This is a revised version of a paper presented at a talk examining the phenomenon of anti-Americanism in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Contrary to widespread perception, the author argues that anti-Americanism in South Korea has a deep-rooted history, the expression of which was suppressed during decades of authoritarian rule. Anti-Americanism in South Korea involves a sophisticated ideology, constituting a kind of belief system. Hakjoon Kim traces the history of such anti-Americanism from 1945 until the present.

The world economy is entering a period of instability unseen since the 1930s, with important consequences for international peace and security. Banking crises increase in frequency with global capital flows, and such flows have recently exceeded the previous peak attained in the early twentieth century.

Furthermore, the international financial system faces new, destabilizing challenges. The Japanese-style economic crisis has called into doubt the efficacy of conventional economic policy tools. In addition, the economic balance of power is shifting decisively away from the United States and toward broader East Asia. In the past, such power transitions have proved destabilizing to the world economy and international peace.

Existing international institutions and arrangements are ill-equipped to handle these monumental shifts, and international cooperation within the G-20 has thus far failed to produce effective solutions. This article by Phillip Lipscy considers innovative reforms.

At his inauguration, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak proclaimed that his country “must move from the age of ideology into the age of pragmatism.” At a time when South Korean voters were fatigued by outgoing President Roh’s particular brand of politics heavily steeped in ideology, Lee’s image as an effective, non-deological manager had proved appealing. Though during the campaign Lee had vowed to strengthen the alliance with the United States and to insist on greater conditionality in inter-Korean relations, these issues were not the headlines of the 2007 presidential contest—in sharp contrast to the previous one. In fact, they received little traction. Instead, economic issues had top billing and Lee won based on economic promises. In a sense, this zeitgeist represents a departure from the previous 10 years of Korean politics, when the reassessment of the South Korea’s relationships with North Korea and the United States were central and divisive issues.

Yet, it would be imprudent to declare the demise of identity politics in South Korea. As Suh asserts, the country has been “caught between two conflicting identities: the alliance identity that sees the United States as a friendly provider and the nationalist identity that pits Korean identity against the United States.” Sharp division and disputes over the North and the alliance will not disappear in the near future because, for Koreans, these issues are intimately related to the basic and contested question of national identity. In fact, as clearly displayed during his first visit to Washington in April 2008, Lee’s “pragmatic” policy is firmly grounded in the “alliance” identity and has already provoked strong reaction from progressive forces that have promoted the nationalist identity.

Using newly collected data from the South Korean media, this article examines differing South Korean views of the North from 1992 to 2003, the critical time of the post–Cold War era, during which traditional notions of national identity have been challenged. While significant attention has been paid to how diff ering U.S. and South Korean perceptions of the North led to strains in the alliance, less is known about how these issues have been discussed, debated, and contested within the South, as well as why this fractious national debate has been laden with such intensity and emotion. We need to understand how these debates were related to efforts to (re)conceptualize South Korean identity vis-à-vis two principal “significant others”—the North and the United States—and how identity politics will continue to shape alliance relations as well as inter-Korean relations.

In February 2008, an international conference was convened at Stanford University at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center to examine the role of high school history textbooks in the formation of historical memory regarding the events of the Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars and their outcome. “Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the War in Asia,” as the conference was titled, was a remarkable gathering of historians and textbook writers, along with other scholars, from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.

The conference marked the culmination of the first year of Shorenstein APARC’s three-year research project on the formation of historical memory. The project flows from the understanding that unresolved historical issues continue to bedevil present relations in the region. We have seen this most recently in a revived clash between South Korea and Japan over rival claims to a group of islets, an issue left unresolved by the peace treaty that concluded the war in Asia. The United States was drawn directly into this dispute when its geographical name bureau was perceived as offering support for Japan’s territorial claim.
Beyond governments, these disputes over past wrongs continue to occupy the pages of newspapers throughout the region, show up on the screens of movie houses and shape the curriculum of school children. The question of history taps into sensitive and deeply rooted issues of national identity. And rising nationalism feeds on the unresolved problems of the past, undermining the efforts of governments to restore damaged relations.

There is recognition of the need for reconciliation and the resolution of long-standing historical injustices. But the barrier to reconciliation lies, in the view of the scholars of Shorenstein APARC, in the existence of divided, and often conflicting, historical memories. Attempts to create common histories, both through the non-government efforts of historians and through official committees formed between Japan and China and between Japan and South Korea, have had limited success, at best. The Divided Memories project aims to further reconciliation through a comparative study of how the main actors in Northeast Asia—China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan—along with the United States, form their view of the past. Recognizing how each society selectively creates its own, divided memory can lead to mutual understanding.