Explaining a Roller Coaster Change in ROK’s Policy toward Japan: Morality/Threat Perception Nexus and the Kim Young-sam Government’s Japan Policy

The paper explains why South Korea displays a roller coaster change in its policy toward Japan, focusing on the Kim Young-sam government, 1993-1997. South Korea’s Japan policy has been a major puzzle for students of Asian politics working in the tradition of realism because it has widely oscillated between two extremes - i.e., policies of both confrontation and cooperation, regardless of the balance of power between the two countries. To explain such an oscillation, the paper develops a morality/threat perception nexus approach in which South Korea’s policy toward Japan is considered the result of Japan’s policy toward South Korea plus South Korean leaders’ concern for morality and Japanese threat. These concerns are retrieved primarily from the leaders’ collective memory of Japan’s forty years of colonial domination of the Korean peninsula. The approach claims that Japan’s policy toward South Korea, i.e., apologies or provocations on three salient issues - i.e., the Dokdo islands, historical past, and foreign policy activism - creates different external conditions under which Korean leaders may develop their Japan policy. Against the backdrop of the conditions, the approach contends, Korean leaders’ sense of morality and their stereotyped threat perception of Japan determine the types of policies the leaders may adopt toward Japan - i.e., cooperation and confrontation of varying degrees. An in-depth case study on South Korea’s foreign policy toward Japan under the Kim Young-sam government provides strong support for these theoretical arguments. This finding contributes to an enhanced understanding of causes of South Korea’s roller coaster change in its Japan policy.