Integration of Non-Traditional Security Issues: a Preliminary Application to South Korea

Abstract

In the twentieth century, the state itself has become a major source of social and political values — especially for developing countries. Democracy, justice, equality and other values of the modern industrial state are part of the vision that inspires Third World leaders, but most developing countries see sovereignty and independence as nation-states as either recent acquisitions or yet incomplete goals. The project of state-building thus is particularly sensitive when the topic is cooperation or modification of autonomy. The US and other industrial states often demand concessions and compromise from developing countries, which are still at a nineteenth century level of state-building. Part of this conflict of vision — complete versus incomplete states — comes from the relationship between security and freedom, in that developing countries see liberal institutions of democracy more as post-industrial luxuries than as prerequisites to full industrialization. How can we build the mansion of individual liberties demanded by the US, the countries of the Third World ask, when we live in a hut of poverty and illiteracy? The Western reply is that prosperity and democracy are mutually reinforcing, but historical proof is difficult to find. In the case study of South Korea, development preceded democracy for more than a generation, and a longer period of gestation was needed in pre-war Japan, and had to be re-established after World War II.¹