The methodologies and assumptions that guide our acquisition of knowledge and interpretation of data are context and time bound. Academic disciplines, sub-disciplines, methodological approaches and research agendas are to a large degree conditioned by the ‘real world,’ and none more so than International Relations. Accordingly, it is important to consider the possible sociological foundations of different epistemologies and paradigms of International Relations. Surely there is more than one way of looking at the world, unless one is steadfastly married to a positivist universal truth. Yet it is interesting that East Asian scholarship and teaching in IR has seemingly not developed strong ‘indigenous’ regional characteristics, perhaps with the exception of Japan with its large market, long tradition, political freedom and economic affluence. In fact IR has absorbed and closely followed Western and particularly North American social science. This introduction and the articles that follow will explore the fortunes of IR scholarship and regional studies in East Asia in the context of national and regional environments. It will consider how IR is taught and researched in various national settings, and examine the interaction between IR as a social science and national/regional historical experiences, cultural and pedagogical traditions, and politico-ideological values. The underlining problematique concerns the idea of an East Asian ‘IR community’: why has this tended to be comparatively weak? How can we envision the development of a more rigorous East Asian IR community, one that is not exclusively judged according to external — and particularly North American — terms of reference and standards? It goes without saying that we are not attempting to antagonize our American friends and colleagues, but simply to stimulate a ‘sociology of science’ reflection of the discipline in the East Asian regional setting. Two questions serve as the organizing themes of this special issue. The first concerns the primary characteristics of the regional IR community. Many of the papers in this collection point to the dominance of US-originated ideas and theories. The second question arises from the first question: whether these predominant approaches help us to understand the region in a time of change.

Mainstream International Relations teaching and scholarship is often argued to be social scientific and therefore able to generate propositions about international life that have general (even universal) explanatory value. However, the methods and research questions of IR can in part be explained by the nature of the national academies in which they develop and by a range of national and regional sociological and political circumstances. Thus, following Ole Waever, the “American approach to the study of IR” and its predominance can be explained by reference to certain cultural and structural factors. Yet if the sociological underpinnings of teaching and researching in IR are inevitable and readily apparent, why is there no distinct ‘East Asian tradition’? Why is the East Asian IR community relatively weak? In fact, the relative weakness of indigenous national and regional East Asian IR approaches can be understood as an extension of national academic environments, historical circumstances, and national political traditions.

In this paper, we review and summarize recent trends of international relations studies in South Korea on three distinct dimensions and, on the basis of this, suggest future directions of research in the field. Our focus throughout the paper is on the constraints and opportunities for the development of indigenous international relations theories and models. Although the confrontational Cold War legacy on the Korean Peninsula sustains the validity of the powerful realist paradigm, we argue that critical challenges are breathing a new life into the academic field of international relations in a time of great change when a new global and regional order has been taking shape since the end of the Cold War. In order to accommodate these new changes and call attention to epistemological pluralism, we posit liberal constructivism, which combines liberalism with constructivism, as a new epistemological alternative to the existing lines of international relations theories. Given the opportunities and intellectual resources, we conclude, the future of the discipline of international relations in South Korea is quite promising.

This article traces the evolution of international relations studies as an academic discipline in China in the last two decades or so. Almost non-existent before the 1980s, IR studies has become an increasingly dynamic, sophisticated, and popular field of social science in both teaching and research. This is reflected in the growth of institutions, degree programs, scholarship and paradigmatic debate as well as interaction with the Western intellectual community in both theory and personnel. Nevertheless, the development of IR studies in China is still in its primitive stage and it must contend with various problems such as political control, a lack of well-trained scholars, inadequate funding, and ideational uncertainty.

Taiwan is diplomatically isolated in international politics and yet it now has a thriving IR community with links the world over. As diplomatic isolation has increased, the government has felt a strong need to reach out in other spheres of the international community, and this has led to a demand for a better understanding of international relations. This can be compared to an ‘industrial policy’ — the government has supported and guided certain IR research agenda and institutions in accordance with the perceived needs of the territory. At the same time, the political science community was able to respond in kind. Since the early 1970s many of those who had received advanced degrees in American universities began to flow back to Taiwan, reversing a brain drain in political science in the previous decade. Their teachings and publications laid a firm foundation for the study of international relations in Taiwan. After three decades, this sub-field of political science has genuinely come of age. Whilst this has been on the back of US-inspired methodologies and academic role models, it is applied to challenges and problems that are unique to Taiwan and its regional environment.

Stimulated by Ole Waever's (1998) examination of American and European developments in International Relations, this article examines the growth of the discipline of international relations in Japan, focusing on the major currents of the social science tradition since 1868 and the intellectual agenda of international relations since 1945. Postwar scholarship has reflected the main themes and questions of Japanese history — the causes of war, the struggle for peace, Japan's place in the world and Asia, and Japan's role in the Cold War. To an extent, the organization and substance of IR teaching and scholarship in Japan can be explained by reference to certain sociological and historical variables. Discussions about methodology have not mirrored the “great debates” of the United States, but the younger scholars are moving closer to the American pattern. Recent exposure to and interaction with American scholarship has become increasingly visible, allowing Japanese scholars to make important contributions to debates in the US.

This paper discusses area, regional, and international relations studies as seen from the vantage point of the United States. Part I situates the issue of regionalism in the current debate about conceptualizing international relations since the end of the Cold War and at the dawn of a new millennium. Against the historical backdrop of a powerful case for area studies made soon after the end of World War II, Part II focuses attention on the crosscurrents that are affecting area studies from three different directions: (1) disciplinary-based, scientific critics who value nomothetic approaches more than contextualization; (2) cultural critiques developed from the perspective of the humanities and, at times, post-modernism; and (3) the growing emphasis on cross-regional studies that seek to blend and incorporate elements from both scientific and humanistic perspectives. Part III concludes with some brief reflections on the relations, in the classroom, between areas, regional and international studies.

A preoccupation with the US and narrow notions of area studies have obstructed scholarship on the diversity of bilateral relations and the emergence of the Northeast Asian regional community. During the Cold War, for example, this meant that Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese ties were neglected. In the 1990s the problem became more acute because many bilateral ties intensified and acquired new dimensions. There was an outpouring of new primary and secondary sources within the region, while rapidly evolving conditions made updating of insights imperative. The gap keeps widening between the claims of globalists with little area knowledge, and the opportunities to deepen understanding by applying area expertise to the flux in bilateral and regional relations. The traditions of Chinese, Japanese and Russian area studies have proven valuable, but inadequate. There is a need for scholars who will develop approaches that navigate between global and area studies. Few specialists on Northeast Asian area relations not involving the US can be found in the US, and the situation is scarcely improving. Experts must be trained for in depth, balanced bilateral analysis. Increasingly, there is a need for triangular experts as well. Indeed, working closely with centers inside the region, the US and other Western scholarly communities should be training a new generation of Northeast Asianists comfortable as area experts while also at home in the disciplines.

This article contends that the September 11th terrorist attacks have had a significant effect on the Asian regional order as well as on the global order. Globally, they have had two seemingly contradictory effects. On the one hand, the post-9.11 situation has presented the major powers of the world, including the United States, Russia and China, to build a “system of concert,” overcoming their rivalries and conflicting interests. It seems to have given new impetus to the promotion of multilateralism in international relations. On the other hand, it has helped to revive and rediscover what is known as realism in international politics, realism that recognizes the supremacy of the state and national interest as individual states become the main protector of their citizens in times of crises.

The system of concert is also evolving in East Asia which, until September 11th, 2001, had been slow in catching up with the Western world (Europe and America) in international cooperation and multilateral mechanisms. Most remarkable in this regard is the improved relations between China and the United States and, secondarily, between China and Japan. Even though sources of conflict remain among various countries, major powers such as the United States, Russia, China and Japan now place greater emphasis upon cooperation and mutual assistance in fighting global terrorism. It nevertheless seems that Asians will continue to live in a regional order where a new system of concert that evolves in the aftermath of the 9–11 attacks coexists with a traditional geopolitical and real politics order.

This article analyzes the impact of political regime and state bureaucracy on policy responses to the 1997 financial crisis in Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The political regime type — classified broadly into democracy and authoritarianism — is found to shape the direction of policy responses by influencing the political elites' understanding on causes, processes, and consequences of the crisis, whereas the state bureaucracy — classified into hybrid and Weberian types — decides the implementation of reform plans by determining the power of big business to resist policy change, as well as the state's organizational capacity to counter that resistance. The article argues that only when the political regime is democratic and the state Weberian will comprehensive — as opposed to partial — reform succeed.

What determines the public evaluation of South Korean president? Is it a temporal cycle of presidential tenure, the economy or political events? This paper explores these questions by examining the case of President Kim Dae Jung who enjoyed high popularity in the early phase of his tenure but experienced consistent decline of popularity after 18 months in office, much like his predecessors did. The paper argues that the high and low of public support for the president is not simply a function of the temporal cycle and that the fluctuation of public rating is strongly influenced by the public's consideration of economic matters and corruption scandals. In the case of the current South Korean president, one's performance in resuscitating the economy could not rescue a president besieged by one corruption scandal after another. Also, the improved economic conditions did not save Kim Dae Jung's public approval rate from tumbling, because reforms failed to alleviate the economic hardship felt by the lower class. All of this demonstrates that the public does separate economic and political issues and weigh them disproportionately in evaluating presidential performance.

We attempt to trace the Hyundai crisis back to its roots with the following questions in mind. What actions taken by the Hyundai Group since its birth contributed to Hyundai's post-1997 afflictions and to the split and the subsequent fall of the parent group? What changes in the corporate environment, in particular, the changes in business-government relationships, brought on by the national financial crisis of 1997 determined the Hyundai Group's fate? The Hyundai crisis was ultimately a test on whether the old business- government relationship could survive the new market environment generated by the 1997 financial crisis. In spite of the government's indecision and inconsistency, however, it was the government itself which eventually yielded and accepted the new market environment it had helped to create after 1997. The government reluctantly transferred the control rights of Hyundai Construction and Hynix Semiconductor to creditor banks via debt-equity swaps starting from March 2001.

This paper examines Japan's security policy after the September 11 terrorism, arguing that its response has been part of a larger process of redefining its security role in the Asia-Pacific region for the last decade. The passage of the 1992 Peacekeeping Law and the 1999 US-Japan security guidelines were an important part of the drastic changes. The paper also discusses the Japanese government's response to the September 11 terrorism, looking into the question of how the government sought to maintain a balance between military contributions to US-Japan security alliance and the restriction on the “threat and use of force” prescribed in the Constitution. Japan's recent pro-activeness toward Asia and entry into regional politics is also examined. The paper concludes by arguing that the combination of continued Japan's security relationship with the US and its strenuous efforts to enter Asian regional politics will be the first step toward real “normalcy” of Japan.