The advance of globalization and regionalization has been widening and deepening the mutual relationships between Northeast and Southeast Asia, making, among other things, the cultural approach of the “Fairbank paradigm” that reduces the geographic scope of East Asia to Northeast Asia (China, Korea, Japan) and Vietnam on the basis of their common Confucian tradition, as too static in its stress on historical continuities. By contrast, the economic approach of the “World Bank paradigm”, extending the geographic scope of East Asia beyond Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia, presents a very dynamic in its focus on geopolitical, geo-economic, and geo-cultural changes.

Southeast Asian studies was “export-oriented” in the West due to its “language hegemony”, and an “import-substituted” in Northeast Asia because of its “language handicap”. In Northeast Asia different vernacular languages eclipse common Chinese characters, which were able to stimulate the development of “self-reliant” Southeast Asian studies. This inward-looking tendency seems most serious in Korea. Unlike China and Japan with close and long relationships with Southeast Asia, Korea lacked in any direct and formal relationships with Southeast Asia before the Korean War. With Korea preoccupied with “Four Powers” throughout the Cold War, Southeast Asia remained outside the academic interests of Korean scholars and researchers.

With the establishment of the Korean Association of Southeast Asia Studies (KASEAS) and its Southeast Asian Review in 1991, however, there had been considerable progress in the field of Southeast Asian studies in Korea. Its achievement in the last two decade has been quite phenomenal. However, Korea still suffers from a “comparative disadvantage ” becaue of its “late development.”

The works uploaded here reflect collective endeavors of KASEAS and its members to correct this imbalance and to “catch up.” The individual articles demonstrate common interests in the relationships between Korea and Southeast Asia in spite of their diverse disciplines, perspectives, subjects, and methods.

The issue also includes a roundtable discussion on the state of Southeast Asian studies in Korea. The panelists discussed a variety of topics, from the pioneering and enlightening, all aimed to showing how much knowledge has been accumulated and reflective upon. The panelists also underscored the need to expane the institutional bases of Korean Studies on Southeast Asia, and to deepen and broaden its research activities. The end of the Cold War accelerated the transition of East Asia from the “battlefield” of confrontation to a “marketplace” of competition. The regional and global economic crises of the 1990s led to a call for the “public space” of regional solidarity beyond the “marketplace” of national competition. This special edition is designed to contribute to an epistemic community of Southeast Asian studies for the vibrant public sphere of East Asia.

PARK Sa-Myung

Professor

Kangwon National University

Orientalism…is not just a complicated reworking of theories about imperialism or of ‘culture bias’: Said…uses the production of the ‘knowledge’ called ‘Orientalism’ to raise questions about the production of any knowledge, and the meaning of any interpretation in any scholarly discipline – Birch (1983, 12)

Edward Said’s Orientalism was a watershed in the development of area studies, the humanities, and the social sciences. Its publication in 1978 set off acrimonious debates across various fields that polarised the community. Over thirty years later, these debates have yet to fully settle.2 On one extreme side were scholars who seem to have misconstrued the message and/or approach of the book and dismissed it outright, say, as “three hundred pages of twisted, obscure, incoherent, ill-informed and badly written diatribe…” (Ryckman, 1984: 20). On the other end were those who were thoroughly captivated by it and hailed the book as, in the words of Gordon (1989: 93) “almost Koranic in…prestige”. In between are a range of scholars who critically and creatively engaged the book, including the postcolonial theorists such as Spivak and Bhabha who regard Orientalism as a foundational text on the one hand, and on the other, Ahamd (1992) and  San Juan (1998; 2000) who damned the book and postcolonial theorising in general.

Outside the Middle Eastern Studies, the response of the Asian Studies community in general was for long no more than lukewarm.3  In 1980, the Journal of Asian Studies carried a number of articles that reviewed the book. The reviews were mostly dismissive and some of them utterly missed the point. A few years later in 1983-1984, the ASAA Review, the counterpart of Journal of Asian Studies in Australia, published a number of articles that were also mostly scornful of Said’s book. Only a few commentators, such as Grafflin (1984), Birch (1983) and Robison (1983) showed a keen appreciation of  Said’s arguments and their radical implications.  Grafflin (1984: 30) may have overstated the case when he described the book as a “bomb that never exploded” but he was not far off the mark in claiming that owing to “a parochial Anglo-American bewilderment with the intellectual terms of his (Said’s)  inquiry, combined with reluctance to perceive any need for critical scrutiny…(f)ar too many Asianists…abandon Said on the shelf, unread”.

The past two decades saw the mainstreaming of the critique of Orientalism in at least certain sub-fields of Asian Studies. This is particularly true in the field of South Asian studies from where some of the best and clearest articulations of engagement with Said and his ideas emanated. Books such as Imagining India (Inden, 2000) and Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicaments (Breckenridge and Veer, 1993) and articles such as “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World” (Prakash, 1990) are very fine examples, to name but a few. As noted with concern by O’Hanlon and Washbrook (1992: 141), this has “become virtually a paradigm for a new generation of historians and anthropologists” in Indian studies.

The debates may have long been passé in various areas or disciplines—and many scholars have either ignored them right at the outset or have engaged with them but have moved on since then—but in others such as the Philippine and Indonesian Studies the out-in-the-open exchanges belatedly started and have yet to peak, if at all moving. The opening salvo was fired in 1999 when historian Reynaldo Ileto published an article entitled Orientalism in the Study of Philippine Politics that bitterly criticized the alleged American Orientalism in the study of Philippine politics.4 It created a stir within the community as gleaned from the hostile or bemused reactions it elicited, both published and by word of mouth (Azurin: 2002; Lande, 2002; Sidel, 2002). Simon Philpott’s (2000), Rethinking Indonesia appeared in 2000 serving functionally parallel purpose. Unlike Ileto’s piece, however, the responses to the book’s provocative assertions have been comparatively tame, if not really lukewarm .5

There are at least two reasons why the accusations of Orientalism in scholarly practice often generate bitter and defensive responses.6 First, it goes against the long-cherished belief held by many that good scholarship is at once rigorous and ‘objective’ and is able to resist or transcend the contaminating influences of the political environment. The charge of being an ‘Orientalist’ carries the implication of sloppy scholarship, something that easily offends scholars’ sensibilities.  Second,  Orientalism has been closely associated with colonial or neo-colonial project and scholars, in their good conscience, simply cannot accept the insinuation that they are privy to any move to jeopardize, control or exploit other people. I hope to show below that these views reflect less than accurate grasp of the nature of Orientalism.

In this essay, I seek to review Ileto’s and Philpott’s critiques of Orientalism in Philippine and Indonesian political studies. I should emphasise that my review of Philpott is focused not on the entire book but only on two chapters (Chapters 2 and 3) that articulate his interpretation and appropriation of Orientalism. These critiques are important for a number of reasons. First, they specifically focus on knowledge and scholarship as sites of political battle, thereby expanding the notion of the political in politics studies of the two countries.  By adjusting the analytic lenses, they include the analyst and the analytic tools they employ—hitherto assumed to be out of the political equation—among the key variable in political analysis.  Second, their deconstructive approach to analysis allows them to cast doubt on a number of canonical views and approaches in the Philippine and Indonesian politics studies, thereby opening up possibilities for new or different lines of inquiries. Third, they did what scholars in other fields have earlier done: explode the myth of innocence that for long the largely empiricist scholarships on the Philippine and Indonesian politics have been cloaked with. Fourth, by foregrounding the postcolonial theoretical and methodological insights long current in other fields, they blow fresh air into the politics studies of Indonesia and the Philippines. Finally, they raise a number of epistemological, methodological and ethical issues that scholars have to confront head on, if not really resolved.

What is the Orientalism that critics like Said, Ileto, Philpott and others have found objectionable? For Said, Orientalism means a number of interrelated things. First, it refers to a form of academic or intellectual discourse through which the ‘Orient’ is constructed in the minds of the Europeans. Second, it refers to system of thought based on “the ontological and epistemological  distinction between  the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Occident’” (1978:1) whereby the Orient was seen as Europe’s negative ‘Other’. Third, it pertains to the whole enterprise –academic, governmental, societal — that constitute and regulate all perceptions, assumptions, and practices that have to do with  the Orient.` Fourth, as a form of knowledge, it is driven by power and political interest rather than a detached pursuit of capturing reality.

In varying extent and styles, Ileto’s article and Philpott’s book rehearse these ideas in their critique of the allegedly lingering Orientalist discourses in their respective fields. Both point to academic discourse as the site of Orientalism. Both also take on the supposition that knowledge is power-driven but they differ on the question of whether this means distortion of reality or not. For Ileto it is a distortion and he offers a particular counter-example, which I will discuss below, as a model of a non-Orientalist analysis. For Philpott it does not follow, for he emphasizes more the creative, as opposed to the coercive, aspect of power as a mechanism that sets the condition of possibility for analysis. This effectively renders the question of accuracy of representation moot or immaterial.

Philpott is more emphatic than Ileto on the institutional character of Orientalism as a regulative medium for shaping discourses. Ileto, on the other hand, focuses on the essentializing character of the Orientalist discourse, and.underscores much more than Philpott does, the reificatory power of Orientalism in dichotomizing the East and the West. Finally, while both emphasize the persistence of Orientalism in the contemporary academic practice, Ileto ties the phenomenon to the colonial (and neo-colonial) bond between the US and the Philippines. In the absence of comparable link between the US and Indonesia, Philpott explores the post-war political and economic interests of the United States— the Cold War, modernization, development—for the roots or the enabling conditions of the lingering Orientalist discourse.

While Ileto and Philpott both deal with Orientalism, their emphases differ. Ileto talks about Orientalism that is closely tied to colonial relationship between American scholars and their object of analysis, the Filipinos and their politics. What underpin such Orientalism are the feelings of condescension towards the (former) colonial subject and the unspoken sense of superiority that persists among American scholars in the post-colonial period. He is equally emphatic, moreover, of the methodologies that underwrite the whole project, which mask the sinister character of such scholarly undertaking. He argues that contemporary American scholars of Philippine politics continue to follow the line of analysis as well as the patterns of attitude of their colonial predecessors. Such analysis, he avers, is anchored on the essentialist views of politics and culture in the Philippines and such views satisfy perfectly the need to present the Philippines as the backward, irrational  ‘Other’ of the progressive and rational US.

Philpott, on the other hand, was more concerned with the methodological rather than attitudinal aspect of Orientalism, although the latter was by no means totally absent. He argues that  “(t)he study of Indonesian politics … is treated as an object of knowledge that precedes the attempts of social science to know it, to elaborate it and to explain it.” It “constitutes the object it putatively describes and establishes the rules under which it is possible to make knowledge claims.” In other words, the discursive parameters set by the confluence of factors outside scholarship set the condition of possibility for the character of political studies about Indonesia being done by the American (and Australian) academic establishment. It thus says as much, if not more, about the US (or American scholarship and political interests) as about Indonesia that is supposedly simply the object of analysis.

From a methodological standpoint, what Ileto did in his article is a good lead to follow. He started with a penetrating analysis of a popularly received (in the US) Pulitzer-prize winning book on the history of Philippine-American relations, Stanley Karnow’s In Our Image (1990). He wonders what makes the book very appealing to the American public. Piece by piece he scrutinized the author’s main arguments and identified the analytic tools he used. The idea was to be able to trace the provenance of such assertions and the tools used for analysis. In so doing, he critically reviewed works that go to as far back as colonial scholarship, thereby drawing the parameter and showing the internal consistency of colonial discourse simmering just beneath American scholarship on Philippine politics covering the period up to mid-1990s. The exposition is neat and at the first glance compelling and the implications revealed are disturbing indeed. All major American scholars (of Philippine politics) are seen to be deeply implicated.

The same thing cannot be said of Philpott’s approach. The problem seems to start at the very conception of his frame of analysis. Rather than demonstrating clearly, he seems to have assumed the existence and the character of the discursive realm within which Indonesian politics discourse allegedly operate. In my view, his approach sees the cart overtaking the horse. Had he done, as Ileto did, a strategic or selective if not really comprehensive review of the literature (something he categorically stated as ‘unnecessary’) on Indonesian politics written by important American scholars, he could have avoided a number of problems. First, he could have shown the intertextual relationship, just like what Ileto has done, among the hegemonic (and other) texts. This is necessary to determine if there is indeed a discernible discursive realm and if there is, the boundaries may be clearly delineated. Second, he could have offered a firm basis for identifying hegemonic texts, thereby not relegating such justification to a little more than a footnote, merely citing people he consulted to help him decide which texts may be considered as hegemonic. Third, he could have not missed some subtle but nonetheless important nuances in the politics studies by American Indonesianist. For instance, his attack on the neglect of the communists/PKI in politics discourse dominated allegedly by Kahin misses Ruth McVey’s works on this area.

His decision to identify at the outset the five hegemonic texts, without demonstrating clearly the ways in which they are hegemonic, and subsequently base on them many of his assertions about the allegedly Orientalist nature of American scholarship on Indonesian politics raises in the mind of the reader questions and doubts about his claims. Without showing the inter-textual relationship among various texts, both hegemonic and not, it proved difficult for Philpott to establish the existence of the discursive realm constitutive of what he claims to be Orientalism in American politics studies of Indonesia. While his emphasis on extra-scholarship factors—Cold War era, and the interests of the American government and the funding agencies—is no doubt commendable, he hardly succeeded in establishing the connection between the dominant status of these agencies or institution and their supposed influence on the political discourses as may be reflected in the scholarly texts. He merely juxtaposed one with the other and from there he seemed to have assumed that the link was made.

While I endorse Ileto’s approach to discourse analysis, it is not without problems. Foremost of which is the danger of over-reading the texts and imputing meaning and intentions that can hardly be independently verified, even easily disproved. In addition to being speculative, it also tends to be teleological. The fact that an analyst assumes that there is such a coherent formation waiting to be uncovered somehow affects the way he/she treats empirical evidences. A scent of ‘conspiracy theory’ pervades analysis. For all the rejections of meta-narratives by the proponents of posties, with which critics of Orientalism are often associated, what seems to me re-inscribed through the backdoor is the presupposition that beneath every knowledge is a bundle of concealed power and interest connected by invisible nodes to other bundles, and the goal of the analyst is to expose the network, its contents and possible consequences. Question may be raised as to whether we ought to consider such a presupposition an indication of yet another meta-narrative.

There is also a tendency to totalize or over-generalize, the same sin the Said has been faulted both by admirers and detractors. Ileto, for instance, ignored the fact that there are American scholars who do not subscribe to, even were critical of, say, the clientelest framework which in his view formed one of the main pillars of American Orientalism. To note, Kervliet (1995) published an article specifically criticizing the limitations of patron-client relationship as frame of analysis. Ileto’s silence about Kerkvliet’s position cannot but intrigue.  His failure to extricate himself from a black and white mode of analyzing the works of  American scholars, his choice not to detect the various shades in the spectrum, inadvertently made himself open to the charge of essentialism.

Ileto’s identifying of a specific thread that underpins American scholarship on Philippine politics and links it to a certain attitude tied with colonial project, it seems to me, has all the air of essentialism.7 He has reified colonial experience and essentialized the colonial bond as the well-spring that can explain the character and perhaps also the intention of American scholarship on Philippine politics. One wonders if this is an avatar of Orientalism or a form of its inverse, Occidentalism. This tendency may have unconsciously, but I believe logically, emerged from the need to prove his point: that there is this coherent and overriding discursive domain called Orientalism within which studies done by American scholars make sense,  operate and do performative tasks beyond the purported aim of  capturing “reality”.

One can understand why it appears difficult for Ileto to present a more textured, more nuanced treatment of Philippine politics by American scholars. Doing so could cast doubt on the supposed coherence, if not the existence of such a discursive realm. Any crack on the purported wall of Orientalist American scholarship is bound to undermine the forcefulness of his critique. Thus, he was pressed to retreat to the totalizing, essentialising, reifying  mode – the very pitfall he bewails in the works of American scholars he considers as Orientalists.

On the other hand, I wonder if there is really enough space for him to maneuver and avoid such a trap. What happens to Ileto, as described above, is,  I suspect, something to be expected in many, if not all, attempts to describe and critique Orientalism, or perhaps any form of widely covering discourses for that matter.  I think any effort to pin down a broadly encompassing discourse such as Orientalism will require some form of essentialism, reification, overgeneralization and use of binary logic. Naming a concatenation of a wide array of phenomena and linking them to a certain set of causal agent, such as colonialism, makes it difficult to escape these ‘sins’ attributed to Orientalism. Lest we forget, the very act of analyzing requires the use to tools –language and logic—which may be at its essence essentialist.

Having said that, a caveat is in order. It can not be denied that the form of essentialism with which Orientalism has been closely associated is not totally the same as that inherent in language and logic.  The difference however, I submit, is less of substance than of degree and form.  The earlier type of essentialism eschews the reductionist and simplified explanation for things on the basis of the supposition that they are “overdetermined”. That is, the multiplicity of factors and the fluidity by which such factors interact preclude the possibility of identifying an essential cause at a particular moment.  The latter type of essentialism, on the other hand, is rooted in their function. For language and logic to work, each unit must be assumed to have at least one essential meaning. Otherwise, things would be messy and clear analysis would be impossible. The first operates on the macro level of overall explanation; the latter on the micro-level, in the tools utilised to produce such explanation.  Notwithstanding the difference, the extent of overlap is crucial in assessing scholarly pieces, particularly those that deal with the politics of knowledge production such as a critique of Orientalism.

Earlier, I may have created a wrong impression that put Philpott’s approach to discourse analysis as the negative ‘other’ of Ileto’s. A qualification is in order. Whereas Ileto’s acerbic tone and sweeping approach may appeal to audiences given to polemic, Philpott’s sobriety and indirection —which may disappoint as ‘lacking in bite’— carries through the message of the importance of the contexts, the extra-textual, out-of-scholarship, and broader political factors, in discourse formation. If Ileto focused more on the internal dynamics of the Orientalist discourse as they operate inter-textually, Philpott highlights the external, over-arching, subtle factors. In other words, their approaches complement each other. In addition, by looking closely into American Orientalism in the study of Indonesian politics, Philpott has shown clearly that Orientalism is not only confined to countries with colonial bonds, neither is it exclusive to colonial discourse. What Breckenridge and van der Veer (1993, 1) call the “postcolonial predicament”—stemming from the realization by scholars themselves  that scholarly practice is complicit in  preserving patterns of domination—is precisely what Philpott tries to address in his book.

One thing that Ileto’s critique does, and so does Philpott’s but to a lesser extent, is to reinforce the popular understanding that Orientalism is a particular form of knowledge that ‘Western’ scholars produced about Asia, and which can be avoided or transcended by ‘doing things right’. Ileto singles out Mojares’s article in the edited volume, The Anarchy of Families “The Dream Goes On and On: Three Generations of the Osmeñas, 1906-1990” as an alternative to what  he alleged to be an Orientalist scholarship of the American Philippinists (Mojares, 1994). The reasons for this endorsement are not difficult to accept. On the one hand, Mojares avoids the fairly common tendency to pin down the “nature” of Philippine politics. On the other had, he steers clear from creating the impression that local politics in Cebu is a microcosm of Philippine politics. Rather than indulge in building typologies, he is careful in highlighting the specificities of Osmeña family’s case. In his words, “The Osmeñas are an interesting case study of power maintenance…because they do not conform to certain stereotypes about political kingpin, or ‘warlords’, in the Philippines.” (Mojares 1994: 312) The portrait that emerges from his analysis is that of a political family that defies easy characterization offered by vocabularies or concepts such as political dynasty, clientelism, neo-patrimonialism, machine politics etc.

Mojares also examines closely the rhetoric of the Osmeñas and demonstrates that there is more to their pronouncements than mere self-serving posturing. For Ileto, a close scrutiny of the rhetoric—one thing the American Philippinists did not usually do and Ileto faults them for—is the key to seeing the nuances in political discourse and practices and to understanding Philippine politics in its own terms.  The failure of the American scholars to recognize the importance of rhetoric, so Ileto seems to argue, made them susceptible to viewing Philippine politics as the inferior other of the unspoken ideal, American politics. One indicator of this tendency is the American scholars’ predisposition to concentrate on the negative aspects of Philippine politics—violence, corruption, personality-centeredness, “irrationalism”–and regard these as key defining elements of the Philippine ‘political culture.’

While one can easily concede that Mojares has avoided many pitfalls of what Ileto regards as Orientalist scholarship by American Philippinists, it seems to me that his success is a matter of a degree, not of a kind. Rather than seeing Mojares’s approach as non-Orientalist qua non-Orientalist, it seems more accurate to say that his approach exemplifies a less Orientalist approach to political analysis.

As essentialism is a central feature of Orientalism, the first question to address is whether Mojares inadvertently commits the ’sin’ of essentialism. As earlier mentioned, Mojares consciously sought to avoid the typologies and stereotypes in the conventional analysis of Philippine politics. In his effort to do so, he presents a picture of the Osmeñas as different from others. In his words: ”The Osmeñas are distinctly twentieth-century politicians sired by a system in which power is won by the ballots” (318). It is from “their mastery of the instrumental aspects of electoral power building…(that) they draw their distinctive character as Filipino kingpins (320)… By temperament, the Osmeñas are atypical political patrons: autocratic and brisk in their interpersonal dealings, averse to gladhanding, generally colorless and methodic in their political rhetoric…They have transformed their take-charge, get-things-done manner into a kind of charisma…” (336) In short, much of Mojares’s article seeks to pin down the “nature of Osmeña politics” (318).

Notwithstanding Mojares’s explicitly stated proviso highlighting the contingency of the position that the Osmeñas occupy within the matrix of Philippine politics, his emphasis on their being an atypical Filipino political family is just a short leap away from the making of yet another typology or stereotype of political behavior among Philippine political actors. It would not be too far then to regard the “Osmeñas-type behavior” (Osmeña-ism?) as possibly another defining  element of Philippine politics, along with the long-standing features captured in the concepts such as clientelism, machine politics, bossism, neo-partrimonialism and political dynasty.  I wonder if what Mojares did in effect exemplifies the proposition that one essentialism can be neutralized only by another essentialism.

One other aspect in which Mojares’s analysis reeks of essentialism lies in his claim about  pulitika being different from politics, and here he drew from Ileto’s ideas. ”There is a gap between elite and popular construction of politics” so Mojares declared. (338) ”In the Philippines”, he further notes “pulitika is not politics…Rather it is that field politics largely constructed and dominated by the elite.” (339), While Mojares is quick to emphasize that “(t)he relationship between elite and popular conception of politics is not one of static opposition” (338), his effort to demonstrate the “popular” conception of politics by examining the Cebuano rhetoric (what Ileto suggests as necessary)  raises the red flag of  essentialism. The crucial point here is not that Mojares’s characterization of popular politics is false. The pertinent question is whether the notion of pulitika as he and Ileto characterize it can capture the complexity, fluidity and the range of variations that are immanent in the ‘popular,’ not to mention its opposite ‘elite politics’. His (and Ileto’s) very act of defining pulitika as different from politics imposes limits on the range of possibilities by which political actors, both the elite and the masses whose existential situation varies enormously depending on material conditions, construe political acts.

While it may be conceded that Mojares’s more acute understanding of Osmeña politics enabled him to provide a more nuanced and fluid treatment than what Sidel, Cullinane and McCoy, whom Ileto critiqued, managed to do, the fact that Mojares cannot but employ the same convention, language and logic of analysis effectively tied him to at least some of the ‘sins’ of Orientalism. This makes me wonder if Michael Birch’s perceptive observation expressed in 1983 was right. That is,  “Said…(was using) the production of the ‘knowledge’ called ‘Orientalism’ to raise questions about the production of any knowledge, and the meaning of any interpretation in any scholarly discipline.” (Birch, 1983: 12) In other words, the sins of attributed to Orientalism—essentialism, reification, binary logic, knowledge /knowledge, ‘othering’—may be built in within the logics and methods of scholarly practice.

If this is the case, then it does not matter whether knowledge is about Asia or not; whether it was produced by ‘Western’ scholars or not. At the bottom line, the questions to most pertinent to ask is not whether one’s analysis or narrative is Orientalist, but to what extent,  in what ways it may be, and, most importantly, for what purpose it is aimed at.

–

Rommel A. Curaming is Lecturer at the Department of History of University of Brunei Darusallam (UBD). Before joining UBD, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at National University of Singapore (NUS) and a Visiting Research Fellow at La Trobe University (LTU). He completed PhD in Australian National University (ANU). Email: rommel.curaming@ubd.edu.bn

References

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Azurin, Arnold Molina. 2002. “Orientalism? Privileged Vista Most Probably, Philippine Political Science Journal 23, no. 46

Birch, Michael. 1983. “Not enough Said,” ASAA Review 7, No. 1: 11-14

Breckenridge, Carol, Appadurai, and Peter van der Veer, eds. 1993. Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicaments: Perspectives on South Asia. South Asia seminar service. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.

Carey, Peter. 2002. “Indonesia in Transition: A Review Article,” Asian Affairs 33, no. 3: 359-364.

Dalrymple, William. 2004. “Lewis’ Revisited,” New York Review (November 4).

Eklöf, Stefan. 2005. Power and Political Culture in Suharto’s Indonesia: The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and the Decline of the New Order (1986-98). NIAS Press. January.

Gordon, David. 1989. Images of the West: Third World Perspectives. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield.

Grafflin, Dennis. 1984. “The Attacks on Orientalism,” ASAA Review 7, no. 3: 29-30.

Ileto, Reynaldo. 1999. Knowing America’s Colony: A Hundred Years from the Philippine War. Occasional Paper Series 13. Honolulu: Center for Philippine Studies.

Inden, Ronald. 2000. Imagining India. Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell.

Kerkvliet, Benedict. 1995. “Toward a more comprehensive analysis of Philippine Politics: Beyond the patron-client, factional framework,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 46, no. 2.

Lande, Carl. 2002. “Political Clientelism, Developmentalism and Postcolonial Theory: A Reply to Ileto, Philippine Political Science Journal 23, no. 46: 119-128.

landowner. 2005. “Academic Catfight: Juan Cole, Edward Said, Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer,” Daily Kos, July 11, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/11/15547/1092 (accessed January 20, 2010).

Lewis, Bernard. 1982. “Question of Orientalism,” The New York Review of Books, 29, no. 11.

Mabbett, Ian. 1983. “Orientalism: Enough Said,” ASAA Review 6. No. 3: 4-9.

Mojares, Resil. 1994. “The Dream Goes On and On: Three Generations of the Osmeñas, 1906-1990,” in An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines. Ed. Alfred W. McCoy. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

O’Hanlon, Rosalind and David Washbrook. 1992. “After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism and Politics in the Third World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 1: 141-67.

Philpott, Simon. 2000. Rethinking Indonesia: Postcolonial Theory, Authoritarianism and Identity. New York: Macmillan.

Prakash, Gyan. 1990. “Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2: 383-408.

Richter, Richard, 2004. “Islam and the West: Edward Said Slammed the Views on Islam expressed by V.S. Naipul and Bernard Lewis,” Islam in the West.

Robison, Richard. 1983. “Orientalism and Contemporary Writing on Southeast Asian Politics,” ASAA Review, 7, no. 1: 4-7.

Rubin, Andrew. 2004. “Edward W. Said’s Biography (1935-2003),” Arab Studies Quarterly, 26, no. 4.

Ryckman, Pierre. 1984. “Orientalism and Sinology,” ASAA Review 7, no. 3: 18-30.

San Juan, E. 1998. Beyond Postcolonial Theory. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

__________. 2000. After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippine-United States Confrontations: Pacific Formations. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Sidel, John. 2002. “Response to Ileto: Or, I am Not an Orientalist?” Philippine Political Science Journal 23, no. 46: 1290138.

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by Ronald D. Holmes

Ang mandato ninyo sa amin ay pagbabago – isang malinaw na utos para ayusin ang gobyerno at lipunan mula sa pamahalaang iilan lamang ang nakikinabang tungo sa isang pamahalaang kabutihan ng mamamayan ang pinangangalagaan.3

(President Benigno S. Aquino III, Inauguration Speech, June 30, 2010)

When Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III, or Noynoy, threw his hat into the presidential contest in September 9, 2009, a pundit labeled the decision as a game changer.4    Prior to the death of his mother, former President Cory Aquino on August 1, 2009, there were more than a handful of contenders who were angling for the presidency, whose voter preference shares remained relatively stable, except for the break of the then “front-runner”, Senator Manuel Villar, whose preference share went up by 11 percentage points from the May 2009 to the August 2009 survey.5

The electoral game change

The tone or complexion of the presidential contest did change when Senator Noynoy threw his hat into the ring.  While most of the contenders projected themselves as “good” relative to the “bad” that they imaged the outgoing President Arroyo to be, Senator Noynoy’s entry immediately cast light on just how “good” the so-called “opposition” candidates were, pitted against the son of the most “beloved”6 leader in contemporary Philippine history, the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.   Beginning with a slogan that he will continue the “struggle” led by his late parents, Aquino took on a more defined reformist-populist call, one that simplistically linked the prolonged issue of poverty with an equally longstanding malaise, corruption and subsequently asserted that Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.  This messaging distanced Senator Noynoy from the other main contenders, Senator Villar and former President Estrada.

Thus, Senator Noynoy’s campaign subsequently trained its guns not only against the Arroyo administration but also against the other contenders, specifically Senator Manuel Villar.   From rumors that Villar was the “real” candidate of the Arroyo administration (Villlaroyo) to resurrected allegations of Villar’s use of his position to favor the real estate firm that his family owned, the second running contender’s voter preference consistently declined.  The attacks against Villar escalated after a January 2010 Pulse Asia poll showed that the former Senate president closed in on Aquino, the latter with 37% of the voter preference while Villar garnered 35%, a statistical tie. An almost daily barrage of criticisms from what were purported to be Aquino-supportive media establishments and commentators ensued against Villar.  It did not help the Villar team that they were also suspected of having leaked fabricated reports about the alleged psychological state of candidate Aquino. From February 2010 until the elections, Sen. Aquino’s preferences remained steady, the game virtually decided by March 2010 as his voter preferences remained steady while Villar’s preferences incrementally declined.

Chart 1



Source:  Pulse Asia Inc., Pre-election and Ulat ng Bayan Surveys from October 2009 to May 3-5, 2010.

Indeed, then Senator Noynoy changed the complexion of the presidential race and subsequently won by a sizeable plurality.  If one were to look at how he sustained his presidential run and subsequently won the race, the simplest explanation is that he had projected himself as the antithetical persona relative to the outgoing president and those who were ranged against him.

High trust, optimism and expectations

In addition to the clear mandate, President Benigno S. Aquino III, who prefers to be called P-Noy obtained a record high trust rating of 85% in Pulse Asia’s July 2010 Ulat ng Bayan Survey.

In the same survey, Filipinos were generally optimistic about their quality of life, both at the personal level and the national quality of life.  For the first time from 1999, the year when Pulse Asia started its own tracking of expected changes in personal and national quality of life, majority of the Filipinos were of the belief that their personal and the national quality of life will be better in the next year.  In terms of improvement in their personal quality of life, 53% of Filipinos said it would be better in the next 12 months, 21 percentage points higher than the optimism recorded in Pulse Asia’s March 2010 survey.   As regards the national quality of life, 56% of Filipinos believed that this would be better by July 2011, a record high as Filipinos are generally more pessimistic about the prospective national compared to the personal quality of life in all surveys done since 1999.

In terms of expectations, the Pulse Asia July 2010 Ulat ng Bayan survey revealed that jobs, controlling inflation and combating corruption as the main issues that P-Noy should address in the first six months of his administration.



In the face of such record trust rating and optimism about their personal and national quality of life, and with the stipulated expectations on the part of his “bosses,” P-Noy definitely has his work cut out for him.   As regards the last, meeting these expectations, as well as fulfilling the promised reforms. P-Noy should be able to sustain his game changing prowess in the murky reality of Philippine politics.  The main question then is can the promised reforms under a P-Noy administration be attained?

To address this question, we begin by discussing the constitution of his cabinet and major pronouncements of P-Noy that will subsequently allow us to define how these policy directions indicate the over-all reform agenda of his administration.   We then discuss the developments in the first 100+days of P-Noy, the relationship with co-equal branches of government, and the major concerns that he confronted in the first few months since he assumed the presidency.    To provide a much more categorical response to the main question, we situate P-Noy in the overall structure, the historic and prevailing characteristics of Philippine politics, for these are the structure and attributes of the political system that the electoral game changing P-Noy would need to alter and if he fails, succumb to (if not, already surrendered to).

P-Noy’s first 100+ days

The P-Noy Team

The first order of business for P-Noy was to constitute the cabinet.   Though all the members of the cabinet are alter-egos of the President, the process of filling up the “presidential official family” still received so much attention, chiefly due to the belief that it will evince how coherent the policies will be under the administration and also mirror the breadth of competence and depth of character that P-Noy would be able to bring into his government.

The news at the start quoted P-Noy and his closest advisers that the vetting process had started and will be thorough, with all possible appointees to be screen by a committee that included former senior government officials, a member of his party, and even a sister of the President.   The first cabinet member to be named as Corazon “Dinky” Juliano Soliman, a non-governmental organization leader and former Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) under  President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PGMA).

Within a period of two weeks prior to his inauguration, the line cabinet positions were filled up in batches except for one position, the Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).   Interestingly, it was this position that became the subject of discussions as it was widely believed that the post was sought by the incoming Vice President, Jejomar “Jojo” Binay7.   However, the talk was that the position had been offered to the former Naga City Mayor, the Ramon Magsaysay awardee, Jesse Robredo.   What was puzzling was why he was not named as DILG secretary at the same time as the other appointees were.   Instead, P-Noy appointed one Undersecretary at the DILG, Rico Puno and assumed the DILG Secretary position concurrently.

Except for four secretaries8, all the other 16 heads of departments had prior experience in government, either at the national or local level, or in government owned and controlled corporations.  Only four of the cabinet members have held  prior elective positions.   In a sense, P-Noy replicated the predominantly professional-technocratic composition of previous cabinets under former presidents Fidel Valdez Ramos and Joseph Erap Estrada.9

“Delivered” promises

From his Inauguration Address to the State of the Nation, P-Noy has articulated what he sees to be his position and role as well as the direction or that his administration should pursue.

In his Inaugural Address, P-Noy labored to put himself in the same position as the ordinary Filipino.   After stating a series of day-to-day experiences10 that highlighted how those in power have been callous of the plight of the ordinary citizen or simply abusive in the exercise of the privileges that come with their position, P-Noy declared that he was just like any ordinary Filipino—Katulad ninyo ako (I am like you).   This led him to say that:

“The mandate given to me was one of change. I accept your marching orders to transform our government from one that is self-serving to one that works for the welfare of the nation.”

Towards the end of his address, P-Noy pledged that no one shall be left behind (Walang Maiiwan) and, in a deliberate way, emphasized that Filipinos are his bosses (Kayo ang boss ko).

For his first State of the Nation Address (SONA), P-Noy began with a differentiation of the path his administration will take from the road that the previous administration trekked.  In his words:

“Our administration is facing a forked road. On one direction, decisions are made to protect the welfare of our people; to look after the interest of the majority; to have a firm grip on principles; and to be faithful to the public servant’s sworn oath to serve the country honestly.  This is the straight path. On the other side, personal interest is the priority, and where one becomes a slave to political considerations to the detriment of our nation. This is the crooked path.”

For a sizeable portion of the first half of the SONA, P-Noy belabored how the previous administration took the crooked path, from the fact that only 6% of the 2010 budget was left to spend for the remaining six months of the year, the misallocation of the calamity fund, the excessive perks paid out to officials of government owned and controlled corporations, and even a case that proves how those who should pay taxes have escaped prosecution.

The SONA also provided a clear indication of the immediate steps that the P-Noy administration will take, as follows:

Implementation of Zero based budgeting to take out unjustified/wasteful expense

Establishment of a Truth Commission to investigate the anomalies of the past nine years

Promotion of public-private partnerships to improve basic infrastructure

Increasing the competitiveness of the school age population by extending basic education from 10 to 12 years

Expansion of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, though effective targeting under the National Household Tracking System, and the allocation of a larger budget to cover an estimated 5 million Filipinos

Extension of Philhealth membership to all Filipinos in a span of 3 years

Resumption of peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF)

In terms of statutes, P-Noy called on Congress to deliberate on and subsequently pass a number of measures, namely:

Fiscal Responsibility Bill

Amendment to the Procurement Law

Anti-Trust Law

National Land Use Bill

Amendment of the National Defense Act

Whistleblower’s Bill

To facilitate the passage of these bills, P-Noy promised that he will call for the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) at the soonest possible time.

Aside from those articulated in these two major addresses, P-Noy also articulated a number of other initiatives or thrusts from the period of the campaign and in other public briefings.  A media outfit listed over a hundred of these “promises”, with around 85% still to be done as of early October 2010.11

In general, P-Noy’s first SONA address did not depart from the addresses of previous presidents, specifically former President Arroyo.  As one article pointed out:

“Both presidents vowed to probe their predecessor, eliminate
corruption in government, complained of huge deficit, pushed for the same solutions, and asked Congress for similar measures.”12

More than the  similarity between what P-Noy delivered in his SONA and the statements of the president his administration, or the Truth Commission will probe, what is glaringly absent in all of P-Noy’s major policy speeches is what he intends to do to reconfigure a political system that has allowed or led every political leader to trek the crooked path, from the perils of presidentialism (e.g., the imminent abuse of executive power, horse trading with or worse, gridlock politics with the legislature), the weaknesses of political parties, the distortion of systems of representation, and the limitations or consequences of a unitary system.

Actions speak louder than words: events and issues prior to and within the first 100+ days

In his first few months in office, or even prior to assuming the position, P-Noy had confronted a number of issues that somehow indicate the will, capacity, substance and clarity of direction of the continually popular but already increasingly challenged Chief Executive.

Of the developments that occurred within the first few months of P-Noy’s administration, the most significant are the following:

Continuous tussle with the Supreme Court

Building and sustaining support from Congress

Tussling with the Supreme Court

When the Supreme Court issued a recent ruling that ordered the status quo ante to apply to a petitioner who was replaced due to an Executive Order13 that rescinded former President Arroyo’s midnight appointments,  P-Noy issued a statement deploring the decision and linked the Supreme Court’s decision on the midnight appointments with its earlier decision that prevent the House of Representatives from acting on the impeachment complaints against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.  Asserting that he had kept his silence when the Supreme Court prevented the House from continuing with its impeachment proceedings.  P-Noy underscored that the:

“recent action of the Supreme Court tests the limits of its constitutional authority, and this latest order could precipitate a clash with another separate, co-equal branch of government.”

P-Noy’s statement prompted a reaction from the Supreme Court’s Administrator.   In his statement, the SC Court administrator stressed that judicial review is a “duty imposed by the Constitution” on the court and it “cannot shirk this duty.” At the end of the statement, the Court administrator somehow took a potshot at the Executive when he said:

“Rest assured that we have a Supreme Court which is not governed by passing emotions or daily polls, but by the Rule of Law, serving not the special interest of the few, but the best interest of all, committed not to self-preservation, but to the preservation of those great constitutional principles bequeathed by history.”

The tussle between P-Noy and the Supreme Court was imminent.   From the outset, P-Noy had shown a degree of distrust towards the Court, especially with the appointment of Chief Justice Renato Corona.   Soon after the appointment of the Chief Justice, then president-apparent Aquino quickly remarked that he will not be sworn in by the new Chief Justice and that he will review the steps to be undertaken to rescind the appointment.    In his inaugural address, P-Noy even did not specifically recognize the Chief Justice unlike all the other heads of co-equal branches of government present.

While the inter-personal relations between P-Noy and the Chief Justice may have started on the wrong footing, what is more important is that the Supreme Court has been asked to resolve issues whose resolution may draw responses from P-Noy that would further worsen the tussle.  These issues include the disposition of the dispute between tenant farmers and the owners of Hacienda Luisita and two other Executive Orders (1 and 7) whose constitutionality have been questioned before the High Court.14  Adding a bit of fire to what has been a testy relationship was the exchange between the Supreme Court and the Executive on what the former believed to be a cut in its 2011 budget proposal.15

Building and sustaining support in Congress

While the Executive’s relationship with the Supreme Court has been caustic, its interaction with the other co-equal chamber, Congress, has been relatively collaborative.  The collaboration comes despite the fact that P-Noy still has to convene the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC).   A fairly recent indicator of the support that P-Noy enjoys from Congress is the passage by the Lower House of the 2011 Appropriations Bill on second reading, after what the House leadership describes as a process where the:

“scrutiny of the budget was meticulous, down to the smallest but important detail. But the statesmanship of our legislators prevailed over partisan interests, that’s why we passed the proposed budget, great stumbling blocks notwithstanding.”16

Though P-Noy has had vocal critiques in the two chambers of Congress, with the former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo questioning the increased funding for the conditional cash transfer and with Senator Joker Arroyo and Miriam Defensor Santiago, both belonging to the minority, challenging the necessity of constituting the Truth Commission, he does have the support of the majority in both houses, with 248 out of 278 congressmen in the Lower House belonging to the majority coalition and with 19 of the 23 senators comprising the majority in the Upper House.

To ensure support in both houses of Congress, P-Noy has had to rely on coalition building strategies that do not depart from practices of preceding presidents. For example, the leadership of the Senate had to go to a member of another political party, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino, when stalwarts of the Liberal Party, specifically Senator Francis Pangilinan and re-elected Senator Franklin Drilon, could not obtain the support of the majority of the members of the upper chamber.  Coming from the institution, P-Noy simply allowed his erstwhile colleagues to determine who should lead the chamber.

In the Lower House, P-Noy had to rely on a relatively new member of the Liberal Party, the former Executive Vice President of LAKAS-KAMPI-CMD (LKC), former Quezon City Mayor Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte, in order to form a coalition that carries a wide breadth of color that is reminiscent of the “rainbow coalition” established by former Speaker Jose de Venecia of what was then a minor party,  LAKAS-NUCD,  in  the 9th Congress.  At the start of the 15th Congress, the Liberal Party membership comprising 73 members in the Lower House solidly stood behind Speaker Belmonte House Leadership, and were joined by 64 members of  LKC, 31 members of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) and 21 members of the Nacionalista Party (NP).  The minority bloc of 30 members, led by Congressman Edcel Lagman, drew 24 members from the LKC and 2 from the NP, with the remaining four coming from 3 party list groups and an independent.

The first test of the type of support that P-Noy elicited from Congress came by way of the deliberation of the proposed 2011 budget.   With a budget message that the proposed Appropriations Act is a reform budget and with earlier pronouncements that his administration will maintain fiscal prudence, the “compromise”  arrived at between the leaders of the Lower House and the Budget secretary expanded rather than limited the use of the Priority Development Assistant Fund (PDAF).    With an original allocation of P 70 million per member of the Lower House, two party-list legislators17 who are part of the majority decried the “compromise” reached between the House and the Executive that is alleged to provide an additional P 50 million for each representative and P 25 million for District representations from the Road Users Tax.  While House Speaker Belmonte and Eastern Samar representative Ben Evardone explained that the additional P 50 million allocation will not in any way be determined by the District representatives, Speaker Belmonte’s admission that there was a four-page menu agreed upon from where Representatives can select where to allocate their “pork barrel” funds somehow affirms the fear of one party-list legislator that the new arrangement may just make congressional offices more corrupt.

The next test as to whether P-Noy could obtain support from Congress will be in the confirmation of his appointments to cabinet positions.   Deferred until Congress resumes sessions in November 2010, the possibility of cabinet member facing some serious grilling from select members of the Commission on Appointments (CA) could not be ruled out.   In similar situations in the past, the President is expected to at least affirm his ad-interim appointee and take every channel necessary to have the confirmation push through.   At present, the CA, headed by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, has some members who have been either critical of P-Noy’s earlier decisions or who have been some of the most vociferous defenders of the preceding administration.  Of the 25 member CA, 6 members belong to the LP, the same number of CA representatives that the formerly dominant LKC has in the Commission.

A quirky crisis

The hostage taking incident of August 23, 2010, that led to the death of the hostage taker, Police Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza, and eight tourists brought forth the first crisis that P-Noy’s administration had to deal with.   In the aftermath of the hostage taking incident, several flaws were uncovered, not only pertaining to the ineptness of the law enforcement agency and the local government unit that should have effected better coordination, but also questions as regards the competence of P-Noy himself to intervene appropriately in such a critical incident.     The incident became a crisis largely because of the reaction of the Chief Executive and the peoples of Hong Kong-Special Administrative Region (HK-SAR) of the People’s Republic of China where more than 140,000 Overseas Filipino Workers are currently deployed.

Reports after the tragic ending of the hostage taking incident alleged that P-Noy failed to receive a call made by the HK-SAR Chief Executive.  Though P-Noy eventually denied that he nor his staff received such call and insisted that such, if indeed made was out of protocol, this did not stop Mr. Tsang from airing his disappointment that he failed to get hold of P-Noy.

Nonetheless, P-Noy continued to assuage the HK-SAR officials and people. In an official statement issued on August 24, 2010, P-Noy expressed his deepest condolences to the families of the deceased victims and extended the country’s deep feeling of sorrow to the Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China and the Hong Kong SAR government.  He also ordered the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Jesse Robredo and Department of Justice Secretary (DOJ) Leila de Lima, to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.18 Malacanang also announced that Vice President Jejomar Binay and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary Alberto Romulo were to proceed to Hong Kong to meet with HK-SAR Chief Executive Tsang.  The visit did not push through.  In a statement issued on August 26, the Department of Foreign Affairs revealed that the Department was still “awaiting arrangements from the Chinese side to ensure that the mission of the high-level delegation to Hong Kong to officially explain what happened during Monday’s hostage-taking incident is achieved.”

Though P-Noy was not deficient in having the public know what transpired, what steps the government will take, and gave the assurance that all those responsible will be made to answer for any deficiency, his eventual statements and decisions continued to spark a negative reaction from HK-SAR authorities.  When P-Noy divulged in a Presidential Panel Discussion, held on September 9, 2010 and aired live in major networks, that he received an insulting letter from a HK-SAR official whose name he will not reveal, HK-SAR Chief Executive Tsang reacted that he did send a letter to P-Noy that in no way was insulting.  The last reaction from HK-SAR came after P-Noy decided on the steps to be taken after a review of the Incident Investigation Review Committee (IIRC).   In an official statement, the HK-SAR officials stressed that:

“Hong Kong people expect the Philippine Government to handle the question of responsibility of the officials and persons involved in a fair manner, and follow through the required actions seriously. The Philippine Government decided to lessen the recommended actions against the relevant officers named in the first report by the Incident Investigation and Review Committee. The people of Hong Kong, especially the survivors and the victims’ families, will find this hard to accept. The Hong Kong SAR Government is also disappointed. We ask that the Philippine Government follow through the required actions. The eventual actions to be taken against the persons involved must live up to their pledge to be accountable to the public. That is also what is owed to the dead and the injured. We will convey our views to the Philippine Government through proper channels.”19

Though this disappointment is expected from the HK-SAR officials, the same disappointment has been expressed by groups in the country, dismay rooted in the belief that P-Noy basically reduced or freed from any significant liability individuals that were found by the IIRC as liable for gross neglect of duty, specifically those who were close to him, a decision that departed from his commitment to have every person found culpable by the IIRC answer for their deficiencies. A published report even alleged that P-Noy, upon receiving the first IIRC report, remarked that “Napatapang ‘ata masyado ah. Bakit kasama pa sila Puno, Lim, at Verzosa?” [It’s too strongly worded. Why are we implicating Puno, Lim and Verzosa?].”20  The three named officials are known to either be personally close (Lim and Puno) with P-Noy or supported by P-Noy’s ally (Puno on Verzosa).   Though the exact alleged statement of P-Noy is hard to validate21, one aspect of the report, that P-Noy ordered only a partial release of the report and another review of the IIRC report before taking action on the recommendation, were indeed undertaken.   The partial release of the report drew a dissatisfied response from IIRC Co-chair Leila de Lima who subsequently admitted that she entertained the idea of resigning from her Justice Secretary portfolio when the IIRC report was sent for another review by the Executive Secretary and the Chief Presidential Legal Counsel.22

ASSESSING P-NOY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR REFORM

Public and pundits’ assessment

After completing 100 days in office, several assessments of P-Noy’s performance have been released.  The survey polling organization, Social Weather Stations (SWS) reported that in its survey conducted just a few days shy of the 100th day of P-Noy, the Chief Executive got a satisfaction rating of 71%, as against 11% dissatisfied.   Comparing P-Noy’s ratings with the presidents after EDSA 1, P-Noy matches the first Net Satisfaction Rating (NSR) of former President Estrada but is topped by the +66% NSR of former President Ramos.23



The assessment from political commentators and other political groups, however, differ from the level of satisfaction from the Filipino public.   Doronila, for example, labels the Chief Executive as a “lazy presidency” as he assessed P-Noy’s 100 day accomplishment report24 as something that:

“reinforce the growing public perception that the Aquino administration is a lazy presidency that loathes hard and sustained planning aimed at delivering results rather than platitudes that are easy to mouth.

To be specific, can anyone cite any legislation ever initiated during the first 100 days that sought to translate into action the wishes of Mr. Aquino and to demonstrate its administrative competence to manage the economy? What has been demonstrated so far is that the administration has been found inept in responding to crisis arising from emergencies related to law and order and security. It has proved to be an administration stumbling into ad hoc responses to emergency situations.”25

Congressional leaders, on the other hand, varied in terms of their assessment of P-Noy’s 100 days, some praising him for “leading by example,” others underscoring the lack of any concrete measure of achievement.26   As expected, militant groups, such as the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) and a multisectoral group, Pagbabago (People’s Movement for Change), were one in expressing disappointment towards P-Noy.27 BAYAN Secretary General Renato Reyes warned that  “with no meaningful changes, the luster of yellow may be fading faster than he thinks.”

P-Noy in the Vortex of prevailing and prolonged Philippine Reality

Joel Rocamora, now the Convenor of the National Anti-poverty Commission (NAPC) once remarked that the Philippines has been “the most persistently undemocratic democracy in Asia.”28  Rocamora identified two key elements of this “undemocratic democracy,”, namely: elite dominance and the low level of political participation.29   He proceeds to pinpoint two other characteristics that have been given much more attention by other scholars30 who have examined the dynamics of Philippine politics—clientelism and violence.   Add to this the prevalence of predation, especially ascendant in the previous administration with many of the current political leaders aligned with P-Noy as beneficiaries, alongside the infirmities of the obtaining presidential-unitary system, and one can be led to conclude that the chances of a significant change in the prevailing game of Philippine politics under P-Noy appears remote.

This response does not mean to denigrate P-Noy’s own capacity and commitment to reform.   We merely recognize relevant insights about political change offered by path dependence theory, as follows:

Political arrangements are unusually hard to change given the complexity and opacity of politics. Once established, basic outlooks on politics, ranging from ideologies to understandings of particular aspects of governments or orientations toward political groups or parties, are generally tenacious. They are path dependent.

Political actors find learning very difficult and such learning is conditioned by short-term/election oriented horizons of political leaders.  Political actors, especially politicians, are often most interested in the short-term consequences of their actions; long-term effects tend to- be heavily discounted. The principal reason is the logic of electoral politics. Because the decisions of voters are taken in the short run, elected officials generally employ a high discount rate. They will pay attention to long-term consequences only when these become politically salient or when they have little reason to fear short-term electoral retribution.31

Though we believe that there is some clarity in what P-Noy aims to achieve, with the emphasis on transparency in government as well as the priority placed on providing the fundamental means to improve the material existence of Filipinos (specifically the emphasis on jobs and the heightened spending on education [to improve social mobility] and in poverty alleviation [through the conditional cash transfer], steering clear of advocating concrete changes in the formal institutions of representation and accountability, will eventually weaken P-Noy’s hands.   Though proposing any constitutional or major statutory change may be costly for P-Noy, perhaps even opening the floodgate for some opposing elements to push for reforms that may even be counteracting P-Noy’s own agenda, such as a shift to parliamentary government that was bruited about as a strategy that allies of the former administration will take to regain power by 2013, P-Noy’s lack of attention on the issue of political reform is just too bewildering.

What is apparent in P-Noy’s first months in power is that he has not given any attention to building an instrument that could prove to be effective in distilling policy options and in institutionalizing his links with citizens, the political party.  A member of the Liberal Party, the only party among the post-EDSA party that took serious steps towards becoming a programmatic organ, P-Noy has drawn only one member32, Florencio “Butch” Abad, to his cabinet.   While the LP is said to be represented in a faction referred to as the Balay33 group, including former Arroyo government officials under the Hyatt 1034, the faction is distinct from the party and is harder to manage. If P-Noy is really bent in changing the nature of policy making, especially in what are supposed to be deliberative institutions, the two houses of Congress, it will be best if he uses his influence in ensuring that the party’s “line” is adhered to by his current roster of partymates in Congress, and even in the local government units.    Though the presidential system does not make for party-government, there are other modalities available for P-Noy to truly build a programmatic party, even for the LP which in recent history has experienced a bit of discord.35

P-Noy’s current base of support, from Congress, the local government units36, and in his own Executive team, is as fluid as that of previous dispensations and will definitely swing depending on the “popular tide.” While the majority blocs in both houses of Congress are supportive of the President, these blocs have within their ranks a roster of traditional politicians who can be vociferously critical should they feel that they are not getting the resources required for their own political survival.    How long P-Noy could keep their support will depend less on P-Noy’s resolute campaign to take a straight path and more on the Chief Executive or his designate’s willingness to reach a compromise, as shown in the ongoing budget deliberations.  Though P-Noy’s initiatives in pushing for universal health care coverage, building more schools and classrooms in the rural areas, rationalizing the distribution of key infrastructure in undeveloped rural areas, and the depoliticized targeting of conditional cash transfer recipients through a National Household Tracking System will court the support of many local government leaders, the fact remains that many of the LGU leaders, for example more than half of the provincial governors37, remain affiliated with “parties” whose leaders are unabashedly undemocratic.

P-Noy’s hands in the first few months of his administration have actually been tied down by institutional arrangements.  At least two developments in the past months indicate P-Noy’s vulnerability to the dynamics between the Executive and two institutional veto players38—the Supreme Court and Congress. As discussed in the previous section, the first three Executive Orders of P-Noy have all been brought to judicial review with one, Executive Order No. 2, partially rescinded in the reinstatement of a “midnight appointee.”   As regards Congress, the “compromise” reached in the Lower House on the disposition of the “pork barrel,” undeniably mirror that the straight path that P-Noy envisioned to take is strewn with barriers that compel him to submit to political considerations.

Speaking of political consideration, P-Noy’s grant of amnesty to coup plotters under the previous administration, has also been viewed as one that involved political accommodation. Though we do not necessarily concur with the view of a pundit that labeled P-Noy as “coddling coup makers39” and would be even willing to grant that the proclamation was meant to bring forth “national reconciliation,” we are reminded of how this amnesty may be rooted in a problematic feature of Philippine political culture, something that P-Noy is also trapped in, the high value given to forgiveness and reconciliation, as noted and lamented by Lande,:

“particularly when it comes to offenses against the state… Forgiveness in private affairs is a virtue, and public forgiveness of those who have committed offenses against the state may be good policy if they have repented of their offenses. But indiscriminate forgiveness of those who, having plotted against the state, show no remorse and make clear their intention to repeat their offenses at their first opportunity, is hardly in the public interest.”40

Beyond institutional constraints, the other cause for concern pertains to P-Noy’s own qualities and style of leadership.   While P-Noy has so far exhibited a laudable degree of faithfulness to perhaps the only unassailable characteristic—personal incorruptibility, this attribute has its limits and cannot propel sustainably the idealized change.  Moreover, certain qualities of P-Noy have also brought forth serious questions about his own capacity to sustain popular support, in general, and mobilize the cooperation of other political leaders or even for his cabinet to produce well thought of policies, in particular.

For one, P-Noy has shown a pre-dilection to attribute all problems confronted to the previous administration. As the efficacy of this blame shifting strategy is expected to wane soon and in specific cases, would not be salient as the issues are far more current to heap the blame on the prior administration, P-Noy will need to assume accountability for having difficulty in effectively addressing prolonged or new problems.

P-Noy has also shown some signs of being too personalistic, favoring those with whom he has had close and long personal ties, being intolerant of people who had shown some insensitivity to his own whim or style, and being unforgiving of those that he simply did not know much. While the evidence is anecdotal, the benefit of doubt that he conferred on DILG Undersecretary Puno, the acting appointment of DILG Secretary Robredo, and the “sacking” of former weather forecasting agency head Frisco Nilo, are examples of the consequences of being too close, too demanding, or too oblivious to P-Noy’s personal whim.

Robredo’s appointment as acting secretary of Interior and Local government deserves more attention.   Perhaps the most experienced in P-Noy’s cabinet, a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for leadership, an innovator in local governance who has institutionalized people’s participation, a leader unsullied despite his blood ties with a political clan in his province, ties which he had not in any way relied on for his own electoral successes, Robredo’s credentials are the type that would easily gain for him an appointment in any vetting process.    It was thus shocking, at least for some of P-Noy’s supporters that Robredo was simply designated in an acting capacity, and in hindsight, was appointed way after his politically designate Undersecretary was put in office.  What is even more alarming, is that P-Noy, though he perhaps had every right to do so, defined the domain that Robredo should work on, separating the turf, police affairs, that he had assigned to a long-time friend, Puno.

P-Noy’s appointees to other key cabinet positions also happen to be people he had worked with for long or had significantly contributed to the campaign.   Key appointees are believed to be part of one of two factions mentioned above that one commentator decried as being engaged in ”open, crude warfare that lacks the sophistication of the old.”41  Another commentator reminded P-Noy of the need to systematize the process of decision making in the Executive, to avoid the folly of George W. Bush, who in one recent book was described as “inexperienced and opaque” leader such that policy was made by “guessing his whims.”42

It is far too early to render a definitive judgment on the prospects of change under a P-Noy administration.   For now, however, the prospects appear dim given that P-Noy has not taken steps to directly wrestle with institutions, processes and practices whose maintenance make for increasing returns for those who thrive under the status quo.

OH Myung Seok; KIM Hyung-Jun; CHOI Horim; CHO Hung-Guk;

CHOI Byung Wook; KIM Young Aih; PARK Sa-Myung; JEONG Yeonsik;

PARK Eunhong; BAE Geung-Chan; PARK Bun-Soon; JEON Je Seong∗1

I. Introduction

This paper summarizes the discussions of “Southeast Asian Studies in Korea since the 1990s: Review and Reflection by Disciplines”, a special panel discussion at the biannual conference of the Han Kuk Dong Nam Ah Hak Hoi (韓國東南亞學會: Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, KASEAS) on 27 October 2007. Eleven scholars had an unusual opportunity to discuss a single topic for about four hours from 10 am to 3 pm, excluding the lunch break. One of the reasons why such an occasion was organized was to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of the Southeast Asian Review (Dong Nam Asia Yeon Gu). The launch of the Southeast Asian Review in October 1992 was a flare, signalling the launching of a serious research body devoted to Southeast Asian Studies in Korea. Since then, Southeast Asian Studies in Korea has achieved both quantitative and qualitative growth despite an unfavourable research environment. It was the idea of the Chairman and other members of the board that the best way of celebrating this event would be to have a conference, to seek a new direction of our studies by reviewing and reflecting on our past academic trajectories. The participants agreed to keep a record of the discussion in a summarised document format.

The presenters of the panel were asked to submit a written summary of their fifteen-minute presentations. All the presentations were videotaped and audio recorded and then transcribed later. Presented papers that followed our guidelines closely were reproduced as they were written, whereas papers that were either too long or too short were edited by the presenters themselves, based on the transcription of the presentation and the discussion. Dr. JEON Je Seong, Director of Research of the KASEAS, summarized the discussion of each paper, wrote an introduction and edited the overall paper. The final draft was reviewed and approved by all the participants, as well as Dr. OH Myung Seok, Chairman of the KASEAS, and Dr. PARK Seung Woo, the Editor of the Southeast Asian Review.

We hope that this paper, which is a record of these voices, which have gone through a laborious process of hard work, will remain as a historical document of review and reflection not only for the development of Southeast Asian Studies in Korea but also for that of Area Studies in general. We also extend our comradeship and appreciation towards all the presenters, who wholeheartedly supported our idea and spared their time and efforts to contribute to this cause.

II. Southeast Asian Studies among Korean Anthropologists

Overview

OH Myung Seok (Seoul National University): I would like to give you an overview of the Southeast Asian studies conducted by anthropologists in Korea since the 1990s. There are two aspects that I would like to focus on. Firstly, who among Korean anthropologists studies Southeast Asia? Secondly, what are the major characteristics of the results of their research in terms of their themes and perspectives?

There would be no problem if I were to argue that research on Southeast Asia by Korean anthropologists began in the 1990s. There were few such studies before then. But this was not a unique trend which was limited to anthropological research in Southeast Asian studies in Korea. Until the 1980s, Korean anthropologists thought that choosing Korea as their field of study was the most natural choice that they could make. There were some scholars who worked on areas other than Korea before the 1980s, but there was a general stream of thought among Korean anthropologists that they should study Korea. However, there was a huge shift of research focus from Korean culture to foreign cultures. An increasing interest in Southeast Asia among Korean anthropologists has run parallel with this wider context.

Out of over 100 anthropologists with doctorate degrees in Korea, 59 of them, or nearly 60 percent, received their degrees for their research on other cultures. This phenomenon may be taken for granted but, in fact, it reflects the peculiarity of Korean anthropology. Studying foreign cultures among American and European anthropologists is not unusual, and this is also the case in Japan. However, most anthropologists from the Third World study their own cultures; not many of them study other cultures. In this regard, the fact that many Korean anthropologists work on foreign cultures is unique. If we narrow it down to those who have earned their degrees since the 1990s, those who worked on other cultures outnumber those who studied native Korean culture. Now, working on foreign cultures seems to be a general trend in Korean anthropology.

There are 14 scholars who worked on Japan, 11 on Southeast Asia, 10 on China and nine on the USA. About half of those whose area of study was the USA focused on Korean immigrants in the USA. In addition, several others worked on India, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The percentage of scholars who wrote their doctoral dissertations on Southeast Asia among the scholars who studied foreign cultures is about 20 percent, and this group is the second largest, following those who worked on Japan. But it is likely to be surpassed by the group of scholars who work on China for their doctoral dissertation, since its popularity is growing fast. Among 11 Southeast Asianists, six received their degrees in the 2000s. Therefore this is a quite recent phenomenon and, considering several others who are preparing their doctoral degrees with their work on Southeast Asia, the number is likely to increase. Looking at the countries where these eleven scholars earned their degrees is quite interesting and the result shows a degree of diversity. Four of them received their degrees from Korea, two from the USA, two from Australia, one from Britain and two from Southeast Asian countries. The fact that only two of them earned their degrees from the USA is exceptional, as a majority of Korean anthropologists working on other cultures (than Southeast Asia) study and receive their degrees in the USA. However, considering the current trends of overseas education of Korean doctoral students, there will be more U.S.-educated scholars in the future. In terms of the research area of doctoral dissertations, Indonesia had the largest number (four scholars, Kang Yoonhee, KIM Ye-Kyoum, KIM Hyung-Jun, CHO Youn-Mee), but it is fairly evenly distributed among other Southeast Asian countries: Vietnam (CHAE Suhong, CHOI Horim), Malaysia (OH Myung Seok, HONG Seok-Joon), Thailand (KIM Yi Seon, LEE Sang-kook), and the Philippines (KIM Min Jung). No one has yet written a doctoral dissertation on Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Indonesia has a relatively greater number of specialists, but the depth of experts on all Southeast Asian countries still remains shallow.

These eleven scholars form a very homogeneous group. Most of these scholars are alumni of the Department of Anthropology at Seoul National University, at least for either their bachelor’s or their graduate degrees. Also, many of them belong to the so-called ‘386 generation,’ who attended universities in the early 1980s and share the same Zeitgeist. This group characteristic helps them maintain a close intimacy with one another. However, precisely because of this, they tend to have similar ideas and sometimes show a problem of scholarly ‘inbreeding’; they may avoid harsh criticism of each others’ work, as they may think it inappropriate to do so since they know one another very well.

Next, I would like to discuss briefly the result of this research. My discussion is based on the publication data that these eleven scholars have uploaded on the website of the Korea Research Foundation. There are a total of 99 research papers that were published in academic journals or books. Among them, the combined number of publications on Indonesia and Malaysia make up the majority with 65 pieces, making up 65%. One of the reasons is that HONG Seok-Joon, a Malaysia specialist, and KIM Hyung-Jun, an Indonesian specialist, have been prolific scholars. These two scholars have published a total of 40 research papers. Another notable feature is that many scholars have published follow-up studies on the countries that they wrote their doctoral dissertations about. This shows that anthropologists try to adhere to their own area speciality. However, there were only five papers covering the whole Southeast Asian region. These works covering the whole region tended to be introductory works but there were not many such works. There have been only five papers covering the relationship between Korea and Southeast Asia. Taken as a whole, these characteristics show that Korean anthropologists tend to focus on their own area specialities and on follow-up studies.

In terms of research themes, religions and rituals make up the majority, with 28 papers on these themes; in particular, on religions and rituals in Indonesia and Malaysia. In contrast, there was no paper on Buddhism, which is one of the major religions in Southeast Asia. There were also many works on nations and on ethnic groups. What was characteristic was that anthropologists were interested in the political aspects of culture. Eleven papers were on civil movements or on local politics, and other papers on Islam dealt with its political aspect, as did the work on nations and ethnic groups. This may be because anthropologists were influenced by working with many of the political scientists of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies. However, there were, surprisingly, not many papers on kinship, the family and marriage, which are traditional research themes of anthropology. This was particularly so apart from research on kinship in the Philippines which is the speciality of KIM Min Jung. Even though several works are coming out on the themes of international marriage, migrant workers or the exchange of popular culture, which are themes which are closely related to globalization, research on these themes is generally lacking. Despite the fact that there have been active exchanges between Korea and Southeast Asia, this has not been probed by Korean anthropologists, though they have some interests in this area.

It was interesting to note the publication types of the research papers. Where scholars publish their papers is closely related to those to whom their papers are targeted. A quarter of these works were published in either Korean Cultural Anthropology or Cross-Cultural Studies, the two major journals in anthropology in Korea. A considerable proportion of anthropologists target their fellow anthropologists as their audience. Next was the Southeast Asian Review. Area Study journals, such as International Area Studies Review and East Asian Studies followed. We can say that academic journals of anthropology or area studies were the main channels of publication.

Now I will switch to the context analysis. In terms of methodology, anthropological research generally requires long-term field research. All the eleven doctoral dissertations were based on long-term field research. In terms of their research subjects, nine out of the eleven studied rural areas, whereas one studied a city (CHOI Horim) and the other researched a factory (CHAE Suhong). That tells us that they followed the traditional way of selecting a research subject, i.e. mainly focusing on a community. But their follow-up studies, after their doctoral dissertations, show that they changed their research subjects. They tended to work on associations, organizations or cities for their research subjects and tend to have short field research. They did so as they had practical difficulties in conducting long-term field research after their doctoral dissertations. If this is inevitable, we need to discuss the methodological issue of how to find ways of taking advantage of field research.

In terms of research perspectives, I feel that many of us share similar views and a critical mindset. One thing that is for sure is that we are against the traditional concept of culture. Culture, in the traditional anthropological sense of the term, is the system of a peculiar way of life or set of ideas that is shared by a particular nation, which is consistent and is not easily changeable. Our shared understanding of culture is that it is not inherently well integrated but consists of divided and competing elements, and it is not normative but is malleable in relation to different social situations and contexts:  therefore we should pay attention to the process of change. This perspective is a general trend in anthropology since the 1980s. We can say that the anthropologists of Southeast Asia have followed this trend.

I also agree with the study of Southeast Asia in terms of such a critical mindset in and that this approach has led to many research results. On the other hand, I feel that we are talking about the same thing and are reaching the same conclusions. Isn’t it a cliché to say that culture is heterogeneous, divided and competing or that culture is changing or that we should explain culture in terms of the situational context? Can we talk about new things only with this approach and isn’t this kind of explanation rather out of date? Therefore it is time for us to go beyond accumulating empirical evidence and we should produce an agenda of theoretical discussion. And also I think that anthropologists, including me, are stingy in citing others. We do not cite others often enough and do not criticise others often enough. I feel that we are lacking in scholarly discussions and debates among us.

Lastly, I feel there is a general lack of comparative cultural research in anthropological Southeast Asian studies. There are few works that compare their areas with other areas or with other diverse cultures within Southeast Asia. Most of them work only on their own area and do not try to compare it with other areas. Once I thought that this was inevitable but now I feel that this may be a problem. Because of the strong emphasis on field research in our methodology, we feel that it is not appropriate to write about other areas where we have not conducted field research. This idea restricts our attempts to conduct comparative research. Anthropologists have a critical stance towards mega-discourses. Mega-discourses, such as those of modernization, globalization and capitalization, deal with a general phenomenon by comparing diverse societies, but anthropologists are critical about the appropriateness of these mega-discourses. We are more interested in the ways in which such general cultural phenomena are represented in a particular society. Therefore, we emphasize and carry out research on the characteristics of a specific area. Even though I think that this type of research is good for the purpose of criticizing the limits and the inappropriateness of mega-discourses, nonetheless other scholarly disciplines now acknowledge that a general phenomenon is represented in a particular way. Therefore, pointing out the existence of particularity and peculiarity is not enough. Instead, we should conduct comparative studies to discover cultural phenomenon, which looks peculiar in a specific area but which penetrates generally throughout cultures. One cultural characteristic of Southeast Asia is its diversity and this provides a very good and fertile environment for comparative studies. However, we have not utilized this well enough and instead we have stuck to our own research areas.

I came to think about this by reflecting upon the results of research in other areas. The anthropologists of Melanesia or Polynesia developed theories of gift exchange or magic by actively comparing and reviewing the research of others who had been researching on diverse societies within the region and therefore they were able to construct theoretically general principles or variations about gift exchange or sorcery. In this regard, we should aim to construct meaningful cultural theories by actively carrying out comparative studies of the cultural diversities of Southeast Asia.

Studies of Religion and Ethnic Groups

KIM Hyung-Jun (Kangwon National University): Professor OH has given us a lengthy discussion and, in fact, what I will discuss somewhat overlaps with his presentation. I would like to focus on anthropological studies of religion and ethnic groups in order to shed light on their orientation and trends. Among 10 anthropologists, eight of them have written on religion and ethnicity. Three of them received their doctoral degrees by writing on religion. They are HONG Seok-Joon, CHOI Horim and myself. They have continued to work on religion since the completion of their doctoral work and they have led the field. In other words, what one writes on for one’s doctoral thesis influences a great deal what one does after one’s doctoral work.

KIM Min Jung and KANG Yoonhee in Singapore partially dealt with religion for their doctoral theses. A commonality among these two and the previous three scholars is that they have a deep interest in rituals. Traditionally, anthropologists have done much work on rituals and Korean anthropologists’ interest in ritual can be understood in this context. There are some trends in studies of rituals. A core concern is that attention is paid to the contextual or situational meanings of rituals rather than the ahistorical or unchangeable meanings that are inherent in all rituals. That is, attempts to find out the contextual meanings of rituals make up the mainstream. This kind of research has the advantage of reviewing the multiple meanings and multi-dimensional characteristics of rituals in different places and contexts but at the same time it has problems. That is, by emphasizing situational interpretations, it neglects the importance of data accumulation about rituals at a basic level. For example, there are many studies of how people from different backgrounds interpret and practice a particular ritual. However, there are few studies that deal with how Southeast Asian people carry out rites of passage while they are growing up and what characteristics these rituals have at the basic level. Because of this research trend, current anthropological studies are not sufficiently appealing to students of anthropology who initially developed academic interests in the religion or rituals of Southeast Asia. Therefore, the consumption of the resulting research is extremely limited, being confined to a very small number of specialists. I have sometimes experienced this problem. I feel it is difficult to ask my students to read what I have written because my work deals with a phenomenon that is so specific that it does not satisfy the general interests of students.

In contrast to studies of religion, studies of ethnic groups show discussion at the general level more clearly. That may be because of the fact that there is no scholar who has written his own doctoral thesis on ethnic groups. As a result, the data that is used for most of the research on ethnic groups is based on historical data or on secondary sources. OH Myung Seok and CHO Youn-Mee, who uses case study sources, primarily use interview data collected during short-term field research. In this regard, we may consider the dilemma that faces anthropologists. That is, using data that scholars are happy with greatly limits the range of their readership. However, if they want to write for the wider audience, anthropologists tend to use data that they are not wholly satisfied with.

Here are the summaries of the trends in the research on religion and ethnic groups in Southeast Asia that has been conducted by Korean anthropologists. Firstly, their doctoral thesis topics have had a tremendous influence on the future research directions of these scholars. We can note this from the fact that there has been a sizable amount of research produced on religion since many scholars have written their doctoral theses on religion.

Secondly, research on religion tends to be conducted at the specialist level. However, studies which cover the whole of Southeast Asia or the whole religious configuration of an individual country have been neglected. This seems to be related to the developmental path of international area studies in Korean academia. When Southeast Asia was first taken as a research subject, in the late 1980s, international area studies in general in Korea was in its infancy, and there were few studies that attempted to conduct research on religion in Southeast Asia by reviewing the literature or by conducting primary research. However, there was a topographical change in the academic field of international area studies in the mid and late-1990s; and academic activities have increased since then. Within this contextual change, scholars have published their studies on religion for the specialist audience. In inverse proportion to this change, introductory research on religion has failed to receive much attention. This resulted in a positive change, that is, in the accumulation of specialist research outcomes. However, this also resulted in a lack of studies which might provide useful information for those who are interested in an introductory or holistic picture of the situation of religion in Southeast Asia. In this regard, this excessively specialist-oriented research trend seems to have played a negative role in garnering general interest from the public.

Thirdly, it seems that research on ethnicity has not been very active in comparison with that on religion. In contrast, introductory and holistic studies on issues of ethnicity have been conducted. In the light of this, research on ethnicity may need to incorporate more in-depth research data for its research. When this has been done, then more balanced research may be achieved.

Globalization

CHOI Horim (Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies): I have prepared the presentation on research on globalization by anthropologists from Southeast Asian Studies in Korea. The concept of globalization refers to phenomena that are related to the global spread of the capitalist market economy or transborder mobility and the exchange of people, commodity and capital, which lead to people having transnational and multi-cultural experiences in their everyday lives. Anthropological research themes that are related to this include tourism, migrant labor, foreign direct investment, international marriage, cultural exchange, diasporas, multicultural societies, cultural hybridity, ethnic(national) identity reinforcement in response to or in resistance to global processes, the reinvention of tradition, localization and glocalization.

The globalization process is now evident in Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, research on this topic is becoming increasingly important. When I first prepared this presentation, I aimed to focus on anthropological research on globalization based on data gained at the local level in Southeast Asia. This type of research was, to my surprise, quite rare. Therefore my initial aim of conducting a critical review of such studies – overcoming academic inbreeding – could not be carried out. Instead, I will review the meanings of such studies rather than conceptually categorizing and discussing the problems of these works, in the way that OH Myung Seok and KIM Hyung-Jun have done today. My presentation may give a narrow view of the trees rather than of the woods. In spite of this, my presentation may provide some overview of such works, as these works are representative of this kind of research, which may provide a glimpse of the woods. Please refer to my presentation paper for more detailed information.

Firstly, I would like to give an overview of anthropologists’ work on globalization. Among eleven anthropologists who had received their doctoral degrees by September 2007, seven have produced research which is related to the globalization of Southeast Asian societies or people. Their topics include, for instance, international marriage (KIM Min Jung, KIM Yi Seon), international labor and investment (CHAE Suhong), tourism (KIM Yi Seon, OH Myung Seok, HONG Seok-Joon), continuity, change and re-adaptation of tradition (KIM Ye-Kyoum, KIM Yi Seon, CHOI Horim, HONG Seok-Joon), and cultural responses to global economic crises (OH Myung Seok, HONG Seok-Joon), and multi-cultural society (HONG Seok-Joon, KIM Min Jung). However, none of these works used ‘globalization’ as a title word and there is no anthropologist who specialises in globalization in Southeast Asia.

There were about 10 papers that focused on observation at a local level. OH Myung Seok’s work on the Chinese community in Malaysia (1999) and on the response of Islam to the economic crisis in Malaysia (2001), CHAE Suhong’s work on Vietnamese workers who returned from overseas migrant work (2007), on a factory of a multinational company in Ho Chi Minh City (2003), the Korean community in Vietnam (2005), and HONG Seok-Joon’s work on a tourist event in Malaysia (1998), on the economic crisis in Malaysia (1999), the adaptation of foreign cultures and multicultural society in Melaka (2004; 2006). KIM Ye-Kyoum’s work on cultural re-adaptation in Sulawesi (2006) and CHOI Horim’s work on the continuation and change of tradition in post-socialist Vietnam (2005, 2007) partly dealt with nationalist or localist responses to globalization or hybridity, but they did not focus on globalization in itself. KIM Yi Seon’s doctoral thesis (2004) and subsequent work (2004) dealt with tourism, but they focused on changes of meanings in the commodification of traditional crafts.

Anthropological works on the perception of Southeast Asian people or societies within Korea were also noticeable. Some exemplary cases include discussions of Southeast Asian migrants in Korea and tourism in Southeast Asia. Take OH Myung Seok’s work on the image of Southeast Asia reflected in Koreans’ travel to Southeast Asia (2006). This work focused on Koreans’ construction of an image of Southeast Asia (tourism) rather than an analysis of the context and path of tourism within Southeast Asia. Therefore, it is a study of the attitudes and ideas of Koreans. In the case of international marriages and international migrant labor, KIM Min Jung has produced several works on Filipino migrant workers married to Korean wives (2003), the dilemmas and choices of Vietnamese and Filipino international marriage migrants, focusing on the ‘feminization of migration’ (KIM Min Jung et al. 2006), and ‘“International Marriage Migrant Women’s Experience of Cultural Conflicts and Policy Implications for Better Communication” a project initiated by the Korea Women’s Development Institute (KIM Yi Seon et al. 2006). These studies reflect the social need for academic and policy alternatives on the issues of cultural conflicts and social problems related to the increase of migrants from Southeast Asia to Korea who came there for work or marriage. Even though the discourse of ‘multicultural society’ is expanding in Korea, not many Korean scholars of Southeast Asian studies have participated in this kind of research. In the case of KIM Yi Seon’s policy project work, I also took part in interviews with the families of Vietnamese-Korean international marriage couples. My experience shows that it is essential to have a local language capacity and an understanding of the local culture for the conducting of in-depth interviews with international marriage families from Southeast Asia. Even though these works point out the importance of in-depth understanding of the cultures of Southeast Asian countries, my belief is that these are also a study of present and future Korean society.

I chose to look at the ‘Korean Wave’ as this is deemed to be a very appropriate topic for Korean scholars who study globalization in Southeast Asia. As has been previously noted, the Korean Wave has become a fashionable research topic and has been dealt with in many disciplines, including political science, economics, media studies, cultural studies, cultural critiques and the arts. Among these, many works by political scientists, economists or linguists have been published. An exemplary work on the Korean Wave in a particular country conducted by an anthropologist is a study of the Korean Wave in China (JANG Soo Hyun 2004). Works on other areas or works by non-anthropologists are numerous, which means that we may need to have a separate publication list. What is interesting is that there is no work on the Korean Wave in Southeast Asia conducted by Korean anthropologists of Southeast Asian studies. This provides implications for our review of the status of anthropology on the Korean Wave and on globalization.

In relation to this, the work of SHIN Yoon Hwan, a political scientist, called “The ‘Wave of Korean Cultures’ in East Asia: A Comparative Analysis” (2002) made an interesting point. We may pay attention to the typologies of the perspectives of Korean academia on the Korean Wave, which has occurred simultaneously in East Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Mongolia. According to him, views of Korean Waves are diverse and contrasting, from a very positive one to a very negative and contemptuous one. Among them, pejorative keywords such as “cheap price”, “outlet”, “shallowly B-rated”, “vulgar”, “desire” are used by cultural anthropologists and cultural critics who have the most critical stance towards the Korean Wave. In other words, cultural anthropologists have expressed their contempt for the discourse of the Korean Wave most strongly.

I understand that these points, paradoxically, can be understood as being a call for more qualitative research on the consumption of foreign culture and cultural products in each Southeast Asian country, the receivers of the Korean Wave. This implies that we need more empirical research on how the Korean Wave is perceived in Southeast Asia by anthropologists. There are already several studies by anthropologists on the Korean Wave (for example, KIM Hyun Mee 2002; CHO-HAN Hae Jung 2002), and these studies can be categorized as ‘meta-studies of the Korean Wave,’ either highlighting the response of the sending country (Korea) or the receiving countries (in Southeast Asia) of the Korean Wave, or critically assessing the discourse surrounding the phenomenon. Anthropologists still conceptualize the “Korean Wave” with quotation marks, treating it and signalling it as a debatable concept. In particular, some perspectives – such as those that worship it, by focusing on its effect of maximizing the national interest, enhancing the national image and status, and increasing economic interests, and those that highlight the cultural affinity shared between Korea and Southeast Asia – are especially at odds with that of anthropology. Also, the concept of culture that is used in these perspectives is not in harmony with the traditional conceptualization of culture by anthropologists.

Anthropological studies on Southeast Asia are concentrated on ‘traditional’ research fields in countries like Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Myanmar where the Korean Wave phenomenon is noticeable. That is to say, anthropologists pay more attention to specific issues of cultural identity, adaptation and conflict in the process of social and socioeconomic change, and the reinforcement or modification of traditional culture in the process of globalization. For anthropologists who are familiar with local cultures, the influx of Korean popular culture into Southeast Asian countries can be seen as just one part of the whole process of interaction between the native culture of a Southeast Asian country and foreign cultures on a larger scale. Despite all this, I believe that we need more anthropological studies of the Korean Wave. Qualitative research on the universality and particularity of the Korean Wave in a Southeast Asian context seems to be a niche market for anthropologists studying the Korean Wave.

Lastly, I would like to conclude by making a few points. First, even though the number of studies on Southeast Asia by anthropologists has been rapidly increasing and we now have a sizeable set of distinguished works, we still have a relatively scant amount of studies on globalization. I reviewed a number of works on international labor migration, international marriage, tourism – all of which take globalization as a keyword – but most of them were studies of Korean society rather than that of the Southeast Asia. For example, there is no work dealing with Southeast Asian sociocultural background among studies of international marriage migrants from Southeast Asia. For anthropological work on international marriage migrants from Southeast Asia to be well grounded in Southeast Asian studies, we need to study not only the experiences of these families in Korea but also those of their in-law families in Southeast Asia. Analysis of the economic and social expectations of the sending families needs to be carried out. Anthropological work has merit in furthering our in-depth understanding of cultural aspects of the globalization practised by Southeast Asians through specific empirical case studies.

Second, we should pay attention to the fact that the problems that our society has undergone through the globalization process are similarly important in Southeast Asian societies. What do foreigners and foreign cultures mean to Southeast Asians as their contact with the outside world becomes increasingly frequent? How is this foreignness imagined, experienced and consumed by Southeast Asians? How does such contact influence the traditional worldviews, identities and ways of life of Southeast Asians? Furthermore, whether increased experiences of foreign cultures deepen Southeast Asians’ understanding of other people and whether that contributes to ‘better cultural communication between cultures’ could be the foci of our future research. The “Korean Wave” in this context could be an imminent research topic for anthropology.

Third, research on Korean communities and the Korean diaspora in Southeast Asia needs to receive due scholarly attention, considering the growing size of the Korean communities in the major cities of Southeast Asia since the 1990s. The number of long-term residents in the region has increased fast relative to that of temporary sojourners. Also, research on Southeast Asia in Korean society, namely empirical research on ‘Southeast Asia within Korea’ needs to be conducted and developed. In-depth research on diverse phenomena of globalization, such as overseas education, expatriate work, ‘Kirogi families’, overseas volunteer work, civil organizational activities and missionary activities, not to mention international marriage, international labor migration and tourism, needs to be conducted.

Lastly, I think that the strength of cultural anthropology in the field of globalization is inherent in the traditionally strong fields within anthropology. For example, the Southeast Asian response to the penetration of foreign cultures and the birth of hybrid culture in the process of cultural assimilation, the resistance to neoliberalism or globalization and the preservation of local culture or localization, the reinforcement of national (ethnic) identity, and the contemporary adaptation of traditional culture should be continuously conducted.

Discussion

JEON Je Seong (Chonbuk National University): I was surprised to hear the presentation of Professor OH Myung Seok who said that the number of Korean anthropologists engaged in Southeast Asian studies outnumbers those who study the anthropology of China, by eleven to ten.  This is a great success in comparison with political science or history. What are the secrets of this success, which means that the number of Southeast Asia specialists could surpass that of China specialists? I guess that it may be because of the spirit of anthropology which takes even a small country seriously. In the Korean academia of Southeast Asian studies, there is no specialist on small countries, such as Laos or Brunei, and it is unlikely that political science will have any specialist on such countries in the near future. Does anthropology in Korea have any strategic plan to nurture specialists on small countries in Southeast Asia?

OH Myung Seok: One of the reasons why there are more Southeast Asia specialists than China specialists in Korea is that China has allowed fieldwork for foreign scholars only recently. It was nearly impossible to conduct anthropological field work in China before. For that reason, the number of China specialists was small, but it has increased recently because carrying out fieldwork is now feasible. Another reason why the proportion of Southeast Asia specialists in anthropology is large is that anthropology recognizes the necessity of research even for areas where Korean society shows little interest. That alone is a sufficient condition. That provides a background in which specialists in ‘minority areas’ can be reproduced, not to mention ‘popular areas’. This is feasible that some more will specialize in new territories within Southeast Asia. It is because anthropologists tend to select an area that others have not selected for their specialization. Even within Indonesia, there are many regions where research was not popularly done. I expect that many more research projects on such regions will be conducted.

CHOI Byung Wook; (Inha University): Probably anthropology is the discipline that has the largest portion of Southeast Asian specialists and of research among academic disciplines in Korea. Southeast Asian research takes up less than 0.1% of historical research in Korea. From what I have heard, Southeast Asian research in anthropology has achieved impressive results in comparison with that of the 1990s. However, Korean anthropologists seem to think too hard about to who should be the consumers of their work when they write their research, what topics they should pick. That suggests that they take the consumers of their research as being only a Korean audience, right? However, questions can be asked as to whether the same considerations are made even in international academia when they write their research. Also, what are the aims, status and international activities of Korean anthropology in Southeast Asian studies? What are the alternative plans? I would like to hear more about the international standing of Korean anthropologists in Southeast Asian studies, not just their standing within Korean anthropology.

KIM Hyung-Jun: When I think of the consumer issue, I think more seriously of the general public in Korea rather than international or Korean academia as I think that more works are needed for them. Numerous Koreans go on trips to Southeast Asia. But we should think about whether there are any books for those Korean tourists to take on their trips to Southeast Asia and whether there are any books that will satisfy those who are interested in Southeast Asia. I think this is the culture of everyday life. My presentation was based on the recognition that anthropologists, including me, have not thought much about this aspect. Prof Choi’s point about how we can promote the standing of Korean anthropologists among international academia requires a collective effort and the first step towards it also be very difficult.

CHO Hung-Guk (Pusan National University): I would like to raise one fundamental question about the planning of this conference. Southeast Asian studies, as an area study, aims to achieve interdisciplinary research and to overcome the limits of disciplinary subjects. However, this conference was planned to discuss the research conducted within specific disciplinary frameworks. Because of this, three of the presenters so far have discussed the results of the research of anthropologists only, not covering those in other disciplines. Planning the conference in an interdisciplinary area studies way, rather than dividing the research by themes and categories, may be the approach that is needed. For example, analyzing and reflecting on the research in terms of themes of area studies, such as modernization, democratization or gender would be more meaningful.

OH Myung Seok: I think that both approaches are feasible and necessary. Although we conduct area studies and interdisciplinary research, we also need to have our own disciplinary methodology and tradition at the same time for our research. This conference was planned to review the results of research by academic disciplines. By doing so, we have discussed the stories of anthropologists only. I agree with Prof Cho that we need to have another opportunity for a discussion of how anthropologists, political scientists and historians, who are working on Southeast Asian studies, view and discuss the same themes in different ways in order for us to formulate a productive agenda as an association of area studies. By the way, even though we ended up with a discussion of anthropological works, while we were preparing the presentations, we realized that we did not know many of the details very well on subjects that we thought that we knew well. I felt that even inside anthropology I realized that I did not know very much about what other anthropologists were doing in their own research. Therefore, I felt strongly that we need to discuss our research with other anthropologists in order to seek new directions of research.

III. Southeast Asian Studies in history and linguistics and literature

History

CHO Hung-Guk (Pusan National University): Historical research on Southeast Asia by Korean historians was concentrated on Vietnam and Thailand until the 1980s. The first Korean historian who worked on Southeast Asian history was KIM Young-geon, who was active in the early twentieth century in Japan and worked on the regional connection between Japan and Indochina. Since the 1960s, most of the historical research on Vietnam by Korean scholars was conducted in the context of Vietnam War in the 1960s. Many of these scholars were Chinese specialists, who tried to understand Vietnamese culture through the lens of Chinese culture. This can be understood as an extension of Chinese historical research. Research on Thailand has been the product of scholars from the department of Thai studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies since the 1970s.

Most of the historical research on Southeast Asia until the 1980s, except for research based on Chinese primary documents, was not based on the primary documents. These scholars did not have the language capacity to read the local languages and they relied primarily on secondary documents written in English or Japanese, as it was also difficult to gain primary documents in Korea. As they did not pay much attention to an historiographical perspective, their arguments are sometimes imbued with colonialism and sometimes with anti-localism or nationalism, depending on the perspectives of their secondary documents. The most important reason why this situation occurred was the fact that most of the scholars who worked on Southeast Asia at the time, with the exception of those who were working on Vietnam, did not major in history. They did not seem to be capable of a critical analysis of primary documents or even acknowledging the importance of using primary documents. They also did not have the basic critical mindset rooted in empiricism and methodological rigor, which is needed in historical research.

Historical research on Southeast Asia since the 1990s has diversified, has increased quantitatively and developed qualitatively. Historical research, which was confined to Vietnam and Thailand until the 1980s, has been extended to Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and others. Some serious research on Thailand has appeared since 1992 and research on Vietnam, with the increase in the number of historians, has diversified in its themes and developed in its quality.

Despite this development, historical research on Southeast Asia still looks concentrated on Vietnam and Thailand. Historical research on Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Singapore has underachieved or has not been conducted. Historical research covering continental Southeast Asia or island Southeast Asia is very rare. Considering the fact that the results of historical research on the individual countries have not accumulated enough, the emergence of a scholar who could cover several countries in Southeast Asia will be delayed. Another problem of historical research on Southeast Asia is that most studies are concentrated in the modern or contemporary periods, i.e. after the nineteenth century. This may be for the technical reason that contemporary historical studies can be conducted without being restrained by the limits of historical documents or language issues. However, knowing the contemporary historical trends well, more research on the pre-modern periods, which can be the foundation research on for the subsequent periods, is needed. In addition, general problems of historical research on Southeast Asia, such as the use of primary documents and perspectives of historical understanding can also be pointed out.

Historical research on Southeast Asia in Korea since the 2000s has still concentrated on several countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. That having been said, historical research on Thailand and Malaysia has been conducted by only a limited number of scholars. Much of the historical research on Vietnam has been produced with the increase in the number of Vietnam specialist historians. In the case of historical research on Vietnam since the 2000s, most of the works have concentrated on political history and on social and economic history, in particular on rural villages and land institutions. Also, another new development of the 2000s is that work on intellectual history in Vietnam is being conducted.

When it is considered holistically, along with historical research on Southeast Asia, political history and social and economic history constitute the majority of this work. Within social history, studies of women’s status and roles are noticeable in terms of their number. That consciousness was reflected even in the 1970s in YU Insun’s studies on Vietnamese society, but it also reflects these scholarly interests that one of the keys to understanding traditional Southeast Asian societies is women. Within social and economic history, studies on the history of the ethnic Chinese began in the 1990s and continued in the 2000s, which has also diversified in terms of its subject countries and increased in numbers.

As for the history of cultural exchange, even though the research has been largely confined to Vietnam and Thailand, it has increased, and art historical research on steel craft in Myanmar has been conducted. It is an interesting development that criticisms of Korean history textbooks regarding their treatment of Southeast Asian history and an analysis of the descriptions of the Pacific War in history textbooks from Southeast Asia have been made. This reflects the influence of recent developments in Korea or else it was conducted as part of a re-evaluation of history textbooks in Korea.

Southeast Asian historical research since the 2000s shows a development of research standards with an accumulation of research work, an increase in the number of specialists and a diversification of the researched countries and themes. This development can also be viewed through the number of history-related monographs which have been published since the 2000s. Publications of versions of Southeast Asian history written by Western specialists and translated into Korean also reflect increasing research interest in Southeast Asian history.

There are still no historians specializing in histories of Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and the Philippines. Also, historical research on Thailand and Malaysia relies on only one or two specialists. Therefore, I think that nurturing the next generation of scholars specializing in these countries is their most imminent problem. In particular, the colonial period and the nation-building period are very important. It is natural to have many works written on these periods. However, the periods before the eighteenth century and after the mid-twentieth century should also be the subjects of in-depth research. Also, it is encouraging that intellectual history in Vietnam has been published but I also hope that intellectual history or histories of ideas in other countries will also be conducted. Art history and cultural history are also unclaimed territory. Within social history, there is some work on the history of women but the history of social classes such as slaves, commoners, the noble classes and the royal families will be important topics for future research.

CHOI Byung Wook (Inha University): Research on Southeast Asian history in Korea, if the standard is set by the establishment of an official course at a university, began in 1979, when the history department of Korea University began its first course on the history of Southeast Asia. That is also the beginning of Southeast Asian studies in general. In the following year, the Asian history department of Seoul National University opened one undergraduate course and two graduate courses. The contents of these classes were the same. In the two universities, under the course title of ‘Southeast Asian history’, Vietnamese history was taught for one semester and Southeast Asian history for the other semester. Vietnamese history and Southeast Asian history courses for graduate schools were established. From the mid-1980s, thanks to SONG In-Seo, Kangwon National University also established a Southeast Asian history course. In the 1990s, CHO Hung-Guk who specializes in Thai history and SOH Byungkuk, who specializes in Malaysian history, came back to Korea from Germany and the USA respectively and courses on Southeast Asian history were established in Sogang University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Yonsei University, around the same time, established one Southeast Asian history course in each semester. When we review the trend up to the early 1990s, Kangwon National University was the exception, in that Southeast Asian history courses were established only in the top universities in Seoul.

Since the late 1990s, KIM Jong Ouk, SONG Jung Nam and others have come back to Korea and Youngsan University in Pusan and Chungwoon University in Hongseong have established Vietnamese history and, since the mid 2000s, CHO Hung-Guk and CHOI Byung Wook have established Southeast Asian history courses at Pusan National University and Inha Universities, which are located in the cities of ports. This shows the process of the spreading of Southeast Asian histories from Seoul to the regions. Considering that Pusan, Inchon and Hongseong are located along the seashores, the spreading of Southeast Asian history courses can be said to have occurred, not from Seoul to the regions, but from Seoul to the port cities or from the inland region to the seashores.

In terms of the characteristics of historical researchers, the spreading of specific specializations has been very slow. YU Insun and SONG In-Seo, who can be said to be first generational historians, specialized in Vietnam and Thailand respectively. Only two scholars existed in the 1980s but, in the 1990s, CHO Hung-Guk and SOH Byungkuk established new courses. From the late 1990s and 2000s onwards, SONG Jung Nam, KIM Jong Ouk, CHOI Byung Wook, and NHO Young Soon came back from their overseas studies and began their lectures. However, except for CHO Hung-Guk and SOH Byungkuk, whose specialities were Thailand and Malaysia respectively, all the other four specialized in Vietnam. Recently, YOUN Dae Yeong came back from France and give lectures at Seoul National University, where YU Insun had retired and Yonesi University. His specialty is also Vietnam. The countries of specialization have increased from Vietnam and Thailand, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to include only one more country, Malaysia, up to the present. As SOH Byungkuk’s specialization is modern and contemporary Malaysia, research on the traditional periods, utilizing classical and primary Malay materials, is still an unexplored area. The expansion of the scope of historical research on Thailand and Vietnam is also very limited. It is a miserable fact that, even thirty years after the first establishment of Southeast Asian history courses, the countries of specialization in Southeast Asian history are only three out of ten countries. Also, we should pay attention to the fact that all of the above scholars earned their doctoral degrees abroad. Even though it was inevitable that the first generational scholars had to earn their degrees abroad, how can we understand the fact that there have been none who have earned their doctoral degrees in Korea, even after thirty years of the first establishment of these courses? The infertility of the research environment may not be a reasonable answer, when we compare it with the examples of anthropology and political science. I expect to receive a diagnosis from the audience.

Next, I would like to discuss research activities. If someone is engaged in an academic field, covering both history and an area, there will be a natural desire and social responsibility on their part to show the books that are based on their specialized field and knowledge of the area. Especially, history books, as they provide the basic knowledge for diverse disciplines, are greatly anticipated by academia. YU Insun’s History of Vietnam (Minumsa, 1982) was published a long time ago, and this book has been newly published with the new title Newly Written History of Vietnam (Yeesan, 2002). This book, as the first book on Southeast Asian history in Korea, has the status of having been read by the widest audience and for a long period. SONG Jung Nam’s History of Vietnam (Pusan University of Foreign Studies Press, 2001) has the status of being the second book published on Vietnamese history or Southeast Asian history in Korea. Unlike these two books, there is no general history of Thailand or Malaysia. In terms of the publication of a general history, Vietnam is distinguished from the other countries. The fact that YU Insun and SONG Jung Nam wrote thick introductory books of history at a similar age may have acted, to some extent, as an imperative for other scholars. Whereas they have not written any translated books, CHO Hung-Guk, SOH Byungkuk and NHO Young Soon have translated Milton Osborne’s classical introductory history book on Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia: an Introductory History (Oruem, 2001), Abudul Wahid’s Glimpses of Malaysian History (Oruem, 1998), Clive J. Christie’s Southeast Asia in the Twentieth Century: A Reader (Shimsan, 2004), which made a big contribution. Recently, I published Southeast Asian History: Traditional Periods (Korea Textbook Publication Co., 2006). This is the first Southeast Asian history book which has been published in Korea, although this book still requires some updates and revisions.

As a pioneer of Southeast Asian history, YU Insun, played an exemplary role in his research activities and in the diversification of the presenting of results of research. Southeast Asian historians in Korea think highly of what he has done: firstly, it is a matter of becoming a respectable scholar in the academia of the country of one’s own study; secondly, it is a matter of being able to present the results of our research in English, the lingua academia, in the English-speaking world; lastly, it is a matter of conducting research activities in Korea. If I take the example of YU Insun, the fact that he has publications which are evenly spread among the Vietnamese, English and Korean languages, even though there are only thin layers of scholars in Asia, helps the Korean academia of Southeast Asian history not to be disregarded by the international academic community. ‘Triple language publication’ is burdensome yet joyous. CHO Hung-Guk and SOH Byungkuk have continuously published the results of their research in English. SONG Jung Nam and KIM Jong Ouk have continued publishing their work in the Vietnamese language. Among the Korean scholars of Southeast Asia, HWANG In-Won, who has worked on Malaysian politics, was probably the first to publish his book in another country (ISEAS, 2003). In the subsequent year, the Central Asia history specialist, KIM Hodong’s book (Holy War, Stanford University) and the Vietnamese history specialist CHOI Byung Wook’s book (Southern Vietnam, Cornell University) were published abroad. Among the academia in Korea, particularly within the field of history, Southeast Asia is distinguished by two books published abroad (a Turkish historian, YI Eunjeong published her book in English in the Netherlands in 2003, but her publication is different in character). This is the fruit of the efforts of active internationalization which started with YU Insun.

Southeast Asian historians in Korea have diverse educational backgrounds. In terms of the countries where they gained their doctorates, they received their degrees from Britain (NHO Young Soon), France (YOUN Dae Yeong), Germany (CHO Hung-Guk), the USA (YU Insun, SOH Byungkuk), Australia (CHOI Byung Wook), Vietnam (SONG Jung Nam, KIM Jong Ouk), and Thailand (SONG In-Seo), which include many of the countries where Southeast Asian studies are actively conducted. While these diverse backgrounds and methodologies are being exchanged and mixed in Korea, the research themes of individual researchers are also diversifying and improving.

Meanwhile, we sometimes encounter the fact that one scholar’s research areas are expanding too much. I can take as examples the fact that the Thai specialist, CHO Hung-Guk, also conducts research on Burma, the Vietnam specialist touches on China and Korea and has tried to expand into Cambodia, and the Malaysia specialist, SOH Byungkuk, conducts research on Irian Jaya, the Eastern end of Indonesia. The Vietnam specialist, YOUN Dae Yeong, is currently preparing research on Laos. This expansion of research areas has the merit of achieving a wider perspective through expanding the scope of research or making contributions to interdisciplinary research, but the real reason is that there are many unclaimed territories because of the thin layer of scholars of Southeast Asian studies in Korea. Nurturing history researchers for all ten Southeast Asian country specialists is very important task. It is necessary not only for established scholars to specialize in their own research areas and to conduct in-depth research but also for us (including me) not to perish as a result of touching upon too many diverse areas where are not our own specialties.

Language and literature

KIM Young Aih (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies): I hesitatingly accepted the unexpected offer of reviewing the research on Southeast Asian language and literature in Korea over the past fifteen years. When I sat at my desk, it was difficult for me to sort out what to include and what not to include in my presentation in an orderly fashion. After much speculation, I decided to review the subject focusing on the articles in The Southeast Asian Review, published by the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies. I would like to start by recollecting my memories of the days before the Association was established.

More than fifteen years ago, I remember that I went somewhere, following Professor YANG Seung Yoon (Department of Malay-Indonesian, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies). I cannot remember for sure where it was, but I remember that I met about seven or eight young scholars from Southeast Asian studies. I was very shy at that time, so that I cannot remember who these younger scholars were. Since then, we have met regularly and exchanged opinions on systematically establishing area studies, scholarly exchanges and collaboration, so as to extend and deepen our scope of research and to think out our plans for nurturing the next generation of scholars. In retrospect, political scientists were the leading figures in the beginning, then economists joined them within one or two years, and linguists and humanities specialists joined much later.

Young scholars in social science who met regularly at the monthly meetings and were the core, together with other scholars who were interested in Southeast Asia, established the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies around the end of the first semester, in 1991. When I attended the founding meeting held at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), I was surprised by the number of senior scholars who were interested in Southeast Asia, and also by others who were interested in Southeast Asia and were active in business and political circles in Korea. Through these events, the journal of the Association, the Southeast Asian Review was born. This journal was published annually at first and later, when the number of scholars in Southeast Asian studies increased in 1995, it published two issues a year. So far twenty-five volumes have been published. The color of the journal’s cover has changed four times. The Association now has about 320 members. The Southeast Asian Review, the face of and the venue for presenting the research of members of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary journal.

Although higher educational institutions teaching courses on Southeast Asian studies are not few, there are only a handful of universities that teach and conduct research on the languages of the region. In referring to Southeast Asian languages, we normally mean Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Thai, Myanmarese (Burmese) and Malay-Indonesian. Among these, Vietnamese, Thai and Malay-Indonesian are taught as majors by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) and Pusan University of Foreign Studies (PUFS). Cambodian and Lao are not taught as majors but their introductory courses are irregularly taught at these two universities. Myanmarese is taught only by PUFS. As far as I know, Vietnamese and Malay-Indonesian are also taught by other universities than HUFS and PUFS but they are mainly taught by focusing on communication.

Therefore, professors who conduct research on language and literature are concentrated in HUFS and PUFS. Proficiency in the local language is a prerequisite of linguistic research on the Southeast Asian region. It is feasible to conduct such research through a third language, including English and French, but such an approach is rarely adopted, except for Vietnamese. Therefore it is no exaggeration to say that language and literature research is conducted mainly by HUFS and PUFS. This observation mirrors the state of language and literature education and research in Korea.

In case of HUFS, the Southeast Asian language departments include a Malay-Indonesian department, a Thai department and a Vietnamese department and overall fifteen Korean professors are affiliated with these departments. In terms of a department-level analysis, the Malay-Indonesian department has six full time professors and one is a linguist and two are literature specialists. The Thai department also has six faculty members; two are linguists and one is a literature specialist. The Vietnamese department, among its three full time faculty members, does not have a linguist and has only one literature specialist. As a whole, there are eight area specialists – in politics, economics and humanities, but there are only three full-time faculty members in linguistics and four literature specialist faculty members; faculty members in language and literature make up less than half the faculty.

Foreign scholars are normally linguists, literature specialists or humanities specialists including political scientists and philosophers. While they lecture in Korea, they also present academic papers. In the case of the Thai department at HUFS, the department invites three (or four) Thai linguists and literature specialists annually. They present one or two papers while they are staying in Korea, but they do not take part in the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies. This is also the case for the other Southeast Asian language departments at HUFS, as far as I know. I guess this is also the case for PUFS.

PUFS is similar in its faculty composition. According to the websites of PUFS, the University has departments of Thai, Malay-Indonesian, Vietnamese and Myanmarese and thirteen Korean faculty members for these departments. In the Thai department, all the three faculty members are area specialists. The Malay-Indonesian department has, among three full-time faculty members, one linguist, one literature specialist, and one political scientist. The Vietnamese department, among four faculty members, has one literature specialist and three others who majored in politics, economics or humanities. The Myanmarese department has three faculty members, whose specialities are literature, language and politics respectively. As a whole, PUFS has two linguists, three literature specialists and eight area studies specialists. Therefore, these two universities, among twenty-eight full-time Korean faculty members, have twelve linguists and literature specialists and sixteen other scholars who are area studies specialists.

Meanwhile, in the twenty-five volumes of the Southeast Asian Review in the past fifteen years, about 140 research papers and research notes have been published. Among them, about fifteen papers in language and literature have been published in thirteen volumes, making up about 10 percent of the total papers. Among these fifteen papers, two were on Vietnamese language and literature, one on Indonesian language, two on Myanmarese literature, and five were on Thai literature and another five on Thai language. Thai language and literature, with ten pieces, take the lead. Among the fifteen language and literature papers, six were on languages and nine were on literatures. Most of these fifteen papers were mostly case studies, focusing on one language or work of literature.

These facts reveal that, even though education in Southeast Asian studies in Korea began with the establishment of the department of Malay-Indonesian at HUFS, in 1964, research on Southeast Asian language and literature has still got a long way to go and research on language and literature is still much weaker than that on social science or humanities. Then what are the reasons for and the background to this fact?

First of all, we can point that there are only a few higher educational institutions that teach Southeast Asia related subjects and there are even fewer universities that provide language and literature courses on Southeast Asia. Another reason is that the primary purpose of education in language and literature is less practical than that of other disciplines of education. Therefore, the departments of languages and literatures in universities have different characteristics from the departments of Korean language and literature. Curricula are organized not by educating students in the language and literature of one’s own country only, but by teaching language and literature as part of the area studies curriculum.

The small number of language and literature students corresponds to the fundamental dearth of language and literature specialists among Southeast Asian studies area specialists. The natural consequence is the limited number of research papers. The presence of few scholars also means that there are even fewer scholars who can review and evaluate these research papers. That also means that the reviewing and evaluating of submitted research papers often cannot be done properly.

So far, I have reviewed the current state of Southeast Asian language and literature research. My next question is how can the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies solve the problems that the departments of Southeast Asian language and literature studies are faced with? These problems are even more conspicuous when we consider the vast number of journals on the language and literature of other areas in Korea.

Before making some suggestions to help solve these problems, first I would like to ask whether language and literature research is effective for the development of Southeast Asian studies or not. My answer is that it surely is. Then, in which direction should we proceed? Should we maintain our research in the way it has been? Or should we disregard the publication of literature and language research papers in the journals so that these journals will focus on and specialize in social science journal papers as the majority of the members of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies are specialists in these fields?

If we want to maintain the current characteristics of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, I would like to suggest that the Association should encourage research of language and literature so as that the articles in this area can be published more regularly. How about publishing one more issue, rather than the current two issues a year? How about publishing two issues that focus on the humanities and social sciences without language and literature articles, whereas another issue would focus on research in language and literature? How about publishing research papers on language and literature in the special issues on one theme, with case studies of individual countries and/or independent research papers? Planning special issue themes in advance for the following year would also be a good idea, as it would give researchers enough time to prepare for them.

I know the recent trend that more students are getting interested in language and literature of Southeast Asian countries. Here I urge my dear next generational scholars. I hope you pay more attention on language and literature of Southeast Asia.

Discussion

PARK Sa-Myung (Kangwon National University): Research trends in history were reviewed by the country. Historical research can be categorized by historical periods or by research themes. I would like to open the table for discussion.

CHO Hung-Guk: I attempted to prepare the presentation by categorizing it by political history, social and economic history, cultural history and history of cultural interaction but I did not present it in this way. In the case of Vietnamese history, research has been concentrated mainly in political history or social and economic history. In the case of other countries, these issues are dealt with at only a superficial level or are rarely researched.

BAE Geung-Chan (Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security): Why do you think that there is no Korean researcher who majors in Indonesian history? Is it because the country is not an important research subject in terms of academic history academia or because it is not interesting as a subject of historical research? Or is it difficult to conduct research on Indonesia by thoroughly… I guess there are reasons for that.

JEON Je Seong: The future will not be so gloomy because there will be two Indonesia history specialists within two years from now. Miss SONG Seung-Won, a graduate of HUFS Malay-Indonesian studies department, is currently completing her doctoral dissertation on contemporary Indonesian history at Ohio University, USA. YEO Woonkyung, a graduate in Asian history and the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University, is also currently conducting field research in Sumatra, Indonesia for his doctoral dissertation on contemporary Indonesian history at the University of Washington, USA.

CHO Hung-Guk: I think it was a result of coincidence that there has not been any researcher in Indonesian history. It is nothing but a mere coincidence. Everybody acknowledges the importance of Indonesian history.

PARK Sa-Myung: My idea is that the country has less direct relevance to Korea. Vietnam has had many relations with Korea and there have been many researchers on it but Indonesia has had less relations with it and that may explain why.

CHOI Byung Wook: I think that absence of any Indonesian historian is a natural result. Of course, Vietnam has received the most attention. Next comes Indonesia. When Professor YU Insun began his lectures on Southeast Asian history and started nurturing his students, most of the students wanted to pursue Vietnamese history, followed by those who wanted to do Indonesian history. Also, at the world level, there are many Indonesian history specialists. However, as Professor YU Insun moved from Korea University to Seoul National University, the student research group on Southeast Asian history that was formed at Korea University at the time was dissolved. Since his move, he has trained students again at Seoul National University and YEO Woonkyung whom JEON Je Seong mentioned earlier, has pursued Indonesian history research, YOUN Dae Yeong has returned from France after working on Vietnam. Also HUH Jiyae, who took my course at Korea University, went on to Seoul National University for his Master’s and is now studying at UCLA, specializing in Thai history. When all this is considered, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Thai histories are popular among students.

PARK Sa-Myung: The issue of Korea University has considerable symbolic importance. In the past, the Asiatic Research Institute of Korea University had produced many scholars. The Institute had considerable importance among the first generation scholars in Southeast Asian studies in Korea. However, the Institute left out Southeast Asian studies completely.

CHOI Byung Wook: That is what I meant to ask the opinions of the audience about when I presented my talk. This has a very much interesting aspect. In fact, if we confined ourselves to Southeast Asian history, Korea began to research on it together with the USA. That was thanks to the foresight of Professor KIM Jun Yop. He selected and trained students, already in the 1960s, and sent them to Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia to study abroad. Then, research on Malaysia and Indonesia, because of several unfortunate incidents, was discontinued. Professor YU Insun and Professor SONG In-Seo gained their positions in Korea, in the late 1970s and 1980s, and research on Southeast Asian history began in Korea. However, this was also disrupted due to a series of unfortunate events that interrupted the process of producing the next generation of researchers. I recall these events with great disappointment. If that group of young students could have received consistent supervision, I believe we would have produced at least six more historians of Southeast Asia by now. What a pity it was.

OH Myung Seok: Professor KIM Young Ai told us that research papers on Southeast Asian language and literature number only fifteen, which is only one per year, even though the journal has lasted for fifteen years. As I was also the editor of the journal, I felt that it was a big problem that there were so few articles being published in the fields of Southeast Asian language and literature. I would like to listen to the opinions of the members of the Association, as a key issue for the Association, as she has rightly raised this issue.

YOON Young-Chon (Inha University): Even though I am a literature specialist, my speciality is not in Southeast Asian literature. However, the idea that publishing one more issue of the journal will solve the problem is questionable. I think we should think further about how to find out the reasons why research papers on Southeast Asian literature are published less.

KIM Young Aih: If I may add some more comments, Southeast Asian literature research has the merits of producing research in comparative literature, comparative culture and comparative linguistics. Also, since Southeast Asian languages can be typed using the MS Word program, important parts that are quoted in the articles can be included together with the original text, which will contribute to enhancing the status and prestige of the Southeast Asian Review.

OH Myung Seok: There are about forty research papers being published in the journals that cover Vietnam but there are few papers in the Southeast Asian Review. This may be because the results of the research are being published in other academic journals, rather than the journal of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies. I guess there must be reasons for that.

CHOI Horim: The fact that research on Southeast Asian language and literature is not published much in the Southeast Asian Review arouses curiosity. We should discuss, firstly, what is the position of Southeast Asian language and literature in the whole area studies of language and literature field, and what significance does this have. Secondly, so far a statistical survey has been delivered to us, but it might be better if an analysis of more of the details of the contents, such as features and implications, were included. Also, I know that many specialists in languages and literatures take part in research on other societies or humanities topics. I think that such attempts can contribute to stimulating interdisciplinary research on Southeast Asian studies. But, first of all, such ideas need to be raised and shared among the scholars before anything else.

OH Myung Seok: I personally think that the journal of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies (i.e. the Southeast Asian Review) is the flagship journal, representing Southeast Asian Studies, so the scope of the journal should basically include research on language and literature. The current situation in which literature research is not well reflected in the journal is clearly a problem that we have. The reasons may be complicated. I will deliver the gist of what has been discussed today to the editor of the journal, and I will ask the editorial board to discuss in depth plans for improving the journal.

IV. Southeast Asian Studies in Political Science and Economics in Korea

Overview of Political Science

PARK Sa-Myung (Kangwon National University): The subtitle of my presentation is “From quantitative scarcity to qualitative enrichment,” and the motivation behind it was that I felt the realistic way to further develop research on Southeast Asian studies in Korea was to raise the level of the quality of research. The sad reality is that due to the scantiness of the researchers specializing in this region, the dearth in the volume of research cannot be overcome in a short period of time. Although the number of political scientists doing research on the region is not too small, nonetheless, we cannot say that we have enough. We do not have a constant influx of young Southeast Asian specialists, either. Taking account of this unfortunate situation, where does the solution lie? Enhancing the quality of research with the human resources that we have is an inevitable, but strategic, choice. Frankly speaking, the level of quality of current and existing research on Southeast Asia in Korea cannot be seen as satisfactory. We may not be held responsible for the scarcity of research in terms of its quantity, but the responsibility for the poor quality of the research fundamentally lies with ourselves, the researchers.

From what I have observed, most of the presenters have focused on discussing and criticizing the current state of research by pointing out how little research has been done on Southeast Asia in Korea. I, on the other hand, would like to address what might be effective ways to enhance the quality of research in Southeast Asian studies in Korea. I jotted down some thoughts that came in to my mind as I listened to the presenters in my notes over there. I think there are some problems that we need to ponder at a fundamental level. I reckon these are problems that all scholars in comparative politics – or even political science in general – encounter, not only in Korea but all around the world, but the degree of these problems is much more serious in Korea, as we do not seem to possess the realistic capacity to solve such problems as much as others do.

First of all, I would like to mention the most fundamental issue of value orientation. It remains for us to seriously ponder why we conduct research on Southeast Asian politics. Is it a value-free or value-oriented study of politics that we need to pursue? To me, the question is not whether one is right and the other is wrong. What we need to do is to consider both aspects when doing research. In theory, a value-oriented approach involves a perspective coming from outside of the region, whereas value neutrality is achieved through a more internal and local approach within Southeast Asia. Then we can further divide the internal approach. Is it a perspective from the whole of Southeast Asia, or from each country or ethnic group? The answer is not so simple. Also, studying Southeast Asian politics through a Southeast Asian lens poses a great challenge to non-Southeast Asians. Completely excluding any chance of our pre-existing values coming into play may be possible in an idealistic world, but its likelihood in reality is slim. Moreover, I question whether that should be our ultimate goal. There must have been certain values that we cherished individually that prompted us to study politics, and especially Southeast Asian politics. If we did not have any such values which are personal to us, we would not have chosen to study Southeast Asian politics in particular. The external approach tends to highlight universal aspects found in the politics in Southeast Asia, and given the current state of social science research, which is heavily influenced by Western academic tradition, our analytical lens will also be highly likely to resemble that of Western researchers. What we should not forget, however, is to reflect upon our identity and position as Korean social scientists, and what value issues we face when examining Southeast Asian politics from a Korean perspective.

Secondly, if we do decide to acknowledge our value orientation, then the next issue is which kind of concrete research method – or whatever terms researchers may use, such as paradigm, perspective or approach – we will take. There are many theoretical frameworks that are available in the existing literature, historicism, modernism and postmodernism, to name but a few. Due to the innate complexities of postmodernism, it is difficult to make a clear summary of recent trend in the literature of postmodernism, so I intentionally touched on historicism and modernism only in my presentation. This issue was also raised by Donald K. Emmerson on the problem of interpreting the history of Southeast Asia. An historicist viewpoint is more of an internal approach, as it focuses on the historical context of Southeast Asia, thus emphasizing subjectivity, autonomy, uniqueness and continuity. The modernist perspective, on the other hand, is more external, and will highlight objectivity, dependence, universality and change.

Thirdly, I would like discuss the issue of interdisciplinarity. It is true that regional studies require an ongoing dialogue among different disciplines, but how well have we been doing this? Looking at academic societies and research institutes in Korea, it is easy to draw the conclusion that we have not been doing so well in this area. We could say we have developed more insight by listening to other academics over the years, but really all we have done interdisciplinarily is we have published an edited collection of essays written by scholars in different fields. Could we really call this an interdisciplinary academic endeavor? Would it not be more appropriate to say that it was done interdisciplinarily at a human resources level? It has stayed that way for over 20 years. To be able to conduct a truly interdisciplinary research, we would need to be able to employ different approaches and perspectives from different fields. Of course, one person cannot do everything, but we should at least be able to apply the accomplishments made in other similar academic fields to our own fields. Simply getting many people to come together does not necessarily mean that it is an interdisciplinary approach.

Fourthly, I will address the research topics that we have dealt with so far in particular. When the colonial regime was dismantled, the central topic in political science was nationalism including state formation and national integration. When Korea entered the modern sovereign state system, for the first time in its history, the issue of national security became a keyword in political academia. In order to sustain national security, economic development came to the fore, but quick economic development also produced side effects, such as developmentalism. During this period, the world was dominated by the Cold War ideology. But, with the demise of the Cold War, nationalism filled in the ideological vacuum. Other branches of thought such as regionalism also emerged, but I would say it was essentially nationalism that was at the core. The age of nationalism resurfaced. However, with the economic crisis that hit the country hard in the late 1990s, this led to a number of new topics for political research: a shift to the topics of state transition towards democracy, regional integration over national integration, human security over national security, human development beyond economic development, and sustainable development over accelerated development. Whether we, the researchers, have been actively dealing with these newly emerging themes remains questionable.

Lastly, I would like to conclude by stressing that it is crucial for us to overcome our predominant research practice of doing case studies. Most of the studies we have done so far are case studies. I am not saying that we should stop doing this, but we should not do this alone. Southeast Asia consists of 10 countries and many more ethnic groups. Doing case studies alone for 100 years will not enable us to achieve universal validity in the region. What can we tease out from countless case studies at both an academic and a practical level? Here, we have a number of prominent anthropologists present, but if we indulge ourselves in doing case studies, we will have a plethora of topics to study, but we cannot just keep writing ethnographic accounts. We have reached a point where we need to seriously reconsider methodological issues. The status of Southeast Asian studies is much better than it was in the past, and we should move away from a subsistence research level and work hard to take a huge leap in our intellectual endeavor. Having had these issues raised in our mind, we will now move on to the presentations of other scholars.

2. Research on political culture

JEONG Yeonsik (Changwon National University): Although the disputes over political culture are not over, at least among political scientists specializing in Southeast Asian area studies, the importance of political culture seems to be unchallenged. The problem is, however, whether Korean researchers on Southeast Asia have carried out research on the political culture of the region that corresponds to its significance. I reviewed the articles on political culture which have been published in The Southeast Asian Review since 2001 to analyze the contribution that Korean researches have made so far.

From the Vol. 11, No. 1 edition published in 2001 up to the Vol. 17, No. 2 issued in 2007, The Southeast Asian Review featured a total of 118 articles, of which 63 were on Southeast Asian politics. Within the political science field, the topics were evenly varied. Fifty of them were written by political scientists, and the remaining 13 were produced by scholars in adjacent fields. Unfortunately, no article on political culture was written by a political scientist. The opposite was equally true, as almost all the articles on politics partially dealt with political culture to a varying degree. Let’s look at in what way and at what level political culture is analyzed and explained in these articles.

The reason why research on political culture is not easy is because it is essentially complex and variable. It is complex because a multiplicity of different political cultures can exist among the members of one society. For instance, political cultures can vary according to social class, generation and region. Therefore, the target group of a study should be clearly demarcated when embarking on a political cultural study. But the problems do not end there. When the target group expands, it becomes crucial to position multiple political cultures in appropriate relationships. When this attempt fails, it is likely that the conclusion of the study will boil down to totalitarianism, and it will miss out essential traits of the political culture taking place during the regime change that normally clashes with the political culture of the dominant class. Also, political culture is variable and changes just like any other form of culture. If we fail to capture these changes, political culture will exist only as an independent variable and this will subsequently end up producing deterministic explanations only. Thus, we need to do research that consistently traces back the dynamics of political culture, especially focusing on the changes in political culture that precede regime change, and the tensions between political regime and political culture created by the difference in the speed of change.

Speaking of the complexity of political culture, I believe that our research on the political culture of Southeast Asia has produced a considerable achievement. The studied groups have widened to include people from diverse social classes and regions. Recent researches have showed a departure from focusing only on the dominant elitist and male-centered central political culture, and have encompassed the dominated, marginalized class, the feminine, and provincial political culture. Although the elite political culture is still regarded as the major variable, considering its position as still the most influential variable and it is also something that rightfully deserves scholarly attention, I would favorably review the progress that we have made in this realm so far.

However, I would say that simply assembling a number of different political cultures in one analytical framework is problematic. For example, some studies maintain rational choice theory as the grand analytical tool, but when something that does not get explained well by rational choice theory emerges, these writers strategically employ a political cultural explanation as a makeshift. This method might in fact be the most accurate reflection of reality, because political culture is complex, even at an individual level, and there is no one single political culture dominating the others perfectly. However, when more than one political culture, especially those that are conflicting, are operating simultaneously, they operate in a certain systematic relationship. Therefore, we must understand that relationship.

In this sense, what has been most lacking in studies of Southeast Asian politics in Korea seems to be a dialectical analysis of the confrontation of contradictory political cultures. If the dominant political culture – the ideological state apparatus in Louis Althusser’s words and hegemony in Antonio Gramsci’s term – operates in order to maintain the current regime, we need to investigate how such dominant political cultures are reproduced, and how opposing political cultures or forms of counter-hegemony are formed and pitted against the hegemony. Without such an analysis, researchers will take the dominant political culture as a constant.

This is something that we need to be very cautious about in terms of the variability of political culture. When a hegemonic political culture stays in power for a long time, people begin to fall under the illusion that it will never change. However, just as no culture is static, the dominant political culture cannot be an exception and we should be aware of the possibility of change. Political culture can be both an independent and a dependent variable at the same time. Changes made in socio-economic structures as a result of the sweeping influence of globalization, and the quick spread of information stemming from the development of communication technology have increased the variability of political cultures more than at any other point in the history of mankind. This is the very reason why we need to conduct research tracing the transformation of political cultures in Southeast Asia.

Changes in political culture are essential in research on political and regime changes because changes in political culture normally precede regime changes. This becomes more evident when we take a look at the recent trend in the study of democratization and the consolidation of democracy that has restored civil culture, which had once been completely discarded from the context, as one of the major variables. This trend is of course not without its flaws and it deserves critical assessment at some point – how much civil culture differs from participatory political culture in the past, and how free it is from the Western-centered, deterministic analysis  derived from the modern-and-tradition dichotomy. But, today, I will only point out caveats in the study of civil culture and regime change that are relevant to today’s topic. Civil culture as the foundation of the solidification of democracy or, in other words, as the driving force that sustains a democratic regime, is often characterized in terms of value-oriented terms like compromise, tolerance, trust, rationality, and political utility. We can think of it as the most suitable political culture under a democratic regime. What we need to be careful about, however, is that such value orientation is likely to be formed not simultaneously, but with certain time intervals, and not before the transition to democracy but during the democratization period. In order to grasp the formation of the political culture that drives regime change, we will need to observe the variability of political culture created by its diversity.

In this context, we need to be critical of the fad of the study of the Korean Wave, or Hallyu. With the explosive popularity of Korean films, pop music and TV soap operas overseas in recent years, a lot of scholars – political scientists being no exception – have embarked on researching this phenomenon. The research has mainly focused on describing the consumption of Korean cultural products and probing the underlying causes of the phenomenon. I am not trying to say that such attempts were of no merit. Investigating commonalities among East Asian cultures deserves recognition in itself, especially with regard to the formation of a greater East Asian regional community. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that these researches on the Korean Wave conducted by Southeast Asian politics specialists did not go as far as exploring the impact of the Korean Wave on the political cultures of each Southeast Asian country. Let me give an example. In my opinion, such researches needed to address how Korea’s political culture, as portrayed in Korean TV soap opera, is accepted or rejected by Southeast Asian consumers and how this affects their political value orientation. The legitimacy of studying the Korean Wave phenomenon lies in the fact that it is an external political culture that penetrates and affects the livelihood of a huge population, not in the fact that it is a Korean political culture.

In order not to miss out the issue of the variability of political culture, political culture should be analyzed as not only an independent variable, but also as a dependent variable. Taking political culture as a dependent variable is not a familiar task for political scientists, and it is in no way an easy project. It requires long years of training to be equipped with the insight needed to understand the meanings that signs, texts, and images symbolize, and grasp the production mechanism of such meanings. That is why most political scientists have predominantly treated the literature produced in adjacent fields such as anthropology as an independent variable. However, it becomes evident that political culture is something that Southeast Asian politics specialists in Korea cannot turn away from if we remind ourselves of the fact that the puzzles of Southeast Asian politics, which could not be satisfactorily explained by grand theories developed in the West, were solved by understanding the political culture of the region, and if we acknowledge that political culture is a culture of politics.

3. Research on political change and political economy.

PARK Eunhong (Sungkonghoe University): It is indeed a taxing job to write a grand overview of the researches that have been made in the field of political change and political economy in the Southeast Asian region. I personally feel that the senior scholars who have initiated and led the study of Southeast Asian politics in Korea are more suitable people to do this. So I plan to limit my role to that of a reporter briefly presenting the review of the relevant literature published thus far.

First of all, I would like to speak about the general trends in the study of political change and the political economy of Southeast Asia taking place outside of Korea. Some of the most influential books in these fields which have been published in recent years are “Contemporary Southeast Asia: Regional Dynamics, National Differences” (2004), “Southeast Asian Responses to Globalization: Restructuring Governance and Deepening Democracy” (2005), and “The Political Economy of South-East Asia: Markets, Power and Contestation” (2006). Based on these books, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand – widely dubbed the “ASEAN 4” – have witnessed their citizens enjoying greater freedom and their political regimes changing through elections on a regular basis. In sum, a transition from pseudo democracy to mature democracy is taking place in these countries. However, the elites are still craftily avoiding policy reforms that would disrupt conventional political practices and infringe upon their self-interest from strong government-corporate ties. Democratization in Southeast Asia is transitional rather than stable, and it is limited to nominal changes rather than fundamental reforms. However, there is a snowballing effect of democratization spilling over geographical boundaries. The trend of political change in Southeast Asia can therefore be summarized as the “3 Ts” – Transitional, Transformational, and Transnational – and this is how overseas Southeast Asian political scientists generally view the political situation in Southeast Asia. We can also witness the growing emphasis on political culture in researches on political change and political economy, as was mentioned by Professor JEONG in the previous presentation. This may be because political change and political economy cannot be completely separated from cultural variables. Whether it be a strategic choice or a rational choice, neither of them can be free from the binding influence of culture. Some argue that, even after the democratization, clientelism still prevails in Southeast Asian political culture, and this hinders political and economic reforms.

In the International Symposium on Democracy in East Asia held in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the 1987 June Democratic Struggle (June 29, 2007), hosted by the Korea Democracy Foundation and the Democracy & Social Movements Institute at Sungkonghoe University, there were presenters who highlighted the importance of political leadership and the role of political elites. Aung Moe Zaw, General Secretary of the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), presented his article on the importance of social movements for the democratization in Burma. He asserted that Burma had failed to achieve a “democratic breakthrough” at the “critical juncture” in 1988 due to the lack of leadership and negotiating skills of the democracy activists. Francisco Nemenzo, former president of the University of the Philippines, shared his thoughts on democracy and democratization. He viewed Antonio F. Trillanes’s coup d’etat attempt against the current President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the first sign of Hugo Chávezian leadership in the Philippines that could bring about the subsequent breakdown of oligarchic democracy. Nemenzo concluded by indirectly stating that the role of progressive elite military figures is indispensable in dismantling representative democracy that reproduces oligarchic practices. His remark reflected elite-centered transitology, and it surprised many Korean intellectuals present at the talk, because Nemenzo is one of the leading progressive figures in the Philippines. Of course, Korean political academia had already started paying attention to the causer rather than cause of democratization in the discourse of transitology from the 1990s, focusing on the role of elites in accelerating, delaying or retarding democratization.

Regarding the oligarchic practices of the political elites in Southeast Asia, terms like godfathers, bigmen, cacique, bossism, patrimonialism and patron-clientelism have been used. In the book published in 2007, “Political Leadership in Coping with the Crisis in Southeast Asia” (Park et al), the authors compared the leadership style of the political leaders of four countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand – in their transition to democracy. This is a very well organized book, and it is in line with the current trend in Korea’s political academia which focuses on political leadership. From this book, I discovered one important point to bear in mind. Even though we may acknowledge the validity of the leadership-oriented political change theory, not only leaders’ own “virtu”, but also their objective “fortuna” matters. In the book, Park discusses this issue using a balanced approach employing both voluntarism and determinism.

It is true that the political sphere of the political elites in Southeast Asia has expanded as the countries in the region have slowly begun to move away from authoritarian regimes at varying speeds over the last 10 to 20 years. But the problem here is whether a Southeast Asian politics heavily based on clientelism is being transforming into a rule-based political system that guarantees transparent and fair competition. In other words, with regard to the “transformational” issue – one of the 3Ts mentioned earlier – I am asking if it would be possible for Southeast Asian politics to be fundamentally transformed rather than ending with nominal and superficial changes. In this context, a series of Southeast Asian studies books published by the Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and the Institute for East Asian Studies at Sogang University are large-scale academic accomplishments that have engaged a large number of Korean specialists on Southeast Asian political change theory and political economy. But there are some things that have left much to be desired, especially leaving some room for better writing of thick descriptions under a coherent theoretical and analytical framework. However, we should give due credit to their attempts to empirically test the “global-local nexus” in an effort to prove that Asian exceptionalism is no longer valid under the pan-global wave of democratization which has been dubbed the “Third Wave,” and the pressure of neo-liberal globalization that has engulfed East Asian developmental states.

What is interesting is the way that interest in Southeast Asian politics intensified among Korean political scientists after the economic crisis, and Southeast Asia was increasingly frequently mentioned when discussing the pan-East Asian community. As the currency crisis that started in Thailand had a contagious effect and produced resounding repercussions in Korea through Malaysia and Indonesia, Korea’s political scientists began to take note of Southeast Asia from the political economic perspective. This might be an expression of interest in comparative politics within the political context of the East Asian economic crisis prompted by the global economic recession.

The changes in Southeast Asian politics since the economic crisis are two-fold. As we can see in the case of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the economic crisis served as an impetus for political reform and democratization. But when we take a closer look at what is happening in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, they are not taking the road that leads to stable democratization, but the one that leads to considerably unstable democratization. Thailand, in particular, was an exemplary case in Southeast Asia that had been taking the democratization process step by step in a fairly stable manner. However, less than 10 years after the country became the origin of the worst byproduct of the “global-local nexus,” the currency crisis, the country witnessed a military coup d’état and slipped into the chaotic state of de-democratization. A string of destabilizing events in Thailand highlighted the rise and fall of Thaksinocracy that initially started as a populist measure, in favour of communitarianism, and the socio-economic background that made the anti-Thaksin military coup d’état possible. The coup d’état was the first event in the history of modern Thai politics that received support from the civil society. The scholars realized the need to make a shift from focusing on “the political context behind the Southeast Asian economic crisis” to the “socio-economic context behind the Southeast Asian political crisis.”

If we could define the progress of humankind as the spread of democracy and the accumulation of material wealth, Korea and Southeast Asia are both experiencing political and economic turmoil in the process. In that sense, I would say that it is a positive sign that more and more Korean political scientists are taking an interest in Southeast Asian politics, especially in a comparative perspective. Southeast Asian specialists in Korea should react more proactively to this trend by developing and supplying diverse resources such as those associated with theory, policy and organization that can contribute to the enhancement of communication between Korea and Southeast Asia. It normally works the other way round, but I do believe that supply could bring out demand too.

For that reason, I would like to speak highly of the Asian Politics Forum created as a sub section of the annual summer conference of the Korean Political Science Association on June 24 and 25, 2004 under the initiative taken by the Southeast Asian studies specialists in Korea. It was significant in that Korean political scientists on Southeast Asian region took a central role in creating a platform for communication between the Korean and Southeast Asian political circles. If we continue to maintain and develop such an arena for communication, I believe that intellectual interest and research in Southeast Asian politics among Korean political academia will expand.

4. Research on international relations

BAE Geung-Chan (Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security): When I was asked to do a presentation today, at first I thought, ‘What is the need for doing this?’ I wondered if a critical assessment of research on Southeast Asian international relations was really necessary, when there are such a small number of scholars specializing in the field. I could count one or two, if I were narrowing down the field, and perhaps a few at most if I were considering it more broadly. More strictly speaking, there might be none at all. I gave a rather childish title to my presentation, “The debate on East Asian community: a small flower that blossomed in a barren land.” I would say it is more of a piece of grumbling than a scholarly article.

Reviewing the literature on Southeast Asian international relations published in Korea over the last 15 years does not seem to be a very difficult job. The only difficulty is the sense of perplexity, embarrassment and even shame that the few researchers who have pursued the field for a long time might feel. The reason is very simple. There are just a handful of political scientists on Southeast Asia who have specialized in the international relations of the region since the 1990s. I would say it is even less than one out of 10 researchers who have received their doctorate degrees in Southeast Asian politics, both in Korea and abroad. Therefore, it is not surprising to see a sub-par research output, both in quantity and quality. Again, it is no exaggeration to say that Korea as a barren land for studies of international relations in Southeast Asia. This is especially true when we compare our situation with that of Japan, Australia, the United States, and even some of the European countries, which boast much longer traditions of research, as they took a strategic interest in the region much earlier than Korea. In spite of all these shortcomings, I nevertheless believe that reviewing the research trends and the progress that has been made by the few existing scholars in the field would be worthwhile for the future.

There are two types of scholars who have dealt with Southeast Asian international relations in Korea since the 1990s. The first group is those who majored in general international relations, who maintained exchange with state-sponsored scholars from the U.S., Japan, China, and Southeast Asian countries through international conference. For example, they are academics who participate in international conference, such as the Council on Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific and the Asia-Pacific Round Table, to discuss security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. However, you could never call them specialists in Southeast Asian international relations. They mainly give lectures on Northeast Asian international relations or on the situation of the Korean Peninsula in these meetings, or they spoke unconventional multilateral security issues in the Asia-Pacific region that encompasses Southeast Asia, such as maritime safety, terrorism, pirates, drugs, smuggling, and the destruction of the environment, on behalf of the Korean government. They have never produced any form of research that deals with major themes in the study of Southeast Asian international relations, so they also do not consider themselves as specialists on the region. They must, however, have a certain level of knowledge of Southeast Asian international relations obtained during discussion of general international relations issues with scholars from Southeast Asia.

The second group is made up of scholars who have pursued professional research devoted to Southeast Asian international relations in universities and research institutes in Korea. The problem is that the number of such researchers is miniscule, and their research interest is concentrated on the ASEAN countries only. We must candidly accept the fact that the quality of their work is not very high. There are books on ASEAN written by professors in some universities, and research on ASEAN and Southeast Asian international relations is being continuously carried out by researchers in state-funded research bodies. But it is not comparable to the researches being done in Japan and Australia, both in quantity and quality, and it merely introduces what ASEAN is and offers a smattering of recent changes that are taking place in ASEAN. Of course, there is no dispute that ASEAN is the central organization in Southeast Asian international relations, but there is nearly no volume of professional research in existence on the foreign policy of each of the Southeast Asian states, or the bilateral or multilateral relations between and among the countries in the region. There is an absolute dearth of research on relations between Southeast Asia and regional superpowers, such as the U.S., Japan, China and India. In-depth investigation on Korea-ASEAN relations, which I would say is Korea’s main concern, is still insufficient.

There is a clear reason why research on Southeast Asian international relations in Korea has been so slight. First, there has been extremely limited demand for research in the field at both a social and a national level. In other words, because there is no urgent need for specialists in this field in Korean universities or research organizations, it is extremely difficult to get a job in Korean academia with such a specialty.

Also, since the end of the Vietnam War, there have been no conspicuous events in the international relations in Southeast Asia that have had a direct, visible impact on Korea. That explains the general lack of scholarly interest in this field among Korean academics. To most Korean international political scientists who are familiar with the superpower-centered perspective, Southeast Asian international politics, which involves numerous small and middle-power states, has never seemed very appealing. The scantiness of the readily available information on this region in Korea has also made it difficult for scholars to observe and analyze international relations in Southeast Asia in depth. The Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade may be the only exception to this, as its job is to analyze Korea’s relationship not only with the global superpowers but also with countries in other regions. As a matter of fact, that is how I was able to pursue my interest in this region all along. The bottom line is that, without demand, there cannot be supply, and where there is no interest, there will be no people.

But we need to be aware of the signs of change that have been taking place in recent years. A small flower has begun to blossom in the barren field of Southeast Asian international relations in Korea. This is the debate on creating the East Asian regional bloc, which was spurred by the ASEAN+3 Summit which was launched in 1997 and the East Asia Summit (EAS) in 2005. This debate was appealing enough to stimulate the intellectual curiosity of many Korean political scientists. The reason why international relations in Southeast Asia is receiving renewed attention in the East Asian community debate is because the process of the regional integration of East Asia is being carried out under the cooperative framework of ASEAN+3 and is virtually being led by it. Moreover, the fact that Korea also played a central role in drafting the vision and the action plan of the regional cooperation in East Asia has also led to heightened interest in Southeast Asia among Korean researchers. International relations in Southeast Asia, the political and economic ties between Northeast and Southeast Asia, has begun to attract more attention from Korean scholars, and has emerged as a popular potential topic for study.

As this is the case, there is now a rapid increase of demand for research on the issue of the integration of the East Asian region. Various joint research projects related to ASEAN+3, research bodies such as the Network of East Asia Think-Tanks (NEAT) and the East Asia Forum (EAF), and other regional studies projects on East Asia have encouraged the continued participation of Korean scholars, and Korea’s Foreign Ministry now indirectly assists the East Asian Community Study Group formed by academics interested in the region in order to react efficiently to growing regional academic cooperation. These recent developments are naturally enhancing the status of Southeast Asian international relations among Korean researchers. Though the future outlook is brighter, research on Southeast Asian international relations still has long way to go. Although many scholars are becoming aware of the importance of this field through the debate over the East Asian regional bloc, the number of professional researchers in this field has not increased much. The research output is still very limited. It is impossible to produce meaningful research results only on the basis of intellectual curiosity and interest, and the making of professional researchers requires a long period of training.

However, we can end this discussion on a high note, as there are indications that the recent debate on the East Asian community will encourage research on Southeast Asian international relations and produce a greater number of new researchers in the field in Korea. We will see a growing number of future Southeast Asian specialists writing their masters’ and doctoral dissertations on Southeast Asian international relations and East Asian regional integration in both domestic and overseas universities. Also, if academics who have recently developed their interest in this field continue to remind their students of the significance of the study of Southeast Asia, I would say that there will be more specialists on this region in the next generation. With the intensification of cooperative ties and exchanges between Korea and ASEAN at political, diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural levels, universities, research institutes and the government will be in need of more regional specialists, and hopefully, this will lead more young students who aspire to be academics to pursue their career in Southeast Asian studies.

5. Economics

PARK Bun-Soon (Samsung Economic Research Institute): We have the presidential election coming up in just two days now, and it seems to me that the keyword in this year’s election is reviving the slumping national economy. According to Marx, the economy rules everything, but economics is the last item in today’s program. I am a bit unhappy that I get to give my presentation last, because normally I tend to be the first one to give a presentation. However, it is hard for me to complain because, as I was preparing for today’s presentation, I felt that the order of the program accurately reflected the reality.

As I got a request to do a literature review on research on Southeast Asia by Korean economists, I started reading the existing literature on the region in mainstream economics and business studies in Korea. I wanted to find out how the Southeast Asian economy has been treated in mainstream economics and business studies, rather than reviewing the work done by regional specialists in the country. So I focused on the official presses and bulletins of Korea’s economics and management studies academia since 1990. The result was rather miserable. The academic journal issued by the Korean Economic Association is The Korean Economic Review. This journal had no article on the Southeast Asian economy. Instead, in 2005, AHN Byung-soo presented an article reviewing the regulations regarding the country of origin in the free trade agreement between Japan and Singapore in a joint conference hosted by the Korean Economic Association. But it is hard to call it a study of the Southeast Asian economy. I looked at the International Economic Journal published by the Korea International Economic Association, and there was nothing on the Southeast Asian economy. In the book of the collection of articles presented in the 1998 conference, there was an entry titled ‘AFTA, Is it Sufficient for ASEAN’s Further Economic Growth?’ by PARK Innwon at Korea University.

The Korean Association of Trade and Industry Studies publishes the Journal of International Trade and Industry Studies. In the 1999 edition, WON Yongkul, who currently teaches at the University of Seoul, published an article entitled, “A Study on Trade and FDI Relations between Korea and ASEAN.” At that time, Won was a researcher at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), and the article was published since it contained policies on the relationship between Korea and ASEAN, but it does not contain much of any significance, content wise. Then there is a 2003 article, “An International Comparison of Organizational Commitment during 1997-2002: Among Indonesian, Chinese and Korean Employees” written by SIN Man-su with some others. The Journal of Korean Trade of the Korea Trade Research Association featured “A Case Study of the Korean Firm’s Investment in Vietnam” by and LEE Jang-rho and KIM Yong-sig at Korea University in 1997.

So far, I have briefed you about the situation of Southeast Asian studies in economics, and now I will move on to what it is like in management studies. According to my own research, there are two journals which are published by the Korean Academic Society of Business Administration (KASBA). One is the Management Education Review, and here I found several articles on the localizing strategy of Korean firms in Southeast Asia. A rare study entirely devoted to Southeast Asia was published in the Korean Management Review in 2001. “Strategy and Structure of Ethnic Chinese Business Organizations: Environmental Changes and the New Breed” by JUNG Ku-hyun, YON Kang-heum and SON Yong-min seems to be the only article focusing on Southeast Asia as its main study target.

While studies on the Southeast Asian economy suffer from the scant amount of the existing literature, the Korean Economic Association seems to have a great interest in China. In the fourth international conference, held in 1990, it had a special feature on the Chinese economy, and again it paid special attention to China in the fifth international conference two years later. In business and management studies, China is a popular country to study, especially with regard to the direct investment of Korean firms.

Although the Southeast Asian economy has been seriously neglected in mainstream academia, there has been a copious amount of research on policies. For example, there is the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), a state-funded research body that no longer does regional studies. It originally started out as the Korea Foundation for Middle East Studies in 1976, and then it was changed to the Korea International Economic Institute in 1979. It was again changed to the Korea Institute for Economics and Technology (KIET) before it acquired its current name in 1991. Since then, it has been the leading organization for research on the regional economy around the world in Korea. But when CHO Soon, formerly an economics professor at Seoul National University, became a finance minister in the 1990s, he established the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), and the regional studies unit in the KIET was entirely transferred to the KIEP. The KIET had a highly qualified body of well-trained regional studies researchers but, for the job’s sake, they stayed at KIET and continued doing other researches. This was a huge blow to regional studies.

KIEP is another research institute that conducts regional studies. During the ROH Tae-woo Administration in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a research body that was devoted to investigating the economy of communist countries. It was later absorbed by KIEP, and KIEP has been producing good stock of policy reports on different regions around the world. As you all know, regional studies usually make a contribution to the policy-making process. But the researches produced by state-funded think tanks are not purely academic, but were initiated by utilitarian motivations, such as what would be the most effective way for Korea to make use of Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian Review, published by the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies (KASEAS), has a quite large volume of research on the Southeast Asian economy, but there is a clear limit to its producing a positive analysis and generating a profound discussion on the Southeast Asian economy, as there are only a handful of researchers in the field.

Then what is the reason for this scarcity of existing research on the Southeast Asian economy? As you all know, the currency crisis in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s had an enormous impact on the Korean economy. Thus, it is rather surprising that so little research has been done on the Southeast Asian economy by Korean economists or business academics. There may be several background factors, and one of these would be a distinctive attribute of the Korean economic academia, which is heavily dominated by the neoclassical economic tradition from the United States. In the past, the nationalist economics advocated by PARK Hyeon-chae and CHU Chong-hwan appealed to some non-mainstream factions, but it never appealed to the mainstream economists who were either teaching or had been trained at prestigious universities like Seoul National, Yonsei, and Korea Universities. Most of them were later educated in the United States, where economics textbooks begin with a chapter on the demand and supply mechanism of the market economy. The premise is that this demand and supply theory is a universal concept that works anywhere in the world. That is why economics does not deal with troubled areas where conventional economic principles lose their explanatory power. In fact, economists in Southeast Asia, too, study the economy of their countries and region within a western economic framework. So, as long as there is nothing unique about the Southeast Asian economy, since the local researchers are not doing it, it seems that there is no need for us to study the Southeast Asian economy.

Given this background of the academic tradition of Korean economics, there is no one to teach the Southeast Asian economy. I am not sure if you remember this but, if I recall correctly, the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University here first started out as a regional studies center with a particular focus on studying developing countries during the KIM Young-sam Administration. But under the government’s plan to globalize the universities, most of the universities in Korea set up graduate schools of international studies. I heard that the person who played a key role in drafting the globalization plan was an economics professor at Seoul National University, and he is the one who devised the current format of graduate schools of international studies. There is a rumor among the economics academia that jokingly says that he had so many unemployed students who had obtained a PhD in economics in the United States, so he created the graduate school of international studies to give them jobs. If you refer to page 116 of the booklet of this conference, you will see the list of the curriculum of the graduate schools of international studies that were granted government funding. You can see that the curriculum does not differ much from the general graduate schools, and there is no special program on regional studies. There were no people who could teach regional economies, but the professors did not think about teaching students with a regional studies curriculum, they just directly transferred the knowledge that they had learned in the United States to their students. You all know how Korean professors do not work hard, except for the members of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies. Their laziness made many professors simply repeat what they had learned in the United States in the class rooms in Korea, and this is what happened as a consequence.

Secondly, the Southeast Asian economy itself is not very an attractive topic to study. When we talk about Southeast Asia, we normally refer to 10 countries. In economics, there must be one coherent theory that can explain the economies of all these 10 countries. However, this is indeed a difficult task. We can apply the East Asian economic development model to some of the more developed economies in the region, but it is hard to find any similarity with the less developed Indochina region. This disparity is what makes Southeast Asian economics difficult. In addition, whereas economic research requires an analysis of empirical data, it is not easy to get a hold of a systematic data set and statistical database on the Southeast Asian economy. To speak of my own experience, the Samsung Economic Research Institute, where I work, has started working on writing a report on the outlook of the Southeast Asian economy every autumn. The work requires gathering, cleaning and analyzing data. Because some countries do not have any systematic data, it is extremely difficult to produce an economic outlook on countries like Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. That is why we usually write reports on just six of the Southeast Asian countries. As for Indonesia, although this country does have a data set, due to logistic problems, like slow Internet connection and low quality of centrally administered government data, problems still exist. Because people consider the United States, Japan, China and the European Union as important entities, there are two to three people working on a single country. But because of the relatively less importance placed on Southeast Asia, there is just one person who is allotted to cover the whole region. Those in charge of the advanced countries only have to deal with a single country and they have a very well organized data set to work with. The European Central Bank keeps very a systematic statistical database. If I need 12 hours to conduct research on six countries, a researcher in charge of Japan needs only half an hour because there are two doing one country. This is what I mean by saying that doing research on Southeast Asia is much harder than doing research on other regions. As this is the reality, who would volunteer to study Southeast Asia?

As Professor BAE Geung-Chan said earlier, the lack of demand has a huge impact on the study of the Southeast Asian economy. I had a strong conviction that future generations would need to look back at what went wrong with the Southeast Asian economy in the late 1990s in order to understand the Asian economic crisis. I devoted all my energy and passion to writing a 500-page book entitled “The Crisis and Restructuring of Southeast Asian Corporations” which came out in 2000. After a few years, I asked the publisher how many copies had been sold, and the answer that I got was 600. This book which I had poured all of my energy into only sold 600 copies. Later, I omitted Southeast Asia and published two books on East Asia, and those books sold around 2,000 copies. I got to publish a little book at the end of November this year and, this time, I even excluded East Asia and included sections on India and China only. I have shared my experience with you for fun, but this example shows how much demand matters in encouraging or discouraging research on a particular region.

The third problem is that there is virtually no one studying Southeast Asia. This is linked to the first problem that I addressed. Southeast Asia is not included as the part of the university education curriculum. While I was preparing for this presentation, I looked at the curriculum of the economics department in a number of universities in Korea to see if there are any classes on the Southeast Asian economy. There was none in the so-called prestigious influential universities like Seoul National, Yonsei, Korea, Sogang and Sungkyunkwan Universities. For example, the Department of Economics at Seoul National has classes on the Chinese economy, the Japanese economy, international trade, international finance and economic integration, but no class on the Southeast Asian economy. It was likewise in Yonsei. What was interesting was Pusan National University, where classes on economic history – not economy – of China and Japan were offered. I found two universities that provided courses on the Southeast Asian economy, and they were the Department of International Economics and Law at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Sangmyung University. I have lectured in both places, and I personally know the professors who teach these classes. The classes were created largely because of the personal interests of those professors, not because it was part of the original curriculum.

On a final note, I would like to ask if the Southeast Asian economy is really not all that popular. Is it not popular when it is actually taught to students? I do not think so at all. In fact the business department at Korea University offers a research course on Asia, except for China, and I taught that course for five years. Because there is a separate course on China, and the only criterion is that the course needs to teach about the regions where Korean companies are present, determining which Asian region to study is largely at the lecturer’s discretion. I chose to teach the Southeast Asian economy, and the course drew a huge number of students. There were times when 125 students took the class, and it was recognized as one of the most popular courses, so that I had to limit the number of students in one class. That led me to think that the Southeast Asian economy would make a very good and also popular addition to the curriculum.

So what do we need to do? My belief is that economics, business, or trade departments at so-called prestigious universities should offer classes on the Southeast Asian economy so that students can get an opportunity to get a taste of the region at an undergraduate level. Reflecting on my personal experience of working in the private sector, those who majored in economics as undergraduates have a better understanding and chance to produce quality output in the fields of regional economics. Therefore, if economic or business major undergraduates get some exposure to the Southeast Asian economy at an early stage, I feel that it will help induce more people to study it more seriously.

6. Discussion.

CHO Hung-Guk: I would like to point out that there is a course on the Southeast Asian economy at Pusan National University. Because I teach the course at the graduate school of international studies, Dr. Park must have missed it.

PARK Bun-Soon: Oh, is that right? On a side note, I did my PhD at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. So if HUFS decides to offer a course on the Southeast Asian economy for first year undergraduate students majoring in the language and literature of Southeast Asian countries, I would be willing to teach the course for free. But there is no such request.

CHOI Byung Wook: What is it like in other countries? Is it especially bad in Korea?

PARK Bun-Soon: When I asked Dr. RA Hee Ryang, who studied in the United States, during lunchtime, she said there is a difficulty in offering a course on the Southeast Asian economy because there is no coherent pattern found in the whole of the region. Because it is difficult to give lectures, I reckon that it would be harder to find courses on the Southeast Asian economy than on the Chinese or Japanese economies in the United States. But if you go to Southeast Asia, things become totally different. The National University of Singapore offers many such courses. Japan also has many courses on the Southeast Asian economy. There are many Japanese scholars who study it.

PARK Sa-Myung: I just heard that there is someone who studied the Southeast Asian economy in the United States. Where is he? As I listened to the speakers today, I realized that he is a rare addition to the pool of scholars in Southeast Asian studies.

RA Hee Ryang (POSCO Research Institute): How do you do? My name is RA Hee Ryang. I came back to Korea in June this year, after having studied at the University of Hawaii for five years. Luckily, I am in the Southeast Asia research team at the POSCO Research Institute. After listening to Dr. PARK Bun-Soon today, I feel more determined to do better. I will try to do both survey research and academic research from now on.

PARK Sa-Myung: We just welcomed a real gem into our community. Anyone else who would like to speak?

JEON Je Seong: I once met some Australian economists, and they carried out field work like anthropologists and wrote their articles on Asia’s informal economy based on data they collected through interviews and field observation. So not all economists in the world only do econometrics.

PARK Eunhong: I must say I slightly disagree with Dr. PARK Bun-soon. When I visited the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, I saw a number of prominent Japanese scholars in Southeast Asian studies. The head of the center, Kosuke Mizuno, specialises in the agricultural economy of Indonesia. Akira Suehiro is an economist specializing in Thailand. Even within Southeast Asia, there are leading local economists, like Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Terence Gomez from Malaysia and Pasuk Phongpaichit from Thailand. That is why I think there is still a possibility for Korean economists to be charmed by Southeast Asian studies.

PARK Bun-soon: That is not what I meant, really. In fact, I began to take an interest in Southeast Asian studies after reading Akira Suehiro’s work on the overseas Chinese economy. Japan has a long history of study of the Southeast Asian economy, ever since the concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was promulgated during the Showa Period of Imperial Japan, especially in Osaka, the Kansai region and Kyoto University. Akira Suehiro’s seminal work on Chinese capitalists in Thailand became a classic that is frequently consulted by Thai sociologists and economists. Japan has a long tradition of research on other Asian regions. The work by Tamio Hattori at Japan’s Institute of Developing Economics on the economy of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty serves as the foundation even for Korean scholars who study the Korean economy during that period. What I was talking about was the Korean situation, that doing research on the Southeast Asian economy in Korea is not an attractive option here.

PARK Sa-Myung: Allright, that’s good. But we are running out of time. To sum up the many points addressed by a number of speakers today, you all must have realized how serious the problems of improving quantitative scarcity and achieving qualitative richness are. The problem is that there is no demand for Southeast Asian studies. But, as has been pointed out by Prof. BAE Gung-chan and Dr. PARK Bun-soon, the number of courses on Southeast Asia can be increased by the proactive initiative and effort by some individuals. Because it is difficult to transform the reality in a short period of time, we will need to take proactive measures at an individual level for the time being. In that sense, I would like to reiterate the beautiful phrase that Prof. BAE used – “a small flower that blossomed in a barren land.” What flower would that be? If it is a flamboyant flower like a rose, it will die soon. The life of a rose bush ends when the flower dies. But if it is a dandelion, the more you step on it, the stronger it becomes. I would say that Southeast Asian studies in Korea is like a dandelion. It is not showy, but it has strong vitality. I think that today’s session was valuable in that it reminded us of the rigorous vitality of the discipline that we love and study. I would like to wrap up today’s discussion on that positive note. Thank you very much.

We are proud to upload this special issue on Korean studies on Southeast Asia. New developments that expanded links between their country and Southeast Asia have dramatically increased in the last two decades, and today “the Korean wave” is an enduring part of everyday life in the region. In this issue our Korean colleagues look back at that evolution of Southeast Asian Studies, the challenges the faced, and the prospects that it will catch up with the “more advanced” studies on China and Japan.

We have also added Korean to the languages of the Kyoto Review, and our Korean colleagues were more than happy to extend their help to us, and we also thank them for their patience in waiting for the other translators to complete their work.

Finally, resource limitation has not enabled us to translate the three essays in this issue: Professor Vedi Hadiz’s review essay on Islamic politics in Indonesia; Professor Rommel Curaming’s review essay of Reynaldo Ileto’s and Simon Philpott’s respective take on Orientalism in Philippine and Indonesian studies, respectively; and Professor Ronald Holmes review of a defense of former President Gloria Arroyo’s presidency.

We hope however that in the near future these three pieces will be translated (and we apologize to these three authors for not having done so in this issue).

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

-Mary Frye, date unknown

Donna and I were introduced to each other long before we met in person.  Her husband, Jojo Abinales,  a long time friend and associate in doing Mindanao studies,  has already mentioned her to me several times.   I knew that Jojo was quite fortunate to have met his match – in intellectual pursuits, in music, in art, in films.  Meeting her, and staying with them in their home in Tokyo and in Yokohama was for me a distinct privilege of having been up close and personal with two great scholars, as far as Philippine, Malaysian and Southeast Asian studies are concerned.  Everyday interaction in the Donna-Jojo household was always a delightful intellectual exercise, sparked most of the time with Donna’s smart remarks as counterfoil to Jojo’s verbal antics.

But it was Donna’s  gentle but firm maternal ways that really struck me.  As a mother myself, I could relate to Donna’s oft-repeated concerns about raising a headstrong daughter:  trying to find the “best” ways for disciplining without being too harsh, balancing love with firm grips on constant and consistent “rules of engagement.”  We shared all these concerns over our breakfast coffee in Yokohama, or when we were cooking some Filipino vegetable dishes, like pinakbet (stir fried assorted tropical vegetables, traditionally cooked in fish sauce) and adobong kangkong, (stir-fried leafy vegetables, cooked in a combination of vinegar and soy sauce)which she relished so much.

Like the scholar that she was, she always brought a pen and a notebook in front of the stove and recorded all the things I did to cook a certain dish.  She said she wanted to know in detail the “secrets” of my cooking so she could replicate the taste of the dish when she cooks it!  But it was not only in cooking where she showed her scholarly attitude.  With a special maternal pride, she showed me her small books about Angela after she and Jojo first got her:  Angela’s first English words, which later on proved to be unwieldy because of the speed of Angela’s progress in speaking English; Angela’s “firsts” .  All these she recorded painstakingly, in handwriting, in different small notebooks.

In late 2008, Donna was diagnosed to have Stage 1 breast cancer.  It came as a shock to me, since at that time I was just recovering from grieving over the death of my only brother – also to another type of cancer- that of the liver.  My brother was only 48 when he died, and Donna was also of the same age at that time.  She immediately asked me, “maybe I will go too, at this age?”  I immediately argued that my brother had an unhealthy lifestyle since he was a teen-ager and his cancer was discovered when it was at its terminal stage, when there was no turning back.  I told her in the most reassuring way that I could, that she was far so healthy than my brother was, and except for the cancer, she was otherwise a very healthy person.  She could very well lick it, like all other women cancer survivors I know, I told her.

With my stay in Japan about to end, I had to bid goodbye to Jojo, Donna and Angela, in January 2009.  Little did I expect that it would be my last physical interaction with Donna, whom I have considered not only as a friend, but also a part of my extended family.  Despite the distance, Jojo, Donna and I continued our interaction thru e-mail, and Jojo once visited my home in Mindanao early last year.  Jojo had shared that Donna was fast recovering through a combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and he never indicated any possibility of relapse.  When Donna knew I would be a paper presenter in the forthcoming AAAS conference in Honolulu this March, she immediately wrote to invite me to go to Washington DC to visit them there.

So it was a tremendous shock to me when I got news of Donna’s passing.  It was even sadder to note that it was not cancer that got her, it was something unexplainable – like a lighted candle burning the last part of its wick, or a power switched turned off.  It was like her life force was just gently removed from her body.  Looking back, it was typical of her:  to go quietly, gently into the night, without much ado, but with light shining bright, like the “soft stars that shine…”

Donna will forever be etched in many people’s hearts, including mine, and I am fortunate to have been touched, albeit briefly, by Donna’s sincerity, honesty, sweet and gentle ways.  Deep friendship is not measured by the number of years as friends – I think it is the quality of interaction that defines one’s kinship with another person.  And I am lucky to have enjoyed that with Donna.

Farewell, Donna…you will forever be missed…But I will always remember you are still around, in the rain, in the gentle wind, in the soft stars that I see at night, wherever I am…

Rufa Cagoco-Guiam

Kyoto, January 29, 2011

–

Rufa Cagoco-Guiam is professor at the Mindanao State University-General Santos, southern Philippines. She is a Moro women’s rights activist and good friend of Donna J. Amoroso and Jojo Abinales. She wrote this eulogy for the newsletter of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.

Coeli Maria Barry

It is difficult to do justice to the unique mix of qualities that was Donna, especially as our hearts are overfull at present.  But we are glad for the chance to come together and pray and reflect and talk here today.  Thanks to the marvels of technology, this small ceremony is recorded so that Jojo, Angela and other members of Donna’s family can take part and can see and feel how deeply Donna is loved  around the world.

I have found Donna near me these past few days as I went to the simplest of tasks at home.   In the midst of grief and unbelief, I have smiled while hanging laundry: with Donna in view, I check myself to see if I might not hang a shirt a bit more tightly so the wrinkles won’t show quite so awfully.   The standards she held for herself when completing the smallest of tasks around the house reflected her appreciation for the peace that came from order and a determination to maintain standards of excellence in whatever she attempted.  For Donna, love-filled acts were enough in and of themselves and her affirmation of this in a thousand ways drew us to her over and over again.

Her mind was exceptional in so many ways: she could weigh in with insight that I treasured hearing—on such a  range of subjects!  In the course of any given conversation across our nearly 25-year friendship we might move from healthcare reform in the US, to new teaching materials on Southeast Asian history, to a recommended cut and color for a jacket to go with those new dress pants that were in need of a certain something to finish the look.

The precision of Donna’s thinking was evident in her mastery of so many subjects, not least of all the English language.  She had little time for cant or for circumvention: she wanted someone to say what they meant.  Donna went to great lengths to empower others to express themselves both in English and in many languages of Southeast Asia.  The materials she and her friend and colleague Kat created for their students at GRIPS are ones that I draw upon in class after class and, without fail, students say these are among the best resources they have ever had in helping them write more clearly and more critically.

Donna believed in the value of other people’s languages and perspectives and out of that commitment she helped bring to life the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asian studies—an incredible publication which allows for the dissemination of ideas by people whose first language in not English.

The integrity Donna exuded in her personality and in her professional life was matched only by her kindness and compassion.  The people here today have come because we admired for the former and loved her and needed her for the latter.

Donna’s greatest joy was in learning that Angela would be coming to her and Jojo.  What a gift it was to be a part of that, even in tiny ways.  How much she prayed for you, Angela and prepared in every way to welcome you in to her life.  We are here today also because loving you gave her a strength and determination to stare down her troubles and her struggles with health.

Over the years, we have dined together and laughed and danced together.  With Donna, there was always music, another touchstone in our friendship.  Though I must be truthful: a certain amount of the music was bad 70s tunes—as often as not, brought to us by Jojo.  Not only did we have to relive the opening lines of tunes that should have disappeared long ago, we had to hear entire verses—second and third verses—thanks to Jojo.

We will be ending today’s ceremony with more music.  But before we turn to that, I would like to speak directly to Donna’s family:  to Dom and Georgette, Doug and Michelle, we would like to thank you for taking such good care of Donna and allowing our lives to be blessed with her as a result.  To Angela, we leave you today with faith and in hope for the future your mother’s love will help you to unfold in time.  To Jojo, we do the only thing we can do, which is to lift up our hearts in song and to offer our hands and our hearts to you, for now and always.

In loving memory,

Coeli

–

Dr. Coeli Maria Barry is  Senior Advisor, Culture and Rights Project Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centrewebsite: http://www2.sac.or.th/databases/crt/

We’ve always wanted to make your web reading experience a lot less difficult and without those annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. Now, with the help of technology, this has been realised. You get the whole story and nothing but the story.

For Safari Users:

It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view. You see every page of the article — whether two or twenty. Onscreen controls let you email, print, and zoom. Change the size of the text, and Safari remembers it the next time you view an article in Safari Reader.

For Firefox and Chrome Users:

The Safari 5 feature that’s caught the web’s attention is the Reader button, which strips down articles and blog posts into an ad. Baris Derin rolled the Readability bookmarklet into a full-fledged add-on for Firefox, but also added in a pretty neat auto-scrolling feature for the true lean-back-and-read experience. Readability tends to keep more of the text and formatting in and around the page, but strips out all the marketing and navigation material. It places an “R” button in the lower-right status area of Firefox, which isn’t the most convenient spot for our use, but some may prefer having it hidden away until needed. Notice the transparent icons, too, that provide printing, email, and refresh functions for live-updating posts.

Mhd Hejazi’s iReader is directly inspired by Safari’s Reader function, offering the same kind of pop-out white box that darkens the rest of the page, a button right in the address bar, and very, very minimal decoration—as you can see, it pared down our Top 10 feature quite a bit. There are also keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac to activate iReader, and options to change the background opacity, font and formatting, and add a “Send with Gmail” link to your articles. Neat stuff.

Both add-ons are free downloads.

by JEONG Yeonsik (Changwon National University)

“Sihanouk! Long live Sihanouk!” However unusual in the circumstances, this evocation of the prince was no surprise. Citing the destruction by the Americans of their sanctuaries over the border in Cambodia, Hanoi’s troops had penetrated to the heart of Khmer country with impunity, with cigarettes as their only viaticum, and Sihanouk’s name as their open sesame (Bizot 2003, 24).

The Demise of Royalists

Cambodians love their king. Yet in the 2008 general elections they dumped the royalist parties led by the blood royal. FUNCINPEC, the winner of the 1993 election with over 45% of the votes, plummeted to the nadir of 5% of the votes, which delivered a meager 2 seats. Norodom Ranariddh Party, another royalist party, also collected 2 seats. Together they received only 10.67% of the votes, losing more than half the votes they had previously collected before they split up. Neither party won a single seat in Phnom Penh, and more shockingly, they won only one out of 18 seats in the province of Kampong Cham, the biggest constituency and undisputed stronghold for the royalists in the past. Although the defeat was not unexpected due to a steady decline of the royalists since their triumph in 1993, nobody was ready to witness such a dramatic fall.

Explanations abound on the debacle of Cambodian royalists (Jeong 2009). One to be explored in this article is Cambodian royalism, which could have been the basis of people’s support rendered to the royalists in the past. A thesis that has long been circulated in regards to royalism holds that Cambodia is a Buddhist country with Hindu tradition and in such a country the king commands a status of authority to which his religious subjects pay unquestioning respect and support. Has Cambodia moved “from royalism to secular democracy” (Vickery 2007, 195)? The question prompts further, more fundamental questions. What exactly is the idea of kingship in the minds of Cambodian people? Has the Buddhist kingship secularized or attenuated in contemporary Cambodia? If not, how do the Cambodian people reconcile between political reality and religious cognition surrounding the king of the Kingdom?

Religions in Cambodian Villages

Cambodia is a Buddhist country. Over 90% of the population is Buddhists and Buddhism is undoubtedly the heart of what defines Khmer. Even the ruthless persecution by Khmer Rouge could not annihilate Buddhism in Cambodia. Buddhism quickly bounced back upon the rout of Khmer Rouge (Harris 2007; Hinton 2008; Ledgerwood 2008, 147-149). As Forest (2008, 24) argues, “Buddhism was the only enduring and unifying factor” in divided Cambodia. As of 2005, there are over 4,106 Buddhist monasteries across the country and about 58,828 monks and novices which is nearly the same as before the war (Sovanratana 2008, 259).

However, it is wrong to assume that Theravada Buddhism per se is the one and only religion or source of world view in Cambodia. Cambodian Buddhism allows room for multifarious divinities, both benevolent and malevolent. Perhaps this is how Theravada Buddhism sank its root in Cambodian society (Forest 2008, 20; Hansen 2004). In fact, everyday Buddhism in Cambodia is a syncretic religion mixed with worship of Hindu gods and animist spirits. Hindu gods are enshrined in many schools, public offices, and even Buddhist temples. Two small shrines at the riverside across from the royal palace exemplify the coexistence of distinctively different traditions. One houses Vishnu while the other Neak Ta, the most popular spirit among Cambodians. Built in the same size and structure, these two temples evenly attract worshipers.

Worship of animist spirits existed in Cambodia before the adoption of Indian religious practices and continues to be a significant part of religious life. Many Buddhist temples reserve space for traditional spirits. Shamans are easy to find near or even inside Buddhist temples (Marston 2008). Spiritual eminences are often associated with the soil and with ancestors buried in the soil. Roughly speaking, Hindu gods are worshiped for benediction while those territorial spirits are related to punishment. Hence people pray to those spirits to ward off accident, illness, and misfortune. Neak Ta is a spirit par excellence universally found in Cambodia, including the newly constructed Khmer Rouge tribunal court. Neak Ta standing at the gate symbolizes justice and those who undo justice cannot escape retribution. In the Cambodian court, defendants swear to tell the truth not to Buddhist moral principles but to Neak Ta figures (Edwards 2008, 219). Since it is not easy for laymen to abide by all the demanding ethical rules of Buddhism, they pray to Neak Ta for exoneration.

Spirits are sometimes mixed with Hindu gods to create a unique worship figure. Wat Kien Svay Knong located in Kandal province not far from Phnom Penh has a statue of Hanuman, Rama’s monkey general, which is worshiped there as a Neak Ta. More interestingly, beside the statue stands a wooden sculpture of Buddha, or more precisely of the savior Maitreya: Buddha-to-come. Local worshipers identify the statue as both Rama, Vishnu’s reincarnation, and Sihanouk (Thomson 2004). This implies that Sihanouk is considered Rama as well as Maitreya. To the worshipers of this hybrid statue Sihanouk is the king and at the same time the savior who is going to save the country. Does this imply that the king of Cambodia is still identified as a god incarnated to rule the world?

Another case of particular interest to be examined is the statue of the “leper king” or sdach kamlong. Various versions of the legend create confusion over precisely who the king is, but scholars have come to agree that the statue represents Yama, the god of death. Nonetheless, the academic conclusion is not relevant to ordinary Cambodians who continue to believe it to be an ancient king. Thought to be built during or shortly after the reign of Jayavarman VII, it was originally at the “terrace of the leper king” in Angkor Thom but was moved to Phnom Penh for safekeeping and placed in the center court of the National Museum. What currently stands in the terrace attracting both locals and tourists is a replica (Sophea 2004).

The leper king’s posture, with the bent right leg, as well as his moustache and fangs, is unique in that it differs from typical Buddhist statues and classic Angkorean forms. As Sophea (2004) points out, the location of the leper king statue in the museum indicates its extraordinary sacred value. Although other statues inside the museum are worshiped too, the leper king is the most prominent object of worship. Many people visit the museum just to worship the leper king and they typically pray for health and prosperity particularly during times of trouble.

Interestingly enough, the leper king statue has been copied and can be found in many places including Wat Unalom, the headquarters of the Mohanikay sect. It is important to note that it is politicians who made and enshrined the copies. The one sitting in front of Wat Unalom along the Sap riverfront is the most frequently visited one, perhaps because it was first consecrated by King Norodom and later by King Sihanouk right before the elections of 1993.

During the skirmish after the 1998 elections, King Sihanouk also consecrated Eay Tep, or divine female ancestor, under a bodhi tree in the center of Siem Reap. Eay Tep is another replica of the leper king but without fangs. Yet it is worshiped as a female deity with lips and fingernails painted red. Sophea (2004) argues that this is not surprising because in the Khmer tradition divinity can be manifested in masculine and feminine forms at the same time. Although situated in the middle of the busiest road, the area is always crowded with people. Soldiers including high-ranking officers come to solicit Eay Tep’s assistance in their military action. On holy days, the king visits the place with offerings of food and flowers.

The religious practices discussed above demonstrate that everyday religion in Cambodia is rather a syncretic Buddhism that incorporates Brahmanist and animist practices. More importantly, the religious practices involving kingly figures shows that the deep-rooted idea of kingship has survived in the minds of the people, though they may not carry precisely the same meaning they once did (Thompson 2004; Edwards 2008). The Khmer idea of kingship needs to be studied in such a context of Buddhism fused with other religious traditions.

The Idea of Kingship in Cambodia

(1) Devaraja

As the Cambodian myth of national origin tells, the Indian influence was stronger in Khmer territory than any other place in Southeast Asia. The Indian influence was particularly evident in rituals associated with statecraft. One of the rituals that readily attracted Khmer rulers was the devaraja cult. Literally put, devaraja is god-king and as such it has often been interpreted as a god incarnated as king. Coedes asserted in this vein that the king of ancient Khmer was nothing else but god (Coedes 1963). This view has been widely reiterated in most publications on the history of Southeast Asia (Hall 1966, 99; Ishii 1986, 151; Osborne 1997, 64), which has in turn led political scientists to claim that the davaraja tradition is the source of power and authority exercised by Cambodian kings. Neher went on to say that Cambodian “kings claimed to be reincarnations of Siva” and their descendents “continue to wrap themselves in the glories of the past to perpetuate their positions as devarajas” (Neher 1995, 19).

Given that kings in Cambodia have been considered god or equivalent to god, how could they be dethroned and even murdered by usurpers? Usurpation indeed is not uncommon in the history of Cambodia. Jayavarmann III, the first successor of the Angkor dynasty was dethroned by a usurper, Indravarman (r. 877-889). As splendid as it sounds, the above interpretation departs from historical reality. Overwhelmed by the grandiose relics of Angkor waiting to be explained and imbued with orientalism, scholars must have been driven to the mythical annotation of equating devaraja with god.

Available evidence suggests that devaraja is not a king but a god worshiped by kings. An epitaph titled Sdok Kak Thom, for instance, reads that Jayavarman II, the founder of Angkor, ordered brahmins to perform a rite devoted to devaraja, “kamraten jagat ta raja”, the ruler of the universe (Kulke 1978, 23; Soh and Cho 2004, 23). Devaraja read in this way is not “god-king” but god, “god of the kings” or the king of the universe. Thus the devaraja cult performed by Angkorean kings was not to apotheosize themselves but to worship gods.

Although it no longer seems tenable to maintain that the devaraja cult was a ritual by which a king became god, neither is it correct to say that the cult was a simple worship rite. The devaraja cult was clearly a royal cult designed to legitimate and maximize the king’s power by endowing divinity or quasi-divinity onto kingship. The Indian ritual was the most sophisticated and hence most powerful ideological device available at the time to which kings were readily attracted. Kings present at the cult were definitely distinguished from brahmins in that what the cult was to bring down to this world was legitimacy and authority of rulers over the ruled. Sublimity and godliness emanated by gigantic shrines and conspicuously placed lingas could effectively produce a religious basis for the legitimation of the kingship (Kulke 1978; Harris 2005, 19). Power therefore was clearly centered upon the king “who was the divine source of all authority” (SarDesai 1989, 29) and the divinity of kingship was achieved by the king’s proper ritual service to god (Mabbett 1969, 209).

Nevertheless, the divinity endowed through the rituals was not enough to protect kings from usurpers. Perhaps all the accounts above, be they god reincarnated or not, could be misleading when considered from a perception of god produced and consumed in the monotheist world where god is an omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient being. Hindu gods are far from being such almighty gods. As Newman (1992, 49) argues, the status gods held in ancient India was not beyond everything around them. In that case, devaraja, whether a god reincarnated or a ruler of divinity, is not necessarily entitled to an absolute authority, unchallengeable and invincible. By the time of Suryavarman I (r. 1003-1050), extensive hydraulic projects led to the institutionalization of bureaucracy by which power “rivaled or even surpassed the power of the king” (Chandler 2000, 43). The fact that Suryavarman I, another usurper, summoned upon his coronation up to four thousand officials at his new palace to swear publicly an oath of loyalty implies that Cambodian kings had been less powerful than what has been presumed. Except at the beginning of the empire, as Chandler (2000, 48) argues, Angkorean kings had to rely on networks of patronage and mutual obligations with power-holders not only at the center but at the periphery. Kings could be and were murdered and dethroned in Cambodia.

Furthermore, Brahmanist rituals could have performed intended functions only among the elites including royalties who might one day vie for the throne. As Chandler (2000, 98) aptly points out, it is very likely that most Cambodian people did not pay special attention, since the rituals had no effect on their lives which would remain fixed in a permanently stratified society. Although the religious life in contemporary Cambodia inherits some Brahmanist practices as seen above, therefore, it is not surprising to find that the concept of devaraja has no place in the minds of common people. Few understand the conceptual connection between the king and divinity. The ideological device for enhancing the king’s power and authority has thinned out, now playing little role in favor of the king and his family.

(2) Dhammaraja and Cakravartin

In the Buddhist world, social hierarchy is justified by the cosmological order in which karma determines one’s social status. A person of higher status is born as such because of the merit or moral standing he or she accumulated through previous lives. This logic also applies to kings, the pinnacle at the hierarchy of merit in a given society. One becomes a king because of his extraordinary merit which surpasses the rest.

However, having the highest merit does not necessarily endow upon the king unlimited power and authority. The King’s power in a Buddhist kingdom is predicated on two conditions. First is the condition that, because it is incomparable merit that seats one on the throne, the king has to live a morally exemplary life and rule the kingdom according to justice and the moral principles called dhamma. A king who successfully abides by dhamma is thus called dhammaraja, a raja by dhamma, or dhammik in vernacular Khmer, while failure to do so makes a mararaja, a raja of evil. Should any of the moral precepts be breached, the moral ground on which the kingship stands crumbles.

The second condition of Buddhist kingship is that the king has the responsibility to provide benefits to the whole kingdom through acts that promote not only peace and prosperity but also “spiritual welfare.” Promoting Buddhism itself through protecting the sangha, building temples, and collecting Buddhist texts, takes up a significant portion of the kingly responsibility (Edwards 2008, 221; Hansen 2007, 52). The king has to continuously prove that his merit is high enough to protect and encourage Buddhism. This is why the court and sangha have been mutually dependent in Cambodia and other Buddhist kingdoms. In contemporary terms, Buddhist kingship is justified on performance.

These two conditions make Buddhist kings vulnerable to challenges. First of all, it is not easy to abide by all the moral principles prescribed to kings. To become a dhammaraja is not predetermined by karma. Karma is not as deterministic as it is often thought to be. Life is contingent upon many factors, and thus good karma does not guarantee a good life. Indolence and misdemeanor can change the course of one’s life. The same is true with kings. As a human being, the king must live up to what his karma prescribes, which is why it is usually recommended that he be ordained and practice asceticism for a time before being throned. Constant accumulation of merit is the sine qua non for Buddhist kingship. A late 17th century anecdote shows the extent to which Cambodian kings were concerned with merit making. According to the story, the ruling king pardoned a buffalo tender who had approached him using ordinary language for the reason that by not punishing him or following the precepts he could increase his fund of merit (Chandler 2000, 94).

Secondly, the king’s merit is directly related to the peace and prosperity of the kingdom. The righteousness of the king is a decisive factor in the harmonious functioning of nature, including proper rainfall. Under a truly virtuous king, therefore, the realm can prosper (Hansen 2007, 21). From this follows that the suffering of subjects can be attributed to the paucity of the king’s merit (Kent 2008, 110). Natural disasters and defeat in wars often plunge the whole society into a chaotic situation that leads people to doubt the king’s merit. This is where Buddhism distinctively differs with Brahmanism. In the Brahmanist world, the king is primarily responsible for disasters and sufferings but shares the burden with god because ultimately what happens is god’s will. In contrast, Buddhist kings are solely responsible for everything that happens in the kingdom. Every single royal act entails consequences for the whole kingdom. Therefore, Buddhist kings must live a moral life in order to deliver peace and prosperity to the kingdom.

This notion that the king’s merit is related to the kingdom’s prosperity is the main theme of the story of King Vessantar (Vessantar-jatak). When the prince gave away his rain-making elephant to a neighboring kingdom, his subjects began suffering from the consequent drought and expelled him to the forest. Yet the prince continued to give away everything he possessed including his wife and children. By doing so, he reached the ultimate level of merit, which in turn brought in unceasing prosperity to his realm. Another lesson that the Vessantar story delivers is that the prince’s indifference to worldly power eventually made him truly powerful, powerful enough to command nature. As such, spiritual power and worldly power are merged into one. A virtuous person of full merit is powerful and therefore a powerful person is necessarily meritorious (Hansen 2007, 34). Vessantar was such a king, an ideal ruler who moved to a cosmic order beyond his earthly ties to reach perfection. It is important to understand that this story is deeply ingrained in the hearts of Cambodian people as it used to be one of the most popular and highly esteemed Buddhist texts in Cambodia that “monks read most often to the laypeople” (Hansen 2007, 28)

Yet kings in reality do breach moral precepts, and it does not mean that they pay a price every time they commit morally unacceptable behavior. Oftentimes immoral acts are ignored or justified by other means. Kings have to take disagreeable actions once in a while in order to fulfill their duties. Even excessive violence is justified if exercised in the context of moral responsibility (Edwards 2008, 217). Perhaps it is the power and authority inherent in the throne which best nullify royal misdemeanors. However, continuously excessive misdemeanors are very likely to cost the people’s respect and thereby royal authority. Power is supposed to be exercised only within the limit of dhamma. Only in dhammic power lies the ultimate authority (Hansen 2007, 43). In the 17th century when Reamthipodey I (r. 1642-1660), who is better known for having converted to Islam and changing his name to Ibrahim, usurped the throne by murdering all other royal dignities, people “wished him dead” (Kersten 2003, 14) because his gruesome actions were considered to have gone too far off dhamma.

More devastating consequences could ensue when royal misdemeanors are connected with the poor performance of the court. King Cau Bana Nom (Kaev Hva I, r. 1600-1602) was drowned to death because his behavior was thought to be the cause of drought, famine, and disease. Enthroned at the age of sixteen, he did not observe the royal precepts and disregarded Buddhism. He hunted frequently, drank alcohol, and engaged in debauchery. That a respected monk was behind the murder indicates that killing an unrighteous king was justifiable in the Buddhist perspective (Harris 2005, 40).

When the king fails to live a moral life and bring benefits to society, those who aspire to be king are rendered a just cause to rebel. Such a bad king is not irreplaceable and should be replaced. Even murder is countenanced, if deemed necessary. A successful usurper can therefore claim that his merit outdoes that of the deposed. Yet the same logic of merit also befalls the new king: he can prove that the usurpation was just only by living a life of dhammaraja. Otherwise, he too can face the same fate as the previous king.

Whether a rightful heir or a usurper, however, palace politics could have had little meaning for laymen during normal times. Throughout Cambodian history, the royal palace was severed from the people and neither part has paid much attention to the other.  A collection of anecdotes produced in the 1690s by a member of the royal family offers an illuminating story concerning people’s perceptions of the palace. It is a story of a princess and a fisherman. When a princess ordered her lords-in-waiting to bring some fish to her, they went out and ordered a fisherman to give his fish to the princess as tribute. The reply from the fisherman was that they and therefore the princess had no right to take his fish without payment. The court officials took the fish without payment and the fisherman was forced to pay a fine for disrespect (Chandler 2000, 94). Important to note is that respect for the king and royalty was not ubiquitously given. Needless to say, the royal court did have power. However, the power was based only on wealth and violence. Monarchy was accepted according to the logic of karma and merit and because of the fact that no alternative form of government had yet been known. Theravada Buddhism was less effective than Brahmanism in terms of generating extra authority and reverence for kings. In normal times, it was only the royalty and nobles to whom the Buddhist idea of kingship really mattered.

People are more likely to acknowledge the existence of the king in extraordinary times, either catastrophic or glorious. As discussed above, the king becomes the object of people’s resentment when their lives are ruined. Between 1750 and 1850, for instance, repeated aggressions by Thailand and Vietnam and the inability of the palace to repel and bring the territory back to normalcy severely undermined the king’s authority over his people (Chandler 2000, 98).

By the same token, the king is praised for ushering in unusual prosperity or glorious victory over an aggressor. Heroic subjugation of unruly savages to whom Buddhism is unknown further elevates the king’s dignity. Under such circumstances, the idea of cakravartin begins to play a significant role in strengthening the king’s power and authority. When a king successfully abides by moral principles and rules his kingdom according to dhamma, he will one day be rewarded with a cakkra, a wheel of the universe, with which he can move on to conquer the rest of the world and become the “wheel-turning” cakravartin, the true “conqueror of the world” (Ishii 1986, 73; Soh and Cho 2004, 32). Ideally speaking, the way cakravartin conquers the world should be congruent with dhamma, involving no violence. Yet violence can be allowed as long as the enemy to be conquered is identified as an evil (mara) that obstructs the divine task of bringing the whole world under dhamma. A cakravartin is therefore a dhammaraja, the ideal king in the Buddhist world, the one who lives a moral life and at the same time brings prosperity and glory into the kingdom.

As such, cakravartin is not an ordinary king and is said to come only in kappas, or times of chaotic disorder that come in a cyclical order. Cakravartin is expected to be the one to rescue the world by undoing damage done to dhamma. Cakravartin hence is conceived by lay people as a godly figure, often as a Maitreya, to whom extra respect and support are due. In this vein, the interpretation that many of the temple-mountains constructed by Jayavarman VII express the king as a cakravartin gains audience because those mountains were built on the sites of major victories over the Champa (Harris 2005, 22). And so was the period beginning from the 18th century down to the 20th century marred by foreign domination in search of a figure of cakravartin like Jayavarman VII.

To sum up, the king’s authority in Buddhist kingship is contingent on the performance of the court. Ascendance to the crown is justified by the theory of merit, which entails the burden of proof. Kings have to face a constant threat of usurpation particularly in times of trouble. Morally unimpeachable life is a necessary condition for superb performance, without which cakravartin, the ultimate status of Buddhist kingship, cannot be reached. Cakravartin therefore rarely comes to the world. It is only when a Buddhist king is perceived as cakravartin that Buddhism renders an ideological basis on which popular support through awe can be engendered.

Modernization of Buddhism

When Cambodia was suffering a series of revolts and foreign interventions which culminated in the Vietnamese kidnapping of Queen Mei, Cambodian Buddhism entered a critical turning point in its history. It started with Ang Duong’s return in 1841 from Bangkok. Ang Duong was enthroned in 1848 by Thais, and his twelve-year reign is considered the renaissance of Cambodia (Chandler 2000, 129-136). Having lived in Bangkok where Buddhism had already gone through reforms, Ang Duong aspired to introduce the same reform to Cambodia. He wrote a letter to Rama IV in 1854 requesting a copy of the Tripitaka (Hansen 2007, 79). Also, a group of monks were dispatched to Bangkok by royal order where they studied the Pali as well as the Tripitaka.

Upon the return of the monks to Cambodia, Thommayut, the reformist sect of Buddhism patronized by King Mongkut, followed into the country. Although its relatively stricter regulations as compared to the Mohanikay order kept the Thommayut order small, its overall influence on Cambodian Buddhism was large. The returnees made up a group of elites equipped with correct knowledge of Pali texts and their according codes of conduct and launched a movement that can be called modernization. The prime goal of the movement was purification, and as a result a great emphasis was placed on the importance of authentic Pali and Vinaya as the guide to purification, while deemphasizing the narratives in the jataka, the Buddha’s past lives. The significance of ritual and ceremonial aspects of the religion diminished as printed periodicals such as Kambuja Surya, which carried rationalized versions of texts in plain language, began to be produced. These were clearly intended to reach a wider populace (Hansen 2007, Ch. 3). The modernists translated authentic Pali texts in prose rather than verse and in the form of sankhep, abbreviated texts containing the essence of Dhammavinaya. Their translations differed significantly from the older versions and transmitted the idea that moral purification can be achieved by lay people “through rational means rather than the elusive and mythological” ways that appeared available only to monks (Hansen 2007, 151-152). The teachings attempted to convert people to a rationality with which they could make judgment by themselves. The basis of judgment was to be Vinaya, rather than what they had been told in the past. People were encouraged to think and challenge anything if it conflicted with Vinaya.

The modernization movement had a deep impact on Cambodian society to the extent that by the 1920s the new teachings were increasingly incorporated into classes of pagoda schools (Hansen 2007, 179). At the center of the movement was Gatiloke (worldly ways or ways of behaving in the world), a simplified version of Buddhist moral values tuned in to the themes of modernity. It was written in such simple words that the texts were clearly intended as a “universal ethical teaching on living the moral life” (Hansen 2007, 162). Let us peruse a few stories of Gatiloke.

(1) The Three Servants of King Bimbisara (Gatiloke 1987, 73-76)

There was a noble king in India who ruled with compassion and justice. He had a son who was reckless, wishing to take over the crown. Devadatta, the evil cousin of Buddha, approached the young prince to take advantage of his greed and jealousy. Finally, he convinced the prince to stab the king, but the attempted murder failed and both of them were brought to the court. In arresting and bringing the criminals to the court three servants of the king make different judgments. The king evaluates each judgment and uses their examples to teach them how to make a prudent judgment.

The thesis of the story is to teach the importance of being rational and prudent in comparison to simply following routines. At the same time, the backdrop delivers a meaningful picture in which the king is depicted as a dhammaraja, yet vulnerable to usurpation. The blood royal in the story is as feeble as laypeople to the temptation of greed. Consanguinity plays no role in becoming a dhammaraja.

(2) The King and the Poor Boy (Gatiloke 1987, 77-78)

A buffalo boy was orphaned and called by his uncle into the palace where the uncle was working as a cook. The boy worked very hard to get the attention of the king. The king asked the boy, “Do you receive wages for your hard work?” When the boy answered yes, six sen every month, the king asked again, “Do you think you are rich or poor?” The boy answered “I am as rich as a king.” Taken by surprise, the king said, “I have all the power and wealth of this country, while you receive only six sen a month. Why do you think you are as rich as I am?” The boy explained, “I may receive only six sen each month, but I eat from one plate and you too eat from one plate. I sleep for one night and you also sleep for one night. We eat and sleep the same. There is no difference.”

The basic theme the author wants to deliver in this parable seems to be the vanity of material wealth. Again, the king in question is depicted as the same human being as his subjects, not in the way that the boy says, but in that the king could be a person of vanity rather than of merit, less wise than a lowly poor boy. There is nothing to respect and awe in any king who is less than a dhammaraja.

(3) The King and the Buffalo Boy (Gatiloke 1987, 86-89)

This fable goes further. The king went hunting and was lost in the forest until he encountered a buffalo boy who kindly showed him the way out. Disguised as a layman, the king promised to reward the boy and let him meet the king. When safely returned with his entourage, the king asked the boy to guess who the king might be. A clue given to the boy was that anyone who kept his hat would be the king. The boy, with no reason to take his hat off, pointed to the king and to himself. Annoyed by the answer, the king changed his mind and refused to reward the boy.

The lesson intended in this story seems to be that kings are human beings and therefore imperfect just like everyone else. The king in the story is far from a dhamaraja, as he breaches many of the ten royal precepts. This means that a king is not necessarily a dhamaraja, which is something to be pursued and achieved. A king who has yet to become a dhamaraja is not entitled to respect and could even be ridiculed as he was in this fable.

Also noteworthy in the fable is the conversation between the king and the boy. The king asked the boy, “Do you know the king who rules this country?” “I don’t know what you mean,” replied the boy. “My grandmother used to tell me stories about kings but I really do not know what a king is.” The boy challenged the king when the promise of reward was broken, even though it became evident that the person to whom he protested was the king of the country. The boy could not care less. It echoes the anecdote of the princess and the fisherman mentioned earlier in that neither of the lowly subjects is overwhelmed by the presence of royal people. Equally surprising is that the king appears unembarrassed at the boy’s attitude, which is not unusual outside the palace.

It is not clear whether the sentiments in Gatiloke regarding the kingship reflect those of the time, or whether it was intentionally created to dismantle mythical images cloaking the kings. In either case, the status of the kings appearing in Gatiloke is not distinctly different from that of other sorts of kingdoms. Considering the impact the modernist movement had on Cambodian society, it can be said that Cambodian kings entered the modern era without effective ideological tools that could confer extraordinary power and authority.

King Sihanouk

As Brahmanism was replaced by Theravada Buddhism, so was the idea of divine kingship. And the Buddhist idea of kingship was not particularly effective at engendering the extraordinary authority of kings. The modernization of Buddhism led by the Thommayut order further curtailed the king’s authority. In this case, how can we explain the enthusiastic support given to King Sihanouk?

As the Cambodian kingdom degenerated into a powerless country with no strength to stop foreign aggression, people started longing for cakravartin. It was no coincidence that the royal court had to face a number of millenarian movements which claimed the advent of Maitreya. Under such circumstances was Prince Sihanouk enthroned. In other words, he took power at the right time to become a cakravartin. And he seized the opportunity. Whether or not he is a true cakravartin is beside the point. Just as is possible in all political theaters, King Sihanouk played the act so perfectly that he could build up an image of himself as close to cakravartin. He was well aware of the significance of dhammaraja and he distanced himself from the brutality which was an essential part of his rule (Osborne 2008, 125). He had shrewdly taken advantage of the circumstances in order to make himself the liberator of the country from foreign domination. The independence in 1953 meant more than the end of French colonial rule: it signified the end of the devastation and humiliation that had lasted for over two hundred years. King Sihanouk successfully cultivated his image as being the one who made it all happen, and who would further bring a new era of peace and prosperity.

Sihanouk’s energy was phenomenal. Working at a pace that exhausted his associates, he traveled widely through the kingdom, opening schools and clinics, inaugurating factories or irrigation schemes. He exhorted, chided and congratulated his ‘children.’ ….Like no other Cambodian ruler before him, Sihanouk was ready to go out among his people. And as with no previous ruler, this readiness earned him an affection that went beyond the traditional awe and devotion felt by rural Cambodians towards their monarch as the ultimate embodiment of the state and Cambodia’s identity. The peasantry were genuine in their warm reaction to Sihanouk, a ruler whom they still saw as possessing semi-divine qualities and who now appeared in their humble villages, arriving dramatically in a flurry of dust and wind as his helicopter sank to the ground (Osborne 1994, 132-133).

In addition, King Sihanouk did not forget to support the sangha. He financed new pagoda constructions and supplied them with texts. At ceremonies he was surrounded by monks who, by respectful presence, increased the king’s authority. The economy appeared to be going well at least until the mid-1960s, though that growth seeded the future decay. It is no wonder that those who experienced all of the twists and turns in Cambodian history from 1953 until today have a tendency to think of the Sihanouk’s reign as a “golden age,” a time to be treasured (Osborne 2008, 123). Neither is it surprising that some loyal followers continue to identify King Sihanouk as a Maitreya, the savior.

Such affection, however, was neither universal nor unconditional. There was a growing number of urban, young, and educated people to whom monarchy was simply outdated and unfit for the task of modernizing their country. Many of them, including Saloth Sar, were attracted to radical means to overthrow the monarchy. Their voice began to gain audience when the economy went downhill. Sihanouk had to witness to his dismay that “some of his ‘children’ were all too ready to disobey their ‘papa’” (Osborne 1994, 133). Dispossessed peasants often swarmed into the capital to demand support for survival. Sihanouk’s foreign policy inviting over 40,000 Vietnamese troops into the territory further undermined people’s support (Osborne 1994, 209). Many began to doubt if he was a true cakravartin. And his extravagant lifestyle further hurt his image and credibility as a dhammaraja. At last in 1970 King Sihanouk was ousted by his own men and the kingdom was transformed into a republic.

The fall of Sihanouk clearly demonstrates that performance is the fulcrum of the Buddhist kingship in Cambodia. It functions to provide a spiritual shield strengthening the king’s power and authority only if the king’s performance is superb in both the spiritual and the material sense.

Sihanouk lived a life of humiliation after being dethroned. He had no choice but to live in exile and watch some of his children be murdered by the Khmer Rouge. He returned to Cambodia in January 1976, only to become a prisoner who had to play the part of puppet for the Khmer Rouge. For many Cambodians, Sihanouk was no longer a dhammaraja, let alone cakravartin. In view of the Buddhist logic of merit, he was the one responsible for all of the pain inflicted upon the people.

After the rout of the Khmer Rouge, Sihanouk came back to the stage, brilliantly taking advantage of the chaotic disruption in and out of the country. He carved out a niche for himself and FUNCINPEC. Many Cambodians, particularly those who survived to remember Sihanouk as the liberator of earlier times, could have a glimpse in Sihanouk of cakravartin who would end the chaos again. Much of the support given to FUNCINPEC in the 1993 election could have come from such a desperate hope. However, Sihanouk’s goal was simply to be crowned again. It did not take long for the loyal supporters to find out that he was a completely powerless king willing to be as meek as necessary to the de facto ruler. As his image of a cakravartin evaporated, so did the support for him and the royalist party he had created.

Buddhism and the Future of King

The 2008 general election was conspicuously different from previous elections in that polling stations were colored with orange robes. Monks were again allowed to vote with the privilege of bypassing the queue. They explicitly and implicitly supported different political parties, sometimes even taking part in popular protests. The sangha has never been separated from politics in the history of Cambodia and is not likely to be so in the future. Wat is the sphere where village people gather and exchange their views, and where the government reaches the people. Politicians need to associate themselves with Buddhist monks who can convert people’s respect into votes (Guthrie 2002). In addition, as has always been the case, the sangha itself is in need of material as well as political support. The symbiotic relationship between the sangha and the powerful will thus remain unchanged.

Leaders of the sangha seem to have switched their symbiotic partner from the palace to the government. After all, it is the government that has the power and money to support the sangha. The sangha, in return, has to square the account with the raja. To the public gathered at pagodas, monks can deliver in their preaching messages supporting the ruling party. Indeed, Cambodia’s mass media is filled with the projections of political power choreographed in ceremonies. Pictures of alms-giving in which poor peasants line up in front of a smiling politician attempt to build an image of superb merit that entitles power and status. Another scene often played is donations to pagodas. Monks aligned with the powerful make up a backdrop that creates the image of dhammaraja, the one who protects the sangha.

At the center of the media coverage is always Hun Sen. He does exactly what Sihanouk did, making up his own personality cult (McCargo 103). Regarding Hun Sen’s effort to project himself as a person of the highest merit, it is important to notice that the concept of saborosjun, a meritorious but not necessarily moral benefactor, has gained saliency in Cambodia’s political theater. It means that Hun Sen has yet to improve his image so as to be portrayed as a dhammaraja. Nevertheless, as Hughes (2006, 479) observes, Hun Sen plays to this figure with great skill and combines it with the image of the strong man, trying to demonstrate that his merit surpasses everyone else. Having the highest merit justifies challenging the palace as all the usurpers did. Since 2006, Hun Sen has increased the level of criticism against the palace (Vickery 2007, 193). He has given warnings that the blood royal must stay aloof from politics. After the landslide victory in 2008, he began to threaten the palace by saying that people would no longer be needed there.

The recent feud with Thailand over Preah Vihear offered Hun Sen an opportunity to show the people that his merit extends over the border to an archenemy. Viewed in this context, he had an evident intention to project himself as a cakravartin when he provoked Thailand by inviting Thaksin to become his adviser. Will Hun Sen attempt to change the constitution to that of a republic? Sihanouk abdicated because he feared that his death could be the end of the kingdom. Will Hun Sen dream of enthroning himself? It may sound ridiculous, yet he is already given the title of samdech, which is reserved only for the blood royals.

It must be remembered that the 1993 constitution chose kingdom instead of republic on Sihanouk’s insistence, in exchange for leaving FUNCINPEC. Cambodians had been without a king for 23 years prior to 1993 and most of them seem to have no reason to defend that constitution. Raja in Pali means leader or ruler and should not necessarily be king. The Buddhist idea of kingship has served only the raja with power.

Bibliography

Bizot, François. 2003. The Gate. London: Vintage.

Chandler, David. 2000. A History of Cambodia, 3rd Edition. Boulder: Westview Press.

Coedès, George. 1968. Angkor: An Introduction. Translated and edited by Emily Gardiner. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

Edwards, Penny. 2008. “The Moral Geology of the Present: Structuring Morality, Menace, and Merit.” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Forest, Alain. 2008. “Buddhism and Reform: Imposed Reforms and Popular Aspirations.” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Gatiloke 1987. Cambodian Folk Stories from the Gatiloke. From a Translation by The Venerable Kong Chhean. Singapore: Tuttle.

Guthrie, Elizabeth. 2002. “Buddhist Temples and Cambodian Politics.” John Vijghen (ed.), People and the 1998 National Elections in Cambodia. Phnom Penh: Experts for Community Research.

Hall, D. G. E. 1966. A History of South-East Asia. London: Macmillan.

Hansen, Anne Ruth. 2004. “Khmer Identity and Theravada Buddhism.” John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie (eds.), History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in Cambodia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

———. 2007. How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia 1860-1930. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Harris, Ian. 2005. Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

———. 2007. Buddhism under Pol Pot. Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia.

Hinton, Alex. 2008. “Truth, Representation, and the Politics of Memory after Genocide.” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Hughes, Caroline. 2006. “Cambodia: Reassessing Tradition in Times of Political Change.” Special Issue, Journal of South East Asian Studies 37(3): 465-483.

Ishii, Yoneo. 1986. Sangha, State, and Society. Translated by Peter Hawkes. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Jeong, Y. 2009. “Cambodia’s 2008Elections: Electoral Authoritarianism Consolidated.” East Asian Studies 56: 139-170. [Korean]

Kent, Alexandra. 2008. “The Recovery of the King.” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Kersten, Carool (trans.). 2003. Strange Events in the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos (1635-1644). Bangkok: White Lotus.

Kulke, Hermann. 1978. The Devaraja Cult. translated by Ian Mabbett. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.

Ledgerwood, Judy. 2008. “Buddhist Practice in Rural Kandal Province, 1960 and 2003: An Essay in Honor of May M. Ebihara.” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Mabbett, Ian. 1969. “Devarãja.” Journal of Southeast Asian History 10(2): 202-223.

Marston, John. 2008. “Wat Preah Thammalanka and the Legend of Lok Ta Nen” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

McCargo, Duncan. 2005. “Cambodia: Getting Away with Authoritarianism?” Journal of Democracy 16(4): 98-112.

Neher, Clark D. 1995. Democracy and Development in Southeast Asia. Boulder: Westview Press.

Newman, Robert S. 1992. Brahmin and Mandarin: A Comparison of the Cambodian and Vietnamese Revolutions. Clayton: Monash University.

Osborne, Milton. 1994. Sihanouk: Prince of Light and Prince of Darkness. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

———. 1997. Southeast Asia: An Introductory History. New York: Allen & Unwin.

———. 2008. Phnom Penh: A Cultural and Literary History. Oxford: Signal Books.

SarDesai, D. R. 1989. Southeast Asia: Past & Present. Boulder: Westview Press.

Soh, B. and Cho H. 2004. Buddhist Kings and Islamic Sultans: A History of Kingship in Thailand and Malaysia. Seoul: Tradition and Modernity. [Korean]

Sophea, Hang Chan. 2004. “Stec Gamlan and Yay Deb: Worshiping Kings and Queens in Cambodia Today.” John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie (eds.), History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in Cambodia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Sovanratana, Khy. 2008. “Buddhist Education Today: Progress and Challenges.” Alexandra Kent and David Chandler (eds.) People of Virtue: Reconfiguring Religion, Power, and Moral Order in Cambodia Today. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.

Thompson, Ashley. 2004. The Future of Cambodia’s Past: A Mesianic Middle-Period Cambodian Royal Cult. John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie (eds.), History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in Cambodia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Vickery, Michael. 2007. Cambodia: A Political Survey. Phnom Penh: Funan.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Guimet_5887_Avalokiteshvara.jpg)

JEON Je Seong (Chonbuk National University)*

I.  Introduction

Southeast Asian studies is one of the emerging and swiftly developing fields of study in Korea. This subject, however, was considered academically ‘futile’ until the 1970s. For the last three decades, the number of publications, academics and research institutions has increased in a dramatic manner. This essay aims to provide an introductory overview of the works and achievements of Southeast Asianists in Korea over this period, and to suggest their limitations as well as future challenges, which the next generation of Southeast Asianists in Korea may learn from for their future roles.

This essay includes accounts of not only academic achievements, but also researchers and research institutions, for analysis. Considering the relatively small number of Southeast Asianists in Korea, we need to take into account the roles played by individual academics for an overall review of the field. It is difficult to separate individual achievements from the institution-building for Southeast Asian studies which has developed in an unique path in Korea.

This essay adopts several methods. First, it will analyze articles published in Dong Nam Asia Yeon Gu (The Southeast Asian Review), the academic journal of the KASEAS (Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, Han Kuk Dong Nam Ah Hak Hoi, 韓國東南亞學會) since 1992. Second, I have interviewed senior Korean Southeast Asianists to recollect their memories and reconstitute of the history of Southeast Asian studies in Korea. My personal experience as a graduate student in the 1990s and a junior scholar thereafter have also been reflected in this reconstitution of the history.

Four main issues will be discussed. I will start from presenting taxonomy of three generations in Southeast Asianists in Korea. Based on this taxonomy, the essay will address the works and aspirations of first-generation in the 1980s, along with the research activities and achievements of second-generation scholars in the 1990s. It will end with the characteristics and future tasks of third-generation scholars, who have emerged in the 2000s.

II.  Taxonomy of Southeast Asianists in Korea

I will divide Korean Southeast Asianists into three generations. The previous taxonomy was that of Yoon Hwan SHIN who identified two categories: ‘the first-generation scholars before the 1990s’ and ‘the second-generation scholars since then’ (Shin and Rhee, 1996: 159-62; Cho, 2001: 49; Park 2009). The year 1990 was viewed as a turning point for the distinction. Specifically, the Dong Nam Ah Jeong Chi Yeon Gu Hoi (Study Group on Southeast Asian Politics) was formed by five PhD holders who had completed their work on Southeast Asia in the United States. The creation of this research group can be viewed as a historic declaration about themselves as the second generation. On top of this, I view the formation of the Han Kuk Dong Nam Ah Yeon Gu So (KISEAS: Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) in 2003 as marking another epoch for the third generation in Korea. With this background, I take a taxonomy of three periods, which will be dealt with in more detail.

Table 1. Generational Taxonomy of Southeast Asian Studies in Korea from 1980 onwards

	First Generation	Second Generation	Third Generation
Period	1980s	1990s	2000s
Original specialties of researchers	Not Southeast Asia specialists	Southeast Asia specialists
Methods	Configurative-idiographic studies	Comparative or case studies	Area studies (with long fieldwork)
Disciplinary fields	Economics and international relations	Extended to include politics, society, culture and history
Research institutes	Not formed yet	Soft organisation	Hard organisation

Table 1 shows the characteristics and features of Southeast Asian studies in Korea. However, this is a rough generalization. The demarcation of the generations should not be viewed as a decisive divide. Therefore, this table should be used as a guide for an overview of the trends. The first-generational works have been introductory ones concentrating on economics and international relations, principally conducted by non-specialists. These first-generational scholars raised the need for scholarly works on domestic politics, society, culture and history, as well as creation of a research institution for Southeast Asian studies in Korea. This was realized by second-generational scholars.

The second-generational works were conducted by those who wrote their doctoral dissertations on case studies or comparative studies of Southeast Asian countries at educational institutions overseas. These scholars formed the Study Group on Southeast Asian Politics in 1990, which further evolved into the Dong Nam Ah Ji Yeok Yeon Gu Hoi (old version of KISEAS: Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) in 1992. They also formed the Han Kuk Dong Nam Ah Hak Hoi (KASEAS: Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies) in the same year. The establishment of these two organizations played a pivotal role in the development of Southeast Asian studies in Korea. Both organizations, nationally and interdisciplinarily networked, played the role of a research hub. However, they were organizations based on ‘soft solidarity’ which relied more on networks of individual scholars. A leap forward in terms of organization of research institutions came with the third generation.

The third-generation scholars, together with the second-generation ones, have played a role in transforming the Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies into an organization based on ‘hard solidarity’. The mainstream third-generation scholars are the ‘fruits’ of effort by earlier generations. They have taken courses on Southeast Asian studies and written their theses in Korea with relatively lengthy fieldwork in Southeast Asia, often supervised or advised through interdisciplinary cooperation. As a result, they have become area specialists who could learn about Southeast Asian studies from their early stages of higher learning. They are not ‘accidental’ but ‘purposive’ scholars, becoming Southeast Asian specialists not from unintended exposure but from personal choices in favorable and supportive academic environments. The following part discusses the works and organizational achievements by the three generations.

III.  Southeast Asian Studies of the First Generation: Insight and Aspiration as Pioneers

Contemporary relationships between Korea and Southeast Asia are characterized by reality of interests and lack of understanding. Pursuit of interests without understanding will become disadvantageous in the long term, and it may also endanger the nation itself. We have not thoroughly thought about what it means to be ‘Korea in Asia’ even though we have lived in Asia. If this situation continues, we may face the risk of being isolated in Asia (Hong-Koo Lee, 1981).

Korea’s politics and foreign policies, whilst competing for its survival and development under the strong influence of the Cold War regime since independence, have fixed its orientation gradually to the perspectives of the developed superpower, communist bloc and European countries. Because of this, it is true that academic interests have neglected not only developing countries as a whole, sometimes called ‘The Third World’, but also Southeast Asia (Chung-Si Ahn , 1981: 1).

These two quotes show clearly what the situational understanding of the pioneering first-generational scholars and their academic orientations were. These are taken from the book titled Southeast Asia and ASEAN published in 1981 by the Seoul National University Press, in which Professor Chung-Si AHN, a prominent scholar of Southeast Asian studies in Korea at that time, had played a major role in publication. His evaluation of 30 years ago still appears valid in today’s context. The understanding of these first-generational scholars about the state of affairs and their recognition of urgency continues to hold true for comprehending today’s events.

Southeast Asian studies in Korea until the early 1960s seems rooted in a ‘barren land’, in contrast with the United States (McVey, 1998) and Japan (Suheiro, 1997), where academics and research institutions have expanded its study dramatically. It was not until the mid-1960s that an interest on Southeast Asia emerged in Korea. Korea established its foreign missions in key Southeast Asian countries. ASEAN and ASPAC (Asian and Pacific Council) were established. These raised interest in foreign affairs. Korean national forces’ involvement in the Vietnam War also raised public concern about Southeast Asia. Korea’s export-oriented industrialization policies in the 1970s also promoted economic interest in this region. All of these contributed to an increase and diversity of research and reports on Southeast Asia in that period. The majority of these works, however, has been on foreign affairs, military and economic policies. Serious academic work on domestic politics, society and culture had yet to be conducted (Chung-Si Ahn, 1981: 4-5).

The first-generation scholars in political science include Chung-Si Ahn (Seoul National University), Kuk-Jin Kim (IFANS), Beom Jun Lee (Sungshin Women’s University), Han-Sik Kim (National Defense University), Woo Jin Lee (Chung-Ang University), Jae Kyu Park (Kyungnam University), Eun Ho Lee (Chongju University). Those in economics include Dong-Cheon Seo (Inha University), Jeongsik Sohn (Hanyang University) and others (Interview with Yoon Hwan Shin on February 2006).

The first-generational scholars, who recognised a dearth of this type of study, started learning about domestic socio-political issues in Southeast Asia. The pioneering work was done by Professor Chung-Si Ahn and others in 1981. Since then, Kyung Nam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES) and Korea University’s Asiatic Research Institute, directed by Professor Sung-Joo HAN, produced a series of outcomes of their research projects in Korean and English (Kuk-Jin Kim, 1991: 97-100), which was uncommon in the earlier period.

Research work of that time however was ‘introductory’, and was limited from mostly relying on ‘secondary literature sources’ (Cho, 2001). A major reason was that it was written primarily for the urgent needs then. Professor Anh said “it aimed to help general understanding on Southeast Asia and ASEAN by writing in a relatively short time and synthesising the available materials” (Chung-Si Ahn, 1981: 1). He therefore summarised the situation of the time as “we had just commenced” Southeast Asian Studies in Korea. The second factor was the scholars’ academic background. The first-generational scholars did not specialise in Southeast Asian studies. Professor Kuk-Jin Kim of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) expressed that “the studies were spontaneous without continuity”. Therefore, “studies on dynamic changes in Southeast Asia” were rare (Kuk-Jin Kim, 1991: 102-103).

Lastly, we can point to the fact that there had been a lack of an organisational foundation for Southeast Asian studies specialists in Korea. According to Professor Kim, “interest in Southeast Asia emerged and surged, but the lack of specialised research institutions on the region rendered its study in Korea in the 1980s weak from discontinuity” (Kuk-Jin Kim, 1991: 100). Professor Kim further remarked the fact that “an academic association of Southeast Asian studies had not been established yet showcased its minimal and marginal status in Korean academia” (Kuk-Jin Kim, 1991: 90).

IV.  Southeast Asian Studies of the Second Generation:

Institutional Achievements and Research Advancement

1. Increase of Southeast Asian Studies Specialists

Influx of new-generational scholars, establishment of research institutions, and consequently expansion of research in the 1990s meant a take-off for Southeast Asian studies in Korea. We have to take note of the emergence and inflow of Southeast Asian studies specialists. As Table 2 shows, a number of PhD holders who wrote their dissertations on Southeast Asia surfaced. Most Southeast Asian specialists in Korea received their degrees from 1988 onwards, though there were some exceptional pioneers.

In addition, the research environment became favorable for Southeast Asian specialists in the early 1990s. There was a small boom period for Southeast Asian studies in Korea when the popularity of Communist Country studies had withered. A few factors are accountable for this. Relaxation of overseas travel regulations for the Korean public led to an increase in travelers to Southeast Asia, a popular tourist destination. Foreign direct investment from Korean companies has centred on Southeast Asian countries since the late 1980s. NGO activists started to survey on the labor rights situation in Korean companies invested in Southeast Asia in the mid 1990s. At the academic level, debates as well as success stories of Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) and the ‘East Asian Miracle’ drew attention to the process of economic development of Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Third World researchers and progressive students paid attention to the Vietnamese revolution, Burmese-style socialism and democratisation in the Philippines. These factors, together with support for international area studies of KIM Young Sam’s Government under the slogan of ‘Internationalization’(Se Gye Hwa) since 1993, contributed to the small boom of Southeast Asian studies in Korea.

Table 2.  PhD Holders with Southeast Asian Specialties: Members of the KISEAS only

Year PhD received	1970-1985	1986-1990	1991-1995	1996-2000	2001-2005	2006-2009	Total
Region in general			2		2	1	5
International Relations			1	1			2
Indonesia		1	1	1	5	1	9
Vietnam	2			1	4	1	8
Thailand		2	2	1	3		8
The Philippines			3		2	1	6
Malaysia			1	1	2		4
Myanmar (Burma)				2		2	4
Cambodia						1	1
Singapore						1	1
Brunei, Laos, East Timor							0
Total	2	3	10	7	18	8	48

Source: revised and updated from Shin and Hwang (2004).

2. Establishing a Nationwide Research Organisations

An irreversible accomplishment in the 1990s by Korean Southeast Asianists is the establishment of a nationwide research organisation. Specifically in 1990, five scholars including Professor Sa-Myung PARK (from Kangwon National University’s Political Science Department) and Professor Yoon Hwan SHIN (from Sogang University’s Political Science Department), who received their PhDs between 1988 and 1990 and thereafter returned to Korea, organised the Dong Nam Ah Jeong Chi Yeon Gu Hoi (Study Group on Southeast Asian Politics) — viewed as a momentous event for Southeast Asian studies in Korea. This small group organised weekly study sessions and translated key books on Southeast Asia. Over a year-and-a-half, the membership expanded to 16, even though it did not have office facilities and research fund.

It was at this time that the first-generation scholars including Professor Chung-Si AHN proposed, with the support of second-generation scholars, the establishment of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies on 29 June 1991. Professor AHN asked Professor SHIN to be a coordinator of a steering committee for the Association. The first Chairman, Professor Sung-Joo HAN of Korea University’s Political Science Department, suggested the Korea-ASEAN academic exchange programme, which has been an important activity of the Association, as well as annual academic conferences. The Association has also published the Dong Nam Asia Yeon Gu (Southeast Asian Studies Review) since 1992.

The second-generation scholars not only actively planned activities for the Association, but further transformed the Study Group into the Dong Nam Ah Ji Yeok Yeon Gu Hoi (old version of KISEAS: Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. The 24 founding members came not only from a political science background, but also from the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, linguistics, economics and management studies. The Institute could be distinguished by its strict membership policy from other scholarly organisations. For example, a new member needs to be initially recommended by a current member(s), and the application has to be agreed upon by at least two-third of present members in a general meeting that is attended by at least half the total members. If a member does not participate in at least half the monthly meetings, (s)he is subject to a vote for membership dismissal. This strict membership policy has been maintained at the Institute.

hapterheast Asia after nture and Reproducing Southeast Asia Area Specialists in Korea.Activities of the Institute are also recognisable by its fresh ideas, programmes and fruitful results. There are five main activities: monthly presentations, collaborative publications, field trip, public education, and organisation of graduate students. Its monthly presentations have been held for over 20 years continuously. Open only to its members, they present pre-publication papers and hold long discussions over the meetings. These have helped improve the papers and the communication of members across disciplines and specialties. Publication activities were not just confined to translations of major works, but also extended to collaborative original works. The Institute published several original and collaborative works in Korean on Southeast Asian political change, party politics, political leadership, political economy, society, culture and religion. The collaborative field trips to Southeast Asian countries have provided a good opportunity for the members not only to understand the region but also to consolidate the membership among them. The public education programme on Southeast Asia sought to educate prospective expatriate employees dispatched to Southeast Asia or graduate students wanting to major in Southeast Asian studies.

In retrospect, the most important programme was that for graduate students which aimed to foster next-generation scholars. The Institute accepted 10 graduate student members through the recommendation of members within a year of its establishment. The Institute helped and sponsored graduate students to organise seminars, which were supervised by its education director. More importantly, the Institute treated these graduate students not just as students but colleagues. Graduate student members could take part in all the activities such as monthly seminars, field trips, collaborative research and translation projects. They were granted full privileges of the Institute except for voting rights in the general board meetings. Members were also willingly responding to advisory requests for the graduate student seminars (Jeon and Lee, 2008). The educational programme for graduate students has made a decisive contribution to the emergence of third-generation scholars and their solidarity with the second-generation scholars.

Resource mobilisation, just like in other organisations, is a very important factor in an organisation’s development. Second-generation scholars, since the inauguration meeting, only needed to pay annual membership fees until 2003. Despite that, the Institute could engage in diverse activities and remained financially stable for over 10 years. A major reason was that it could secure financial contribution from external sources through active efforts of the members. First, the Daewoo Foundation’s study group grant was small but important financial source in the initial stage. Second, the Twenty-First Century Korea Foundation of the Hanjin Group (Korean Airline Co.) provided unconditional support for five years from 1993 to 1997, which helped in the consolidation of the organisation (Interview with Yoon Hwan SHIN on 10 February 2006). Since then, the Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI) has provided the seminar facility for the Institute’s monthly presentations.

Lastly, the Consortium for East Asian Studies, which received grants from the Korea Research Foundation (KRF), made direct and indirect contributions. Professor Shin, then Director of the Institute for East Asian Studies of Sogang University, organised the Consortium with over 60 area specialists on China, Japan and Southeast Asia, and successfully secured mega-sized research projects, as well as the largest grant for humanities and social science projects in the Foundation’s history. The two-year Consortium’s Southeast Asia research section was entirely compiled from the KISEAS’ members. They could publish six volumes of books on politics, economics and socio-cultural studies on Southeast Asia based on fieldwork. Participation in the Consortium also provided a critical leap forward for Southeast Asia research institutions, which will be discussed in next chapter.

3. Increasing and Diversifying Research

Visible accomplishment has also been made in research outcomes since the 1990s. Surveying the Southeast Asian Review, the official journal of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, shows vividly a quantitative increase in articles, improvement in research methods and diversification of topical areas and subject countries. Contributions rose to the extent that the journal has been published twice a year since 2000. Table 3 shows that case studies still comprise a majority of the articles but efforts at generalisation have also risen in comparison with the past. The most remarkable indicator of development is fieldwork-related publication. In the earliest issues of the journal, fieldwork-related contributions were less than one-third of the total. From year 2000 onwards, this has increased to about half the total contributions. Considering the critical role of fieldwork in area studies, this can be viewed as an indicator of qualitative advancement of Southeast Asian studies in Korea.

Since the 1990s, there has been more research in the subfields of domestic politics, society, culture and linguistic studies as well as cultural studies conducted by anthropologists, which differs from the first-generational scholars’ concentration on international relations, economics and Korea-related works.

Table 4 also shows diversification of countries studied: Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia which have been preferred in the earlier stage, and now studies are conducted on other countries less examined in the past. In particular, works on Thailand and Malaysia have increased faster than others. These five countries have become the most studied in Korea. On a smaller scale, works on Singapore, Myanmar (Burma) and Cambodia have begun. As a whole, the trends of Southeast Asian studies in Korea show clear expansions in research topics and cases.

Table 3. Publication Statistics on the Southeast Asian Review (1): Research Methodologies and Topics

		1992-1995	1996-2000	2001-2005	Total
Total articles		33 (100%)	57 (100%)	90 (100%)	180 (100%)
Research methods
Area general		6 (18%)	10 (18%)	13 (16%)	29 (16%)
Comparative		1 (3%)	3 (5%)	12 (13%)	16 (9%)
Case study		26 (79%)	44 (77%)	65 (72%)	135 (75%)
With fieldwork		9 (27%)	23 (40%)	48 (53%)	80 (44%)
Research topics
Korea-related		5 (15%)	4 (7%)	10 (11%)	19 (10%)
Politics	Political change	5	1	11	17
	Political process	0	2	7	9
	Political economy	3	5	71	5
	Subtotal	8 (24%)	8 (14%)	25 (28%)	41 (23%)
International relations		7 (21%)	6 (11%)	6 (7%)	19 (11%)
Society	Structure/institution	1	3	1	5
	Rural/agricultural	1	0	4	5
	Gender	1	0	4	5
	Subtotal	3 (9%)	3 (5%)	9 (10%)	15 (8%)
Culture	Ethnicity/religion	1	8	8	17
	Cultural change	1	2	3	6
	Political culture	0	3	3	6
	Subtotal	2 (6%)	13 (23%)	14 (16%)	29 (16%)
Economy	Economic policy	3	10	10	23
	International economy	2	7	5	14
	Subtotal	5 (15%)	17 (30%)	15 (17%)	37 (21%)
History	Research trends	1	0	0	1
	Ancient history	3	3	3	9
	Modern history	2	1	6	9
	Subtotal	6 (18%)	4 (7%)	9 (10%)	19 (11%)
Language and literature	Language	0	2	4	6
	Literature	1	2	5	8
	Subtotal	1 (3%)	4 (7%)	9 (10%)	14 (8%)

Table 4. Publication Statistics on the Southeast Asian Studies Review (2): Countries Studied

	1992-1995	1996-2000	2001-2005	2006-2009	Total
Vietnam	8 (30%)	11 (22%)	16 (20%)	10(24%)	45 (23%)
Thailand	3 (11%)	10 (20%)	18 (22%)	5(12%)	36 (18%)
Indonesia	5 (19%)	10 (20%)	12 (15%)	7(16%)	34 (17%)
Philippines	7 (26%)	8 (16%)	10 (13%)	8(19%)	33 (16.5%)
Malaysia	1 (4%)	4 (8%)	14 (18%)	4(9%)	23 (12%)
Singapore	2 (7%)	2 (4%)	5 (10%)	1(2%)	10 (5%)
Myanmar(Burma)	0	2 (4%)	3 (4%)	3(7%)	8 (4%)
Cambodia	1 (4%)	1 (2%)	1 (1%)	3(7%)	6 (3%)
Laos	0	1 (2%)	0	1(2%)	2(1%)
East Timor	0	0	0	1(2%)	1(0.5%)
Brunei	0	0	0	0	0
Total	27(100%)	49(100%)	79(100%)	43(100%)	198(100%)

Note: General introductory studies without specific country examples were excluded from the total. Comparative works with more than two countries were counted under all the countries involved.

V.  The Emergence of the Third Generation?

1. Identity of the Third Generation

As mentioned earlier, the second-generational scholars declared their emergence. We have yet to witness that for the third generation. If so, have they arrived yet? Interestingly, it is the second-generation scholars who recognised the possible emergence of their successors.

We may regard young PhD holders as the third generation, though they have a weak identity as such. Most of the second-generation scholars, though they wrote their dissertations on Southeast Asia, based their works on secondary sources rather than visits and conducting fieldwork (Interview with Yoon Hwan SHIN on 30 December 2006).

When we came back to Korea, after completing our PhD, we were not sure of conducting independent research on Southeast Asia by ourselves. It was a reason why we started the reading group and translation projects. These days, young PhD holders have the capacity to conduct independent fieldwork and run into the field. They even publish their dissertations in major foreign publications in English (Interview with Sa-Myung PARK on 3 January 2006).

According to their remarks, the third-generation scholars are closer to area specialists than the second-generation ones. Completing their dissertations with fieldwork and native sources, third-generational scholars contributed to the diversification and localisation of papers in the Southeast Asian Review. These third-generation scholars are in their late 30s and early 40s, and make up about 40% of active members of the KASEAS. Professor Seung Woo PARK, Coordinating Director of the Association, surveyed and received replies from 67 active members of the Association. According to the survey, 14.9% of them were aged 55 or older, 41.8% were between 45 and 54 years old, and 40.3% were between 35 and 44 years old. Among them, 64% were university professors and 4% were full-time researchers, but 25% were either part-time lecturers or contracted researchers (Park, 2004). Most of the third-generation scholars joined the KISEAS from year 2000.

The ‘internationalisation’ of research may be as an indicator of a new generation. Some new PhD  published their dissertations through foreign publishers (In-Won HWANG, 2003; Byung Wook CHOI, 2004) for the first time, and some (for example, Yeonsik JEONG, Junguk CHOI, Dong-Yeob KIM, Nankyung CHOI, and Je Seong JEON) had articles published in internationally referred journals. Another obvious characteristic of a third-generation scholar is purpose-consciousness. They began their courses when the second-generation scholars had teaching jobs in Korean universities, and have been influenced by seniors in their area of study. Many of them went to graduate school to study on Southeast Asia. They were therefore not ‘accidental’ but ‘purposive’ students.

2. Establishment of the Research Organization based on Hard Solidarity

The third generation proposed, planned and managed the transformation of the research institute into a legally based organization, new version of KISEAS (Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Stduies). A critical moment was when most of them took part in the Consortium on East Asian Studies from August 2002 for two years, as mentioned earlier. Employed at the Consortium, most had to have daily face-to-face interactions for cooperation and collaboration on the projects, which led to lively discussions and debates on the transformation and management of the Institute.

Young researchers then felt the need to have an organisation which can accumulates their ‘products of labor’ on a ‘permanent’ basis, rather than a ‘temporary’ Consortium. By taking part in the Consortium, they built up the capacity and learned ways to mobilise the resources from the Korea Research Foundation (KRF), which subsidises overhead costs and expenses for full-time researchers and research assistants. This was the first hurdle in the transformation of the voluntary research organization (old version) into a formal and registered research entity (new version, 法人), to apply for research grants by the Korea Research Foundation.

Among the new younger members, Dr. In-Won HWANG was the most enthusiastic about the plan for reestablishment of the Institute. He persuaded me of the need, though I initially thought it was too early for this because of the low level of communication among young PhD holders. I took on the role for the establishment of new version of the Institute. When 10 young members held the first steering meeting, I named the gathering ‘hungry young Turks’, because the participants were all ‘contract worker’ and younger than the second generation. This could be the first naming about the identity of the third generation by itself thus far. Dr. Seok-Joon HONG of Mokpo National University, played a bridging role by strongly supporting the idea of transforming the Institute.

Following the proposal of the third generation on the transformation of the Institute, the second-generation scholars agreed to take up their roles, which dissolved the ‘old’ KISEAS and established the ‘new’ KISEAS. On 13 December 2003, a general meeting to establish the new KISEAS, Han Kuk Dong Nam Ah Yeon Gu So, was convened. In the next year, they realised its registration as a legally-approved independent organization by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This transformation was to change a ‘soft-solidarity’ organisation into ‘hard-solidarity’ one with an office and library space, hierarchical structure, and management and account systems complying with the relevant laws.

In fact, the establishment of KISEAS was the dream of the second generation. Their wish was reflected in the naming of the old organisation as KISEAS, adopting the name from ISEAS (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore). Their long-lasting wishes could be on the track to realisation by the proposal and active participation of the third-generation scholars. Despite the change in the Institute’s Korean name from Dong Nam Ah Ji Yeok Yeon Gu Hoi (동남아지역연구회: 東南亞地域硏究會) to Han Kuk Dong Nam Ah Yeon Gu So (한국동남아연구소: 韓國東南亞硏究所), the Romanisation of the name remained as such.

Considering the fact that most research institutes were established by favourable grants and support from government sources or universities, the experience of KISEAS is distinguishable. About the half of Institute members contributed their money for seed funding. The Institute successfully secured costs for the office maintenance and the employment of full-time researchers and research assistants through ‘bottom-up’ research projects from the Korea Research Foundation, which was unusual for non-university-based research institutes in Korea. The Institute also cooperated with the KASEAS (Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies) to receive the project from the Korea-ASEAN Academic Exchange Fund, which required the consent of the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the ASEAN Secretariat. This helped the Institute to secure additional funds and grants for the consolidation of the organisation.

VI.  Waiting for the Third Generation’s Manifesto

The emergence of the third-generation scholars and the reformation of the Institute should not be regarded as a happy ending of the story yet. Inauguration of the Institute has brought the challenge of maintaining a ‘hard’ organisation for its operation to researchers who have been accustomed to a ‘soft’ organisation. In other words, a soft organisation has a low ratio of input to output, while a hard organisation requires a certain level of minimum input such as resources for maintenance. A hard organisation requires a high level of administrative capacity, resource mobilisation, disciplines and consensus of its members. Based on this viewpoint, I would like to end this essay by suggesting some future challenges for the third-generational scholars in Korea.

1. Organic Intellectuals

In general, local language fluency and fieldwork experience have often been regarded as prerequisites of an area specialist (Rhee et al., 2004: 8). However, I think we should add another characteristic of ‘organic intellectual’ for specialists in areas often categorised as ‘minor’. We, Southeast Asia area specialists, should take the roles and the attitudes of “organic intellectuals”, who can play the part of “constructor, organiser, and permanent persuader” as minority researchers for the advancement of research and building of research communities. Organic intellectual is the term used by Antonio Gramsci in Prison Notebook. If we modify the implications of the term, we may use it as a model for Southeast Asianists. Gramsci distinguished traditional intellectuals from organic intellectuals. Organic intellectuals, in comparison with traditional intellectuals, are more organised, and can be understood as a group rather than individuals. They orientate towards practical and counter-hegemonic intellectuals rather than towards the status quo (Burke, 2006). I refer to the term ‘organic’ as having character and capacity which will induce interlinked cooperation of all the related actors and resources, which may go beyond the academic world.

Looking at the history of the first and the second generations, there have been some organic intellectuals who have not only actively participated in research activities but have also organised and mobilised the resources. Unconditional support from private foundations has proved critical in the formation of institutions and development of research but those who have committed to mobilising them should not be forgotten. Without their labor in producing public goods, consolidation of the research institute would not be possible.

However, the labor should not just be conventional. It should also aim to go beyond the conventional divisions of universities, schools and disciplines in social sciences and humanities, but also include other fields such as environmental and forestry studies. The exchange should not just extend to governmental and corporate organisations, but also to diverse non-governmental organisations, which advocate exchange and solidarity in Asia. By doing this, we may raise the utility of the knowledge we produce and further facilitate the development of Southeast Asian studies in Korea.

We should also pursue organic solidarity across the generations. Development of research institutes of Southeast Asian studies in Korea has been characterised by ‘eclectic development by generations’. Solidarity between the first and the second generation resulted in the formation of the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies; that between the second and the third generation produced the Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. The second-generational specialists received the call of collaboration from the first generation who waited the area specialists. The third generation was either nurtured or warmly greeted by the second. At the same time, the newer generation takes up the central roles in academia and activities, which further facilitates the development of a scholarly society. I would like to stress the need for a forward-looking self-consciousness of the third generation for the future development of Southeast Asian studies in Korea.

2. IR Area Specialists

We should also have organic capacity in resource mobilisation not only domestically but also internationally. Southeast Asian studies in Korea should aim to be more international. For swift capacity-building, we may use lessons from Japanese experiences as reference. Japanese Indonesianist Takashi Shiraishi (1994) selectively translated works of Japanese scholars that possessed originality into English, thereby introducing Japanese works on Southeast Asia to the world. I think similar efforts of translation from Korean authors into English would be worthwhile efforts for the internationalization of Southeast Asian studies in Korea.

A final comment regarding future development is about hybridization. The third generation may play a continual role in activities with the area studies tradition, but it should also be able to hybridize the traditions of the first generation which emphasized international relations (IR) studies and those of the second which pursued comparative studies. Especially, the current situation mandates hybridization of international relations studies and area studies. A senior scholar in Southeast Asian studies, Ruth McVey, argued that globalization resulted in the marginalization of Southeast Asian studies (McVey, 1998). However, the situation in Korea at present does not seem to support his argument. Globalization in East Asia has accelerated the regional cooperation between Korea and Southeast Asia in response to the trans-border crisis in the region.

To actively engage in the further development of East Asian regional cooperation, Southeast Asianists need to be ‘reform’ as “IR (International Relations) area specialists” (Moore, 2004). An IR area specialist refers to an area specialist who has the capacity for conducting research on the issues of international relations, besides his role in the conventional sense. These scholars can contribute to real and practical applications of international relations by combining theories of international relations with local knowledge. This will prove the value of area studies in the contemporary era. Emerging East Asian regionalism and the undercurrent of transnational issues in East Asia, for example, economic development, financial crises, avian influenza, terrorism, separatism, refugee issues, migration, natural disaster, history textbook controversies, international solidarity of social movement and spread of democracy, urgently need IR area specialists.

I call for organic intellectuals and IR area specialists to be models for the new generation of Southeast Asian specialists in Korea, whose roles still seem to be as a marginalized minority in academia, despite surprising developments in the field. The organic intellectual model can consolidate the research community. The IR area specialist model can provide a productive tool for a breakthrough in seemingly unfavorable research environments.

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*  This essay is a revised and updated version of “Dynamics and the Future of Southeast Asian Studies in Korea: Waiting for a Manifesto of the ‘Third Generation’.” East Asian Studies (Dong Ah Yeon Gu) No.50 (February 2006) published by the Institute for East Asian Studies at Sogang University in Seoul. The author would like to thank Ms SUH Jiwon, a PhD candidate at Ohio State University for her assistance in data collection, and Dr. KIM Jeehun, a HK Professor at Sogang University, who helped translate this essay into English. The responsibility for any errors or omissions is mine.

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