East Asian Regionalisms and Korea in the 1940’s
Journal Title: International Journal of Korean History - Year 2014, Vol 19, Issue 1
Abstract
This paper seeks to consider the various types of regionalisms in East Asia during the 1940’s, and Korea’s position in the United States’ “Great China Policy” and demilitarization and democratization plans for Japan. After World War II, although aspects of regionalism were formed by the Cold War in East Asia, the regional structure of Northeast Asia was originally formed from the ‘turn of the century’ through the Asian Pacific War. From the beginning of the 1940’s, Japan promoted the idea of a “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” in order to justify its hegemonic position in the East Asian regional order. In addition, the United States and Japan’s readjustment plans appeared to be related to strategies regarding the regional order of East Asia. During World War II, the victorious U.S. had already become one of the world’s superpowers and by principle, collaboration between the superpowers (United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union) revealed an initiative for a four country police state. Japan devised a survival strategy in the case of its defeat. During the war in the early 1940’s, these policies and plans were used to recognize Großraum around the East Asian region. This paper points out the significance of the 1940’s and the continuity between the awareness of the wartime situation and the prospective situation during the postwar period. During the 1940’s, three forms of regionalism in East Asia appeared. The first was Japan’s regional hegemony over the East Asian regional order. In order to preserve regional hegemony, Imperial Japan gave specific meaning to Korea as an extension of its own economy. The second is based on the United States as an offshore hegemonic power, which chose China as a subordinate partner within East Asia and used the division of labor through sub-horizontal industry based on an initiative to suppress Japan. In order to weaken the economic dominance of Japanese Empire, the United States tried to sever the economic relationship between Korea and Japan. The third is based on the United States choice of Japan as a subordinate partner within the region as the Cold War spread through East Asia, and as a way to create regional economic integration, using a division of labor through vertical industry. Although the plan was to partially introduce the first form, placing them under the control of Japan within East Asia’s Cold War was a way to secure their own territory. Under this plan and under the control of the United States, Korea’s economic unification with Japan became the target of regulation. In the first form, due to the division of the Cold War in East Asia, the collapse of the utilized industrial linkage structures created the need for a new re-ordering of the regional order, which decisively influenced the regulation of Korea’s position in the East Asian region.
Authors and Affiliations
Byong Kwon Song
Keywords
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