforms must be supplemented by administrative and bureaucratic reforms: The Report highlights that legal reform is a necessary but not a sufficient precondition for ensuring greater equity and efficiency within the land acquisition process. In the absence of administrative and bureaucratic reforms, the introduction of the LARR Act will not succeed in eliminating inequities and inefficiencies embedded within the implementation of existing land acquisition procedures. In fact, the increase in procedural requirements under the LARR Act implies an even greater need for securing executive compliance with the rule of law, in order to translate the equities intended by these additional procedures into reality for land losers. Types of administrative reforms required: Such administrative reforms include building of state capacity to meaningfully comply with the increased procedural requirements stipulated by the LARR Act, and designing institutional structures that incentivise such compliance with the rule of law. This, in turn, requires a serious mind-set shift within the government toward accepting the reform enshrined in the LARR Act, and not subverting it as we have seen in both the LARR Ordinance, and the state amendments to the LARR Act, as also the rules adopted to implement the LARR Act in the states.
Topic:
History, Reform, Economic Growth, Land Law, Courts, Supreme Court, Rule of Law, and Land Rights
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

16. Korea's Economic Relations with Japan

Author:
Kim Gyu-Pan
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
Korea's economic relations with Japan, which were re-established as a result of the diplomatic normalization between the two countries in 1965, have transformed from dependent to interdependent. The extraordinary economic growth that Korea accomplished during the post-war period was largely due to intermediate goods imported from Japan, and technical cooperation and joint ventures with Japanese enterprises. However, in the 21st century, the dependence of Korean firms on Japanese technology has somewhat declined as global enterprises have appeared in Korea. In contrast to the post-war economic boom, Japanese companies now prefer to cooperate with their Korean counterparts, resulting in joint business ventures between Korean and Japanese firms being continuously developed. This reversal in the economic ties between Korea and Japan can be attributed to several reasons including: the rise of China; Japan's two lost decades; and Korea's push for domestic structural reform as well as economic globalization after the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997. Nonetheless, the issue of Korea's trade imbalance with Japan, which was established during the post-war period, still remains thereby serving as a serious impediment to FTA negotiations between Korea and Japan as well as Korea's TPP negotiations.
Topic:
Economics, History, Bilateral Relations, and Trade
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, South Korea, and Korea

17. Present Conditions of North Korean Industry and Possible Reconstruction Plans

Author:
Lim Soo-ho and Hong Seok-ki
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
Since the collapse of industry during the 'Arduous March' (1995-1997), Pyongyang has continuously launched reconstruction plans but has failed to see a rebound. The key is to restore industrial linkages; however, the DPRK allocated a majority of state investment to the defense industry under the 'Military First Economic Policy.' As long as the 'strategic sector' retains priority, a sound outcome seems to be out of reach. In reality, North Korea's comparative advantage lies on labor-intensive business, with abundant labor forces at a low cost. After unification, such industries will have bright prospects with technology and capital not only from South Korea, but also from China and Japan. The economic integration scenario of the two Koreas -- whether radical or gradual -- will decide industrial policies for the upper half of the peninsula in the post-unification era.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, History, Reconstruction, and Industry
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

18. History, International Relations, and Public Health - The Case of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea 1953-2015

Author:
John Grundy
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
The historical legacy of North Korea is characterized by occupation and conflict, and economic rehabilitation and then collapse, with tragic and widespread consequences for population health. From the standpoint of the historical determinants of health, this paper reviews the health system in North Korea between 1953 and 2016. Ideology and political relations have been dominant forces in determining the evolution of the health care system and population health. Despite the development of an extensive primary health care system in the country from the early 1960s following the establishment of the DPRK state in 1948, the public health system experienced a major decline in the 1990s, with catastrophic implications for the health and survival of the population. In recent years, evidence has emerged of some important public health gains, particularly through immunization, women's and children's health, and communicable disease control initiatives. This experience demonstrates that, within the overall policy context dominated by the historical and political determinants of health, there remains the capacity for implementation of public health programs that can yield both tangible health benefits for the population in North Korea, as well as assist the health system to edge closer to a regional standard.
Topic:
International Relations, History, Ideology, and Public Health
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

19. Guerre, reconstruction de l’Etat et invention de la tradition en Afghanistan (War, Reconstruction of the State and Invention of Tradition in Afghanistan)

Author:
Fariba Adelkhah
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
War since 1979 and the reconstruction of the state under Western tutelage since 2001 have led to a simplification of the identity of Afghan society, through an invention of ethnicity and tradition – a process behind which the control or the ownership of the political and economic resources of the country are at stake. Hazarajat is a remarkable observation site of this process. Its forced integration into the nascent Afghan state during the late nineteenth century has left a mark on its history. The people of Hazara, mainly Shi’ite, has been relegated to a subordinate position from which it got out of progressively, only by means of jihad against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the US intervention in 2001, at the ost of an ethnicization of its social and political consciousness. Ethnicity, however, is based on a less communitarian than unequal moral and political economy. Post-war aid to state-building has polarized social relations, while strengthening their ethnicization: donors and NGOs remain prisoners of a cultural, if not orientalist approach to the country that they thereby contribute to “traditionalize”, while development aid destabilizes the “traditional” society by accelerating its monetization and commodification.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil Society, Religion, War, History, Sociology, Peacekeeping, Identities, State, and Anthropology
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Central Asia, Asia, and United States of America

20. Le désordre ordonné : la fabrique violente de Karachi (Pakistan) (Ordered Disorder : the Violent Fabric of Karachi)

Author:
Laurent Gayer
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
With a population exceeding twenty million, Karachi is already one of the largest cities in the world. It could even become the world’s largest city by 2030. Karachi is also the most violent of these megacities. Since the mid-1980s, it has endured endemic political conflict and criminal violence, which revolve around control of the city and its resources. These struggles for the city have become ethnicised. Karachi, often referred to as a “Pakistan in miniature”, has become increasingly fragmented, socially as well as territorially. Notwithstanding this chronic state of urban political warfare, Karachi is the cornerstone of the economy of Pakistan. Despite what journalistic accounts describing the city as chaotic and anarchic tend to suggest, there is indeed order of a kind in the city’s permanent civil war. Far from being entropic, Karachi’s polity is predicated upon relatively stable patterns of domination, rituals of interaction and forms of arbitration, which have made violence “manageable” for its populations – even if this does not exclude a chronic state of fear, which results from the continuous transformation of violence in the course of its updating. Whether such “ordered disorder” is viable in the long term remains to be seen, but for now Karachi works despite—and sometimes through—violence.
Topic:
History, Sociology, Urbanization, Conflict, and Political Science
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, Asia, and Karachi

21. Mutations sociales et identitaires en Azerbaïdjan : les évolutions du rituel de deuil

Author:
Raphaelle Mathey
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Anthropological studies demonstrate that personal values, social relationships and indicators of cultural identity are expressed in a symbolic manner in funeral rites. In Azerbaijan such rites can include as many as ten commemorative events (yas) in the year following the death. These are critically important events in which allegiances are made and broken. During the period of political chaos and economic recession which followed independence, from 1991 to 1996, the yas served as an incubator for a local identity movement. Political stability, beginning in 1996, and the advent of the petroleum era, in the 2000s, transformed the country’s face, reordered the relationships between individuals, and today raise the issue of creating a State and developing a national political project. The study of funeral rites enables one to measure the magnitude of these changes. The evolution of yas reveals new needs of a society in turmoil and reflects the fundamental examination Azerbaijanis are undertaking of themselves, their religion, their European and Oriental identity and their relationship to modernity.
Topic:
Economics, Religion, History, Culture, Identities, and Anthropology
Political Geography:
Central Asia, Asia, and Azerbaijan