Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Nye, Joseph, Jr. 2004. Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.

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Main points:

- Ch. 2 – the US has many resources that can potentially provide soft power. Not only is the fact that America is the world’s largest economy, but nearly half of the top 500 global companies are American. 62 of the top global brands are American. (33)

- opposition to American policies is not the same as general opposition to the US. The image or attractiveness of a country is composed of foreigner’s attitudes on a variety of levels and types, American policy constitutes only one. (35)

- many intellectuals and critics disdain popular culture because of its crude commercialism. They view pop culture as an anesthetizing and apolitical opiate for the masses. Such disdain is misplaced because popular entertainment often contains subliminal images and messages about individualism, consumer choice and other values that have important political effects. (47) (c/f  pop songs)

- simple items like blue jeans, Coca-Cola, or a cigarette brand acquired an added value that helped younger generations to give expression to an identify of their own. (48)

- Soviet audiences watching films with apolitical themes nonetheless learned that people in the West did not have to stand in long lines to purchase food, did not live in communal apartment, and they owned their own cars. All these invalidated the negative view promulgated by the Soviet media.(49)

- all countries pursue their national interest in foreign policy, but there are choices to be made about how broadly or narrowly we define our national interest. Polices based on broadly inclusive and far-sighted definition of national interest are easier to make attractive to others.]60-61)

-the US, like 19^th century Britain, also has an interest in keeping international markets and global commons, such as the oceans, open to all. To a large extent, international order is a public good. (61)

- the image of the US and its attractiveness to others is a composite of many different ideas and attitudes. It depends in part on culture, in part on domestic policies and values, and in part on the substance, tactics, and style of the US foreign policies.(68)

(to be continued)

Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Nye, Joseph, Jr. 2004. Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.

Main points:

- Preface – What is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment. It arise from the attractiveness of a county’s culture, political ideals, and polices.(x) [c/f also one's own good past records]

- the first chapter analysis the changing context of power in international politics, and the reason why soft power is becoming more important than in the past. (xii)

- the second chapter examines the sources of American soft power. American is not the only one with soft power; the third chapter looks at the soft power of other nations and non-state actors. Chapter 4 examines the practical problems of how to wield soft power. The concluding chapter summarizes what it all means for the foreign policy of the US in the aftermath of the Iraq war. (xiii)

- ch. 1 – at the most general level, power means the ability to get the outcome one wants. (1) Power resources cannot be judged without knowing the context. You need to understand what game you are playing and how the value of the cards may be changing (4)

- soft power rests on the ability to shape the preference of others. At the personal level, we are all familiar with the power of attraction and seduction.(5)

-hard and soft power are related because they are two aspects of the ability to achieve one’s purpose. The distinction is one of degree; there are command power and co-optive power. The types of behavior between command and co-option range along a spectrum from coercion to pure attraction. (7) Soft power resources tend to be associated with the co-optive end of the spectrum of behavior, whereas hard-power resource is usually associated with command behavior. (7)

- in international politics, the resource that produce soft power arise in large part form the values an organization or country expresses in its culture, in its internal practice and polices, in the way it handles its relation with others. (8)

- the soft power of a county rests primarily on 3 resources: its culture, its political value, and its foreign policies. Let’s start with culture. Culture is the set of values and practice that create meaning for a society. (11)

- when a country’s culture includes universal values and its policies promote values and interest that others share, it increases the probability of obtaining its desired outcome. (11)

- in a diverse world, all three sources of power –military, economic, and soft – remains relevant, although in different degrees in different relationships. (30)

- the soft power in the information is in part a social and economic by-product rather than solely a result of official government action, nonprofit institution with soft power of their own can complicate and obstruct government efforts. (32)

(to be continued)

五月份暫停上載資訊

五月份因爲工作繁忙, 會暫停上載資訊一個月, 十分抱歉。

5月が多忙ので、月のアップロード情報を一時停止することがあり、非常に残念。

Because I shall be very busy in May, the uploading of information to this blog shall be temporarily stopped for a month. Sorry.

North Koreans in Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997

Main points:

- ch. 6 – (Diaspora and beyond) – Mr. Yun, a Chongryun Korean, drew a clear distinction between the South Korean regime and its people, including his relatives. This distinction functions brilliantly as a device to rationalize Mr. Yun’s north Koran identity despite his southern origin and his relatives were in south Korea. In order to do this, Mr. Yun distinguished between the word kohyan, ‘native place’, and choguk, ‘the fatherland’. The kohyan-choguk separation allowed him to maintain his dual attachment to the peninsula. (168)

- second-generation Chongryun Koreans could do the same type of switching as their third-generation counterparts. They used to speak Korean at school and Japanese at home. But their symbolic boundaries of the organization were drawn in different ways for each generation. (174)

- now the antagonism between Chongryun and Japanese society had eased. Previously Chongryun regarded the Japanese state as one of its ‘enemies’. For this reason, the second generation did not undertake the frequent and speedy border crossing between intra-organizational and extra-organizational line until much later – possibly after quitting high school, and even later for those who were related to Chongryun. For those who continue to be working with Chongryun full time, this experience had yet to come. (174)

- all the forty third-generation youth that I met were clear that they would continue to live in Japan even after Korean reunification. North Korea was politically their fatherland, but Japan was where they lived. (176) In this vision, the third generation gave south Korea little room. Now that the new curriculums more or less ignored South Korea, this tendency would continue to grow. (176)

- in the 1960s and 1970s, Chongryun schools placed considerable stress on remembering Japanese colonialism. The story of the massacre of thousands of Koreans by the Japanese in the wake of the Kanto earthquake in 1923 had a prominent place in the lessons. Such films had an immense impact on children’s everyday conduct. Second-generation children equated their being overseas nationals of North Korea with being rescued by Kim II Sung. (178)

-terror-based drills thus help young pupils appreciate the existence of their fatherland. Such a mechanism augmented the second generation’s feeling of indebtedness toward North Korea. The combination of fear and gratitude generated by its emotional campaigns once had been used to maintain Chongryun’s organizational boundaries. (178)

- the transition from the second-generation model to that of the third generation might be called a post-diaspora. This was also a transition form collective identity to individual identity. Second-generation experience had been placed well within the state’s boundaries. Second generation‘s identity as Chongryun Koreans stood on the premise that Chongryun was a north Korean organization. Third generation experience was more individual-oriented. Their identity as North Korean living in Japan did not necessarily relied on the relations between North Korea and Japan. (198)

- the third generation distinguish between the north Korean state and Chongryun, and they could view north Korea critically. The third generation’s North Korea identity was gradually leaving the image of North Korea as a solid entity. Their identity did not have to rely on the state form.(198)

- conclusion: in this section the author tries to retrace the process as a historical flow. (201) If the colonial past was a collective past, the utopia of reunification was a collective future. The second generation thus grew up in the dual construction of terror (of repeating the miserable colonial history) and hope (the reunification under the guidance of Kim). (203)

- the reproduction of Chongryun’s organizational identity in individual utterance had a social effect crucial to Chongryun’s ongoing existence. As Paul Willis has shown us, it was true that within the limits of the given language, individuals were able to make life more meaningful; they strategically appropriated their underprivileged situations and turned them into positive factor to create meaning. In this process working-class youth were articulate and capable of expressively reflecting on their life-world. (203)

- however, Paul Willis’s work was important in the insightful analysis that despite their affirmation attitude towards life, working-class youth were structurally positioned in such a way as to maintain the exiting class structure. Far from causing an ‘educational crisis’ in British, the counter-school culture contributes to perpetuating the process that working-class youth would ‘voluntarily’ direct themselves to skilled, semiskilled and unskilled manual work. (203) The same was observed in the world of Chongryun Koreans. When they referred to their North Korean identity, they were articulate, expressive and positive. (203)

- in this historical course, we could see how the same term, overseas national of north Korean, had had different function. In the 1960s and 1970s, the term represented a utopia and was part of a discourse of heroism; it implied that Chongryun Koreans would eventually become North Korean nationals. Now oversees nationals comes closer to reflecting reality: it implies that Chongryun Korean would remain overseas. There was a shift from heroism to realism. (204)

North Koreans in Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997.

Main points:

- ch. 4 – (The structure of coexistence) – what had be emphasized that just as the Japanese government lacked the perspective on Koreans as resident aliens, so Chongryun defined Koreans in Japan as overseas nationals of north Korea, not as citizens of Japan. Chongryun’s self-identification as overseas organization of north Korea coincided with its break with the Japanese Communist party. (115)

- by establishing it new identity, Chongryun successfully avoided being drafted into assisting the revolution on a foreign land.  Because of its political opposition to the south Korean regime and its loyalty to the North, it required a specific political identity by labeling its members as overseas nationals of north Korean, even though the majority of its members came form southern Korea.(115)

- “although the Japanese government and Chongryun pursue their policies separately, the effect of these polices often coincide.” (119)

- in 1965 the Japanese government entered into normal diplomatic relations with south Korea. In 1979, the Japanese government ratified the international covenant on human rights. In 1981 it joined the UN convention relating to the statue of refugees. In 1982 the Japanese Ministry of Justice installed a new category of permanent residence called ‘exceptional permanent resident’ for Koreans who had not been eligible to obtain permanent resident under the 1965 treaty.

- in 1991 Japan and south Korean Ministers of Foreign Affairs signed a memorandum putting into effect various reforms to the alien registration law and the immigration control act: fingerprint was abolished. Improvements were made with regard to civil right. In 1992 all Korean permanent resident, including most Chongryun Koreans, were made ‘special permanent residents’. Chongryun Korean thus became eligible to apply for various social benefits. (125)

- when the legal status of Chongryun Korean was extremely uncertain in the 1950s and 1960s, Chongryun’s identify was relatively stable. During the 1970s it could fortify itself as an organization following Kim II Sung’s idea of juche. Today the state-centered identity of Chongryun as an organization of overseas nationals of North Korean clearly remained in it official discourse. (127)

- generational difference within Chongryun were increasingly coming to the surface. Things that the first generation took for granted were not necessarily so for the second generation and definitely not so for the third and fourth generations. (128)

- ch. 5 – (Hesitation and transition) -for Chongryun Koreans, their Korean identity meant primarily a north Korean political identity, but they adjusted and readjusted it depending on the political conditions. Individuals had their own ways of adapting, sometimes re-ordering their memory, as did the first-generation Korean, and sometimes quickly switching between two different modes of existence, as did the third generation schoolchildren. (140)

- on 7 July 1994 Kim II Sung died, Ae-son a female Chongryun Korean could not stop crying. She was sad because she felt she had not always fulfilled her duty to the great leader. She was sad because she could not bring about the reunification while the great leader was alive. (144)

- out of the author’s numerous visits to Chongryun schools, one of the most interesting incident was an open hours where she could observe the interaction between parents and teachers.  There was certain regularity in the languages they chose. On the one hand, if both the husband and wife or one of them worked for Chongryun, their conversion would be in formal Korean. On the other and, if they were not involved with Chongryun on a professional level, their conversation in public would normally be in Japanese. (151)

- as we look at this shift in language, it was not our concern to ask the speaker’s  motivation. The point was, rather, to view the shift as a practice or a series of practices closely related to identity constitution. In the case of Chongryun Koreans at least, the process of the language shift itself was already part of their Chongryun Korean identification; going from Japanese to Korean or vice versa was how they lead the Chongryun lifestyle.(152)

- in other words, in this case identity could not be the essence; it is the process of identification that matters. And what enabled such a process in ordinary day-to-day life was language use – not the languages as it was but the act of using the language. (152)

- habitus alone cannot explain the transitional (changeable) state of social process; it could not answer the question how social individuals coped with reality. The first generation could stick to the old language. The third generation was flexible; their performative skill would enable them to shift. The second generation was somewhere in between, caused by the transitional nature of their identity.

(to be continued)

North Koreans in Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997.

Main points:

- ch. 2 – (chapter title: From performative to performance) - in 1993 Chongryun launched a three-year program of curricular reform. Under the new curricular, subject such as things about the childhood of father Marshall Kim II Sung were abolished.

- this chapter focuses on various changes related to the circular reform and considers its implication for re-adjusting the identity of children as overseas national of north Korea. (51)

- of greatest interest with regard to the new Korean educational  program was the emphasis on teaching the spoken version of Korean. In the new textbook, fourteen out of 28 lessons were dedicated to informal, spoken ending forms. (57)

- some young teaches told the author that the revision of the textbook came at the insistence of the second generation teachers. (58)

- the emphasis on teaching the spoken version of Korean was structured in such a way as to replace the spoken Japanese children use outside the school, thereby encouraging the use of Korean in the after-school hours. Yet when child spoke to teachers, they used the Korean honorific with formal ending. It was unthinkable for teacher to conduct class in informal Koran. (65)

- yet outside school the children switched to Japanese. Children’s knowledge of informal Korean could not extend beyond the classroom. (65)

-pupil were getting better reading Korean, yet their daily language was increasingly distanced form the school-taught Korean language. Children were no longer capable of identify themselves as ‘loyal children’ of Kim Ii Sung. They no longer took such an identity as a point of departure, as the language used to form that identity was no longer imposed on the children. (66)

- ch. 3 – (chapter title: The rise of legitimate identity) - in 1945, the peninsula was divided into American and Soviet occupation zones. In the eyes of many Korean in Japan, events in Southern Korea appeared to take a far less satisfactory turn. The situation was chaotic. Riot and uprising, protesting against the military government occurred in many areas in the south. October 1945 saw the release from prisons of many Korean communist in Japan. On 15 October the League of Korean was formed in Tokyo. (79)

- following Korea’s political and territorial division the League of Korean opted for political conviction at the expenses of regional attachment. Its opposition to the South Korean regime meant that it would abandon repatriation to the south because the majority of Koreans in Japan originally came from the southern provinces; this option was a costly one to them. (81)

- from the outset two different orientations had coexisted with the League of Korean: Communist internationalism and nationalism. According to Ernest Gellner, “Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent”.  In terms applied to the Korean case, those who associate with North Korean regard the latter as the only legitimate state representing the whole Korean nation. (82)

-  in many ways the League could be regarded as the predecessor of Chongryun. (83) The League was dissolved in September 1949. (87) Following the dissolution of the League, in 1951, during the Korean war, the Korean communist and leftist-nationalist in Japan organized the democratic front of Korean – Minjon .  Minjon inherited the factionalism between internationalist and nationalist within the League of Korean. (89)

- among those nationalist who were frustrated by the communist party’s stance was Han Dok-su, chairman of Chongryun. In March 1955 Han denounced the Internationalist. On 25 may, 1955 Minjon was dissolved and Chongryun emerged with Han as the chairman. (90)

- many member of the first-generation support Han because he shifted away from the subjugation to the Japanese Communist party. Elderly Chongryun Koreans believed that Kim II Sung allowed them to live in Japan as North Korean’s ‘overseas nationals’. (92-3)

- the term ‘overseas nationals ’of north Korea, central to Chongryun’s legitimate discourse, occurred frequently in the languages of the first-generation individuals. This identity replaced the identity of colonial subject. (92)

-  what was surprising was that many first –generation Chongryun Koreans’ story regularly jumped from the ‘colonial past’ to the time they became ‘overseas nationals of north Korea’ mediated by the phrase ‘thanks to the love and care and wise guidance of the Great Leader Marshal Kim II Sung. (93)

- Mrs. Kwon, a Korean, usually conducted her life in Japanese. In the earlier part of the conversation with me, she spoke Japanese. As she moved on to talk about the organization and matters related to Chongryun activities and north Korea, she changed to Korean.  Sometime the language was intermingled. But by the time she was telling me about Kim II Sung, her whole sentences were in Korean. It was obvious to me that she was better at Japanese than Korean; indeed she said she learned Korean only after she became a teacher at a Korean high school. I found such regularity in switching language when I talked to other Chongryun related Korean.(97)

- the example could only be explained in terms of institutionalized training whereby the speaker learned to say certain terms and not to say other. In this case, turning the ‘thanks to’ phrases into a norm as an contrast to colonial humiliation. (97)

- such training should also prevent speakers from telling their own stories with their own expression. We can already see a certain type of censorship at work here. Let us turn to the linguist life of adult member, since this control was closely related to the rise of the legitimate identity of Chongryun. (97)

- Juche literally meant ‘subject’ and was often translated as ‘self-reliance’. According to Kim, ‘establishing juche means that the people approach the revolution and construction of their own country as masters’. (97-8)

- “the implementation of Kim II Sung worship strengthened north Korea’s authority over Chongryun. This in turn provided Chongryun with a rationalizing device: by emphasizing that Chongryun activities were in the served of Kim II Sung and the fatherland.” (102)

- “chongryun workers begin their day with a choson shinbo reading session at which they take note of current slogans and aims of the organization’s activity. It is important that they register the set of rhetorical expressions used in the paper.” (103)

- the regular criticism session functioned to maintain Chongryun’s linguistic orthodoxy. The systematic use of fixed terms by cadres would influence the members by exhibiting what was supposed to be ‘good speech’. (105)

-“it became the norm to mention their identity as ‘overseas nationals’ of north Korean in connection to the ‘thanks to’ phrase. In such a process, they reordered their past, remodeled their memory, and reformulate their experience in what is regarded as a ‘proper way’ of speaking. Even Mrs. Kwon represented her adolescence in a well-to-do family as slavery under colonialism.” (106) (c/f using a keyword to describe a period)

“In this sense, it is highly indicative that Chongryun’s official publications hardly refer to pre-Chongryun days, official history begins only after Koreans in Japan came to be benefited by the glories benefactor.”(106)

- two factors were involved: obliteration of nonorthodox identities, such as the well off or docile colonial days; the omission what was regarded as irrelevant including domestic violence and disproportionate personal privilege enjoyed by the top ranks. This was of course censorship. The best censorship was not so much to suppress speaking negative or unusable words but not to give the word at all. In study meetings students were given Korean words related to Chongryun only positively; negative words were used only with reference to ‘enemies’. (106)

- a fundamentalist commitment become a manufactured identity helped by strategies as marking and making, obliteration and omission. Language here again played a decisive role in both forgetting and selecting experience and replacing and displacing memory. (106-7)

- nevertheless, this was not to say that their identity was false. This was not a matter to verify in terms of true-false opposition. By internalizing Chongryun’s discourse, the majority of first-generation Chongryun Korean lost alternative language to represent themselves.  In this process they had indeed become ‘overseas nationals’. (107)

(to be continued)

North Koreans in Japan

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997

Main points:

- this book pursues a number of closely connected themes. First it looks at how an organization such as Chongryun that was loyal to North Korea could exist in Japan. The key to investigate was to find out how individuals used their socially constituted linguist capacity and linguistically constructed social resource. (12)

- part I (ch. 1 & 2)  of this volume probes into the system of discipline that shaped Chongryun’s students . In chapter 1, the book discusses the acquisition process of the appropriate socio-linguistic competence by Chongryun’s schoolchildren. Chapter two goes on to examine the changing curriculum and its effect on schoolchildren. (13)

- in chapter 3 of part II (ch. 3 & 4)  a view of the first generation of Chongryun recalled the historic background. (14) In chapter 4, the book considers the connection between Chongryun’s strategies that had enabled Chongryun to find a niche within the framework of the Japanese state.

- in part 2 (ch.3-4), the book thus look at the historically determined condition for the ongoing reproduction  of Chongryun’s identity. (14)

- in part 3 (ch.5-6) it focuses on the contemporary debate inside Chongryun by highlighting dilemmas and difficulties that the second generation faced. Ch. 5 concentrates on a teacher in Chongryun School; it provides a glimpse of a typical second generation.  Chapter 6 summarizes the world of three generations in a comparative perspective. This chapter is about migration and diaspora. (15)

- in conclusion the book summarizes the forgoing discussion, returning to the theme of language, ideology, and identity.  (15)

- ch. 1 – (The performative and its effects) as a self-financing kakushu gakko,(hidden school) Chongryun’s schools were exempted from regular inspection and other forms of intervention by Japan’s central and local education authorities. (25)

- children were also subjected to extra-academic pressure, as their parents were generally keen to see them perform well in school. No text was critical of Chongryun, North Korea, or Kim Ii Sung. To teach negative terms, lessons used examples of South Korean regime, Japanese imperialism, and US imperialism (31)

- the linguistic life of students was placed under collective control inside the school; the implementation of the using the Koran language was an important concern of Chongryun schools.(31)

- the Korean language schoolchildren spoken predominately text-dependent: it was the written form that was spoken. (36)

- Korean was the only language used in Chongryun’s public life; Japanese was the language used in private life. (44)

- the linguistic practices of Chongryun had two interrelated effect. First they fostered a positive relationship between its users and Chongryun. Second a clear distinction between the spheres of application for Korean and Japanese keeps the two sociolinguistic domains relatively independent form each other, the division bring about more efficient social control. (44)

- Bourdieu referred to bilingualism as that the same speaker changed his or her expression, moving from one language to another, without even realizing the fact. Thus, for as long as habitus and field were in agreement, the habitus ‘comes at just the right moment’, and without the need for any calculation. (44-5)

- the utterance of Chongryun students carried strong element of the performative statement. Performative statement, according to Austin, was not to be verified in terms of the true-or-false opposition but to be identified primarily as felicitous or infelicitous depending on the situation. (46)

- utterance was neither neutral or innocent; it amounted to a political act, legitimating Chongryun’s existence and recognizing  its authority. In this way, language and identity were linked.(47)

- by examining the institutionalized disciple, we were able to look at the process whereby individual acquired socially approved way of language use; this might not necessary be preceded by ideological conviction. (48)

- once acquired, the organizational language was at the disposal of individual users. In this process individual accrue a distinct, if only partial, identity as Chongryun Koreans. (49)

(to be continued)