Isa Ducke (2002): Status Power. Japanese Foreign Policy Making Toward Korea. New York: Routledge. 256 S. ISBN: 0415933714

STATUS AS A FACTOR IN JAPANESE FOREIGN POLICY MAKING TOWARD KOREA

  Japan is big, wealthy, and powerful compared to South Korea. Yet South Korea is allowed to occupy a disputed island, use unfair trade practices, and give the directives for Japan's policy concerning North Korea. Historical issues feature prominently in Japanese-Korean relations and give South Korea a certain power over Japan which dominant explanations of foreign policies, centering on material calculations of power and interest, fail to explain.
  My thesis first discusses the existing concepts of interest and power in the literature on international relations in general and on Japanese policies in particular. The concept of status, including non-material, abstract factors in an issue area sometimes referred to as 'cultural', 'diplomatic', or 'political', is considered in depth and placed alongside military and economic factors. This leads to a framework in which status, based either on prestige or on a positive reputation, or moral authority, can be a power resource similar to military or economic strength. The thesis argues that an imbalance in status exists between Japan and South Korea: due to its historical role as a victim of Japanese aggression, South Korea has from some viewpoints a higher international status than Japan. It derives 'status power' from this special relationship, which it utilises efficiently in the economic and even security issue areas to pressurise Japan into certain policies. The mechanisms of this power and the domestic Japanese differences over the appropriate ways to raise Japan's status are discussed in a number of case studies, ranging from pure 'status' issues like war apologies, history textbooks, and the 'comfort women' issue, via economic issues like the 1981 South Korean loan request and the Takeshima dispute, to issues related to North Korea and the Korean unification.

Last updated: April 2004