From a Garrison State to a Humanitarian Power?: Security Identities, Constitutive Norms and South Korea's Overseas Troop Dispatches

Abstract

This article examines the transformation of South Korea's international security identity from an anti-communist garrison state to a humanitarian power. Given the frequency of its choice of non-combat troops mobilized as part of alliance obligations and UN peacekeeping operations, South Korea can be classified as a state that has made the dispatch of non-combat troops a norm in the case of overseas power projection following the end of the Cold War. It argues that South Korea's normative preference of dispatching non-combat forces on humanitarian and peacekeeping missions has played a constitutive role in crafting the state as an international humanitarian power, though in the initial stage of identity transformation. Given its rise as an economic powerhouse and its international security stature as a middle power, South Korea's transformation of security identities holds strategic significance, not only for those on the Korean peninsula, but also for the United States and many other countries in the world. The article first analyzes South Korea's garrison state identity of the Cold War period and the emerging humanitarian power identity by focusing on a shift in institutions and public opinions regarding the country's overseas power projection. It concludes by critically reviewing South Korea's international humanitarian activities and making a number of suggestions as to how it might emerge as a full-fledged international humanitarian power.