• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.83-104
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• 2022

This article attempts to explain current social perceptions in Mexico about the Silk Road. Based on a critical geopolitics approach, the author analyzes how the idea of the Silk Road is socially constructed in Mexican popular geopolitics, focusing on studying digital mass media between 2013 and 2020. The main research questions are: how is the Silk Road notion constructed in Mexican popular geopolitics and what are the geopolitical implications for Mexico? The article discovers that in Mexico, the idea of the "Silk Road" is profoundly close to the idea of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) given China's geostrategic discourse that constructs the BRI as a "New Silk Road". The article also argues that Mexico's social-political agency to deal with China may be hindered by divergent social perceptions in favor and against the "Silk Road".

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.51-67
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• 2016

This article examines the nature of geopolitics and its impact on the international political economy of Eurasia/Silk Road. The research questions are exploratory and aim at revealing the differing geopolitical perceptions of the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the former Soviet Central Asian countries-Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan-within the context of an emerging "New Silk Road". Consequently, the main goal of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of what factors constrain and shape Silk Road initiatives in Eurasia. To this end, the article focuses on geopolitics and regional integration theories through a consideration of the Silk Road initiatives of a number of Eurasian countries.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.143-160
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• 2016

The official development assistance (ODA) accompanies an interstate financial transaction, such as trade, foreign direct investment, and money transfer. ODA policy has designated several purposes. Among them, political purposes have been considered to be the key factors in the regional distribution of foreign aid. If we agree the traditional approach that recognizes ODA as a 'political one', the practice of ODA can be a kind of state geopolitics. This study investigates the construction and characteristics of geopolitical discourses. More specifically, this study pays special attention to the 'practical geopolitics' that is crucial to the policy-making. By analyzing the minutes of the National Assembly Standing Committee, four geopolitical discourses were identified: 'practicing humanities as a developed country', 'providing a role model to developing countries', 'developing new foreign markets' and 'coping with global geopolitics'. These geopolitical discourses have been constructed through the process of justifying the ODA policy to the domestic and international audiences. Constructing discourses on ODA shows the representation of a dichotomous and typical image of developed/developing.

• 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.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.131-148
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• 2022

While much has been written about Imperial Japan's encounter with geopolitics and developing ideas about Geography as a political and cultural discipline, little if anything has been written about relational and research Geographies between Japan and Silk Roads both ancient and modern. Memories of the ancient Silk Road were revivified in the late 19^th century in tandem with the Great Game of European nations, as Japan modernized and sought new places and influence globally following the Meiji restoration. Imperial Japan thus sought to conquer and co-opt spaces imagined to be part of or influenced by the ancient Silk Road and any modern manifestation of it. This paper explores a particular process in that co-option and appropriation, research collaboration between institutions of the Empire. In particular it considers the exploration of Mengjiang/Inner Mongolia after its conquest in 1939/1940, by a collaborative team of Korean and Japanese Geographers, led by Professor Tada Fumio. This paper considers the making knowable of spaces imagined to be on the ancient Silk Road in the Imperial period, and the projecting of the imperatives of the Empire back into Silk Road history, at the same time as such territory was being made anew. This paper also casts new light on the relational and collaborative processes of academic exchange, specifically in the field of Geography, between Korean and Japanese academics during the Korean colonial period.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.669-687
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• 2010

Critical scholarship has shown itself much more adept at identifying and analyzing the content of religious geopolitics than its impacts or effects. This article suggests ways in which the concept of social performance can be used to more carefully consider the effects of religious geopolitics. Judith Butler's identity-oriented notion of performativity is usually geographers' point of entry into issues of performance. But its strong poststructuralist distrust of agency limits its power among those who question poststructuralism's grounding beliefs. This article illustrates the added utility of other theories of performance-particularly the recent pragmatic, dramaturgical, and non-poststructuralist theorization of social performance by the cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander-in evaluating the impact of religious geopolitical action. It does so through the case of a recent, particularly geopolitically laden Mormon General Conference. It concludes, through Butler and Alexander, that this General Conference likely accomplished significant geopolitical work. But it also, mainly through Alexander, argues that this work likely had limited capacity to motivate new or additional geopolitical action. Its power was more to reinforce than transform.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.138-156
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• 2021

The aim of this article is to describe direction of Sino-Russian relations toward a new epoch - as the decision-making centers of both countries define them - indicating the commitment to building the future international order. It includes the synthesis of evolution of relations, descriptions of cooperation building of mutual confidence by both sides in variety of institutions; analyses of geo-economic relations emphasizing their geostrategic dimension and finally dynamics showing how two great powers want to achieve new areas of cooperation focused on building multipolar world order which is the essence of "new epoch". The argument goes towards recognizing the relationship as a "hhybrid alliance". This hybridity is a structural factor that can constrain the use of new dimensions of asymmetric interdependence as political leverage especially by United States against the two non-western powers but also facilitate to use it against West.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2020

The paper discusses how the new EU Strategy towards Central Asia issued in May 2019 might be analyzed through the lens of the intensely debated transformations from the liberal to a post-liberal international order. The author claims that the EU's normative power is transforming from the post-Cold War predominantly liberal/ value-based approach, with democracy and human rights at its core, to a set of more technical tools and principles of good governance and effective management of public administration. The paper problematizes a nexus between the dynamics of the EU's nascent post-liberalism and the geopolitical challenges of the EU's growing engagement with illiberal regimes, focuses on direct encounters between the post-liberal EU and the illiberal elites in Central Asia, and seeks to find out the impact of these connections upon the EU's international subjectivity. In this context geopolitical dimensions of EU foreign and security policies, along with the specificity of the EU's geopolitical actorship in Central Asia, are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.887-905
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• 2003

In this paper, we first understand the concept of imperialism as a 'a dialectical relation between territorial and capitalistic logics of power', as suggested by Harvey, and its history with three phases, the last of which would be seen as the phase of new imperialism. Secondly, we examine the New Security Strategy of the U.S which can be seen as a reflection of the new imperialism of the U.S. with its neo-conservative Bush administration, and explain the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as the implementation of the new imperialism. And then we take a close look on the current geopolitical situation of East Asia, especially North and South Korea, Japan and China, in terms of the new imperialist foreign policy of the Bush administration. Finally, we consider the limits of the new imperialism of the U.S. and globally emerging movements of anti-imperialism.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.713-737
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• 2016

This study is to review research issues on North Korea and unified territory in terms of topics and approach method in Korean human geography. The conclusion of this paper is as follows. Before 1980's, topics on political geography, such as geopolitics or unified land, were the main stream in research. In 1990's with the end of the cold war and the access to material which was published in North Korea, scope of research was widened especially in geography education. After 2000's with the expansion of cooperation between South and North Korea, the scope of topics were more expanded in all field of human geography, for example, critical geopolitic in political geography, Gaeseong Industrial Complex, Najin-Seonbong region in economic geography, place names, Geumgangsan, North Korean defectors in social and cultural geography. The approach method of toward North Korea is fall into two categories. One is regional geography and the other is the unified land. In the latter approach, topics on the regional structure after reunification or on the life adaptation of defectors in South Korea etc. were studied. After unification of land, new Korean Studiea will be established and human geographers should make ready for this. Before unification, research on the land in north Korea should be proceeded in terms of historical geography.