Changing South Korea: Issues of identity and reunification in formulating the Australia-Korea security policy, foreign policy, and wider relationship

Abstract

This article argues that Australia must consider the changing attitudes of young people in South Korea toward nationalism, identity and unification when formulating Australian-Korean security and foreign policy. Through an in-depth examination of the South Korean youth and student movement and young people's changing attitudes to North Korea and unification, I suggest that a change in the nature of nationalism has occurred - a shift from a nationalism based on a peninsula-wide concept of nation, to the emergence of a South Korean nationalism. This has important consequences for policy-makers trying to understand events in South Korea, the Korean peninsula, and wider Northeast Asian region. The evidence for this article comes from the analysis of survey data from the mid-1980s to the present day. For the most part, the survey data used in the analysis is translated and presented in English for the first time. The surveys are informed by face to face interviews with over 60 South Korean students from across the country. These took place in 2009 and 2010 during fieldwork carried out by the author.