Facing China differently and equally: A comparison between south Korean and Japanese policy behaviors

초록

Widespread rhetoric suggests South Korea's tilt toward and Japan's balancing act regarding their relationship with China. This seems based not on a systemic analysis, but superficial observation. Extensive literature highlights the two nations' response to China's rise, but very few works have conducted a comparative study. This article attempts to do that by analyzing both Seoul's and Tokyo's China policy behaviors from early 2013 to mid-2019. Six key topics related to threat perceptions are compared: threat perception, primary security concerns, strategy between the US and China, economy and economic security, identity politics, and domestic politics. We determine that Seoul's policy is based on de-geo-politicization, whereas Tokyo revives a classical or neoclassical geopolitical game. This study concludes that the rhetoric mentioned above may be myths or temporal phenomena at best. The two nations' rationale seems to converge into a middle-power strategy, which we predict will have a meaningful impact on East Asian geopolitics. © 2020 Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies - National Sun Yat-sen University. All rights reserved.

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