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IPE-K: Soft Power of Korea

* Some parts of this note are summary of the references for teaching purpose only.

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IPE-K <Lecture Note 6 > 13.5.10

Semester: Spring 2013 Time: Friday 2-5 pm Professor: Yoo Soo Hong Office Hour: By Appointment Mobile: 010-4001-8060 E-mail: yshong123@gmail.com Home P.: http://yoosoohong.weebly.com

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National Power

Foundation of National Diplomacy• Essential element of diplomacy in a system based on state sovereignty• Power is the ability of actor A to get actor B to perform A’s wishes.• Politics is based on power.

The Nature of Power National capabilities plus attributes Multifaceted: Tangible and intangible elements Power as money: A ‘political currenc’y, sometimes used in a charitable

way, most often used to further self-interest

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Power in International Relations

Hard Power• Coerce with political, economic

or military power.• (Realism: force, military

capability)

Soft Power• Ability to get what you want

though attraction and not coercion (Nye, 2004).

• (Liberalism: education, art, sports, values)

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Hard and Soft Power Hard Power Ability to make someone else do something, or suffer the consequences Rests on negative incentives (“sticks”) and positive

Soft Power Ability to persuade others to follow your lead by being an attractive example Iraq may have damaged U.S. soft power Realists dismiss soft power

Measuring Power − Difficulties in creating a formula for what counts toward national power: Weighing military power might versus economic capacity and leader-ship capability versus national infrastructure, and easy to identify criteria but hard to weight − Difficulties in quantifying some aspects of power: e.g. leadership or perceptions (and misperceptions of power)

– (“carrots”)

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Characteristics and Diplomatic Application of Power

Characteristics of Power (Measurement is difficult) Dynamic, constantly in flux: Coercive power, and persuasive power Both objective and subjective Relative: In comparison to whom?: Zero-sum game Situational: Power that can realistically be brought to bear varies depending on the situation Multidimensional: Need to consider all facets and context

The Nature of Diplomacy: Diplomacy as Applied Power − Direct diplomatic application of power Includes the use or threat of economic sanctions and the threat of military force − Indirect diplomatic application of power Involves a communications process of a country skillfully advancing its policy preferences, arguing the merits of its position, and persuading others to join it in promoting those goals or at least to accede to them 6

Definition of Soft Power

• Soft power is an ability to attract others; such an attraction serves to persuade others to accept one’s purposes without explicit threat or violent exchange (Nye, 2004)

• Three ways to transform soft power resources into soft power effectiveness.

• Ability to shape the preferences of other • Ability to legitimate one’s values, cultures and policies • Capacity to construct rules and norms which limit other’s activities

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Tools of Soft Power: Public Diplomacy v. Cultural Diplomacy

Public Diplomacy

• Government sponsored programs intended to inform or influence public opinion in other countries: its chief instruments are publications, motion pictures, cultural exchanges radio and TV. (One way communication)

• Sponsored by the government • Embassies and diplomats

play a major role

Cultural Diplomacy• Cultural diplomacy establishes a two-

way communication with other countries.

• Primary focus is not merely political but also cultural (athletic, education, art)

• The actor can take on his/her own agenda independently of the government.

• More high culture and education focused (less popular culture, publications, radio or TV)

• Can be sponsored by the government but also by private institutions or NGO.

• Embassies play a major role but not the only role

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Soft Power Index

Business/Innovation: • International Patents; Business Competitiveness. Corruption. Level of

Corruption: Transparenc.y International Corruption Perception Index, Innovation

Education: • Think Tank Presence, Quality of Universities, Foreign StudentsGovernment: • UN HDI Score Index, Good Governance Index, Freedom Score Index of

Political Freedom and Personal Liberty, Trust in Government, Life SatisfactionCulture: • Tourism, Reach of State Sponsored Media Outlet, Foreign Correspondents,

Language, Influential Languages, Sporting Success Diplomacy: • Foreign Aid Overseas, Languages Spoken by Leader, Visa Freedom, Strength

of National Brand, Number of Cultural Missions

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Geun Lee’s Theory of Soft Power

Different Categories of Soft Power 1. Soft power to improve external security environment by projecting peaceful and attractive images of a countries

2. Soft power to mobilize other countries’ supports for one’s foreign and security policies

3. Soft power to manipulate other countries’ way of thinking and preferences

4. Soft power to maintain unity of a community or community of countries

5. Soft power to increase approval, ratings of a leader or domestic support of a government

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1st Category − Examples of the first category of soft power are China’s recent emphasis on “peaceful rising or development” and “harmonious world,” and Japan’s post-War efforts to project peaceful image of itself through the Peace Constitution, 3 Non-nuclear Principles, self-restraint of Self Defense Forces, and 1% of GDP limit on defense spending. The soft power strategy of this category contains combination of “soft resources” such as national slogans, policy proposals, and public diplomacies to minimize threatening images while projecting a peace-loving image of a country when a country is either the international society as a new or transformed member, or is rapidly rising in terms of its hard power.

− An example of a failure of soft power policy in this category is North Korea’s slogan of “strong and big nation (Kangseong Daekuk).” As the slogan conveys an intimidating image towards outside world, such a slogan accelerates the isolation of North Korea from the international society.

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2nd Category − The second category of soft power is necessary for an effective leadership in mobilizing collective actions among countries. Unless an action by a leading country is justified by reasonable rationales or causes, the leading country cannot form an effective coalition of countries for collective actions.

3rd Category − The third category of soft power aims at more direct consequence of changing preferences and behaviors of others by using ideational resources. Examples of the third category are spreading theories, concepts, or discourses to other countries so that they adopt specific ways of thinking. “Washington Consensus” “Neoliberalism” “Globalization” discourses are some of the examples of the theories and discourses developed and spread by Anglo-American powers. Japan also had similar soft power in the past when it developed and spread.

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4th Category − Maintaining a large size of political economic entities such as an empire, a nation, or a community demands soft power at the center of the entities because coercive, violent suppression of defectors are too costly and too short-term. Natural identification or loyalty by the members of such entities pertains to this area of soft power.

− Examples of the fourth category are an empire’s efforts to maintain its unity over a vast imperial territory through imperial museum, imperial rituals, common languages, invention of traditions, and common life styles. The EU’s efforts to establish common European Constitution and other institutions, and symbols are a similar example.

5th Category − Examples of the fifth category are crating national heroes, invoking patriotism by international sports competition, or showing a leader’s outstanding performances in international summits or conferences so as to increase domestic popularity of a leader or a government. In most cases, the fifth category of soft power is geared toward domestic audience rather than international audience. However, without international dimension, this 5th category of soft power cannot exist either.

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Celebrities and the entertainment business

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The Korean Wave

• Korean wave stars have become very important soft resources of Korea, and are expected to play a more active, though subtle, political roles representing Korea’s as well as regional and universal interests.

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Potential and Actual Soft Power of Korea

Korea’s Soft Power Potential − In order for Korea to have soft power, at least some soft resources should be secured. • Korea’s experiences of successful modernization and democratization within a very short period of time. • The so-called ‘Korean Waves’ in many parts of East Asia. Korea’s well known human resources can also have the potential to be Korea’s usable soft resource.

Trade and Economic Goal s and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy − One of the goals of Korea’s foreign economic polities is to expand in-

ternational markers for Korea’s exports, induce more FDIs toward Ko-rea, and attract more tourists to Korea. When storing industrial policies of the past are banned in the WTO regime, there are not many things a government can do to promote exports as well as strategic industries.

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− Demands for indirect ways of creating markets for Korean goods will increase and the indirect ways of creating markets will be supplied partly through soft power strategies.

− Korea’s soft resource of experiences in successful modernization and democra-tization attracts the attention of many of the developing countries, and they ask for expert advices on how to develop their economics and political systems.

− Korean consulting teams can develop a systematic and consistent strategies to

link Korea’s economy with the economies that they are advising, and with the in-fluence that they have over the minds of the leaders of the inviting countries.

− Korea can also take advantage of the Korean Waves in the target countries in East Asia. In the countries where the Korean Waves are widely welcomed, the Korean government may try to spread Korean ways of living so that the con-sumers of the target countries can habitually consume Korean culture, good, an services. This can be done by the influence of Korean celebrities or deliberate efforts of the government to spread Korean standards, culture, and brands.

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− Japan seems to have been extremely good at this kind of soft power strategy in terms of creating Japan’s animation markets, game soft markets, and other cultural markets, though it is not certain how much the Japanese government has been involved in creating these markets.

− The importance of this strategy is that when network effect is to be es-tablished by exporting standards and habits, the source country can have long-term influence over the target countries, implying long lasting market shares for the source country companies.

Political and Security Goals and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy − Although Korea may not assume the role of global leadership by mobi-

lizing international supports for collective actions, Korea can play the role of regional leadership or co-leadership in issues like North Korean nuclear crisis and the 6 party talks or building multilateral security frameworks in Northeast Asia.

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− The Korean wave indeed improved the security environments of many of foreign Korean residents as the images of Korea and Koreans are being recreated as charming, warm, and advanced.

− Korean wave stars have become very important soft resources of Ko-rea, and are expected to play a more active, though subtle, political roles representing Korea’s as well as regional and universal interests.

Korea’s Higher Education − Nye argues that higher education is perceived as one of the critical

sources of soft power.

− South Korea has also been striving for attracting more foreign students in recent years. According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Korea sets a goal to increase the number of foreign stu-dents up to 100,000 by 2012.

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− In order to improve the universities’ quality and competitiveness, the Korean government allocated USD 600 million over 5 years as part of ‘World Class University’ Project designed to assist Korean universities to develop research capacities. Within the framework of the ‘Brain Ko-rea-21’ project supported by the Korean government, 81 faculty mem-bers including 9 Nobel laureates will work in South Korea over the next few years.

− New Songdo City’s Global University Campus invited 15 foreign univer-sities to open a branch campus with financial incentives.

− China has emerged as Asia’s top destination of international students by replacing Japan. Japan is no longer attractive in terms of higher educa-tion, which is one of the indices of soft power, in comparison with China, but it is more appealing than Korea.

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Soft Power Index Result 2010

• 1 France • 1 UK • 3 USA • 4 Germany • 5 Switzerland • 6 Sweden • 7 Denmark • 8 Australia • 9 Finland • 10 Netherlands • 11 Spain • 12 Canada • 13 Singapore

• 14 Norway • 15 Japan • 16 Italy • 17 China • 18 Israel • 19 Korea • 20 South Africa • 20 Brazil • 22 Mexico • 23 India • 24 UAE • 25 Turkey • 26 Russia

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References

Lee, Geun. 2009. “A Soft Power Approach to the “Korean Wave”. The Review of Korean Studies. Vol. 12. No. 2. pp.123-137.

Lee, Geun. 2012. “A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy”. (Google, PDF).

Nye, Joseph Jr. 2004. “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Poli-tics. Public Affairs: New York.

Nye, Joseph Jr. 2011. “The Future of Power” Public Affairs: New York.

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