Korea and the Securitization of International Political Economy

Korea played an important role in the field of comparative development and international political economy, particularly in its apparently successful use of industrial policy. While issues of industrial policy continue to have importance, there has been a new turn in international relations and political economy toward the role that security calculations play in foreign policy making This focus has been motivated in large party by changes in China’s development strategy in a more statist direction. This chapter reviews five different questions raised in this new literature: the relationship between grand strategy and trade openness; the “weaponization of interdependence” and responses to it; the new emphasis on strategies of denial of critical technologies to adversaries; the role that industrial policy should play; and how these new efforts at securitization affect global and regional governance, including the nature of alliances relationships.