• Strategy21
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• s.36
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• pp.5-32
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• 2015

Geopolitics or Political Geography is an essential academic field that should be studied carefully for a more comprehensive analysis of international security relations. However, because of its tarnished image as an ideology that supported the NAZI German expansion and aggression, geopolitics has not been regarded as a pure academic field and was rejected and expelled from the academic communities starting from the Cold War years in 1945. During the Cold War, ideology, rather than geography, was considered more important in conducting and analyzing international relations. However, after the end of the Cold War and with the beginning of a new era in which territorial and religious confrontations are taking place among nations - including sub national tribal political organizations such as the Al Quaeda and other terrorist organizations - geopolitical analysis again is in vogue among the scholars and analysts on international security affairs. Most of the conflicts in international relations that is occurring now in the post-Cold War years can be explained more effectively with geopolitical concepts. The post - Cold War international relations among East Asian countries are especially better explained with geopolitical concepts. Unlike Europe, where peaceful development took place after the Cold War, China, Japan, Korea, the United States, Taiwan and Vietnam are feeling more insecure in the post-Cold War years. Most of the East Asian nations' economies have burgeoned during the Cold War years under the protection of the international security structure provided by the two superpowers. However, after the Cold War years, the international security structure has not been stable in East Asia and thus most of the East Asian nations began to build up stronger military forces of their own. Because most of the East Asian nations' national security and economy depend on the oceans, these nations desire to obtain more powerful navies and try to occupy islands, islets, or even rocks that may seem like a strategic asset for their economy and security. In this regard, the western Pacific Ocean is becoming a place of confrontation among the East Asian nations. As Robert Kaplan, an eminent international analyst, mentioned, East Asia is a Seascape while Europe is a Landscape. The possibility of international conflict on the waters of East Asia is higher than in any other period in East Asia's international history.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.297-313
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• 2003

Problems caused by the U.S. military bases have attracted little attention until recently due to the national security of S.Korea and the peace of North-Eastern Asia, emphasized from the perspective of macro-geopolitics. However, since the political regime has been democratized and political discourses have been liberalized from the 1990s, those problems become a nation-widely serious social issue, though they have been brought about on the local areas. Thus, it can be suggested that micro-geopolitics is highly relevant and significant in approaching the local problems caused by the U.S. military bases, and ultimately resolving the macro-geopolitical problem of longstanding unfair relations in the SOFA and the withdrawal of U.S. troops. This paper aims to consider local problems caused by the U.S. military bases and resolving strategies from the perspective of micro-geopolitics. First of all, it discusses some significance of the micro-geopolitical perspective, as it has been recently emphasized in political geography in considering local problems and politics of life on the basis of place, then looks on empirically criminal and environmental problems caused by the U.S. military bases, analyses the questionnaire date on the perception of local dwellers around the military camps in Nam-gu Daegu, and finally suggests strategies to resolve those problems, which level up from the micro to the macro-scale of geopolitics.

• Strategy21
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• s.34
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• pp.26-57
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• 2014

Revolution of Shale gas literally brings about great changes in many spheres. In the past most academic research had been focused on the influence and innovative change in term of economic perspective. But nowadays we should more concern about the security approach and perspective as its status of the future's core energy resources. Revolution of Shale gas has an great influence on the reshaping of global and regional alliance order. There are many international political implications as follows. Contribution of energy hegemony with leading U.S.; Acting as strategic leverage on the reshaping international order; Deepening competition among major states on the construction of energy security and so on. We'd better make a good solution and systematic policies which are preparing for the Shale gas's revolution period including on the understanding about the change on the global energy structure and making a national policy agenda of energy security issues and so on. The thesis like 'to get the energy resources is to get the hegemonic power in the world' will persist. The same holds good of Shale gas case. To meet the revolution of shale gas era, we have important tasks as like making an opportunity to develope not only regional but also international prosperity.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.37-78
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• 2022

The U.S.-led international order, sustained by overwhelming national power since the end of the Cold War, is gradually being restructured from a unipolar international system to a bipolar international system or a multipolar international system, coupled with the weakening of U.S. global leadership and the rise of regional powers. Geopolitically, discussions have been constantly raised about the security instability that the reshaping of the international order will bring about, given that East Asia is a region where the national interests of the United States and regional powers sharply overlap and conflict. This study aims to critically analyze whether security discussions in Korea are based on appropriate crisis assessment and evaluation. This paper points out that the security crisis theory emerging in Korea tends to arise due to threat exaggeration and emphasizes the need for objective evaluation and conceptualization of the nature and the level of threats that the restructured international order can pose to regional security. Based on the analysis of changes in conflict patterns (frequency and intensity), occurring in East Asia during the periods divided into a bipolar system (1950-1990), a unipolar system (1991-2008), and a multipolar system (2009-current), this study shows that East Asia has not been as vulnerable to power politics as other regions. This investigation emphasizes that the complexity of Korea's diplomatic and security burden, which are aggravated by the reorganization of the international order, do not necessarily have to be interpreted as a grave security threat. This is because escalating unnecessary security issues could reduce the diplomatic strategic space of the Republic of Korea.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.475-495
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• 2006

This paper is to analyse a changing space of energy flows in Northeast Asia from geopolitical and geoeconomic perspectives that have been recently promoted for energy security of countries in this region. The research is based on an analytical framework in an integration of political ecology and political economy. Because of an ever-increasing input of energy resources for economic growth and of dramatically increasing price of crude oil and recent instability of oil market, South Korea, China and Japan have been deeply concerned with energy security and conducted very actively geopolitical strategies. And hence the space of energy flows in the region is now in a process of dynamic reconfiguration, in which the project for development of oil and natural gas fields in East Siberia and construction of pipelines to transport them can be seen as one of competitive issues among these countries. In spite of worrying about stagflation due to rapid increase of oil price, such geo-strategies for energy security and reconfiguration of space of energy flows seem to keep the accumulation of capital in this region continue with generation of huge privatized oil companies.