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The EU in the views of Korean ‘elites’: new findings and some lessons

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Abstract

The last two decades have seen most significant developments, which led to incremental upgrading of the Korea-EU bilateral relationship, including the adoption by the European Commission in 1993 of a strategy paper toward Korea, the presidency role played by Korea in the third Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit in 2000 and the launch and entering into force of the bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in 2007 and 2011, respectively, as well as the upgrading of the relationship to a strategic partnership in 2010. The imagery of the EU, however, does not seem to have improved substantially as these series of positive developments in bilateral relationship might suggest, as manifested in a few recent studies conducted on the EU perception in Asia and Korea. As an extension of the two previous interviews of Korean elites carried out in 2006 and 2009, a new round of elite interviews has been conducted to find out how the perception of the EU in the mindset of Korean elites has changed over the past years. The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, among a number of changes found in the comparative analysis of the three interviews, the bilateral FTA that appeared at the top as an immediate image of the EU in the two previous interviews lost its place substantially. Instead, the Eurozone crisis has become one of most influential EU images in the mid of Korean elites. Second, the global actorness of the EU has become substantively weakened in the eyes of the Korean elites over the past few years. As this was most strongly pronounced in the group of media representatives, the authors expect it to have lasting impacts on the images of the EU in the wider Korean public.

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Notes

  1. Park (2013).

  2. European Commission (1993).

  3. http://eeas.europa.eu/korea_south/index_en.htm

  4. This interview project is part of a multi-country project ‘After Lisbon: The EU as an Exporter of Values and Norms through ASEM’ conducted in ten Asia-Pacific countries for the period of 2011–2012. This project was undertaken to address three objectives—to monitor the most representative media outlets in each participating country; to survey public opinions in the ten countries; and to examine the EU images perceived by elites as well. By comparing the results of each country, this project aims at characterizing the EU imagery in the region. Ten Asia-Pacific countries involved in this 2011 project include China, Korea, Japan, Russia, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. For the related information, see the website of National Research Centre for Europe, University of Canterbury, at http://www.euperceptions.canterbury.ac.nz/

  5. The 2006 interview project was the first type of multi-country project. Twenty elites were selected in this first round. In 2009/2010, a total number of 32 elites were interviewed. The results of these previous interview projects have been discussed in earlier publications such as Park and Kim (2006) and Park and Yoon (2010).

  6. As for the detailed methodology, see the website of National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury, http://www.euperceptions.canterbury.ac.nz/elite.shtml (accessed 13/Aug/2013)

  7. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea; http://www.mofa.go.kr/trade/areaissue/europe/eu/index.jsp?menu=m_30_30_50&tabmenu=t_2 (accessed 13/Aug/2013)

  8. Formal characteristics include explicit features of a news coverage—coverage frequency/volume, placement, domesticity and centrality;substantive characteristics refer to latent and in-depth mechanisms of image formation, such as news frame, actor, evaluation, visual imagery, etc. As for the details, see Yoon, Chaban and Chung (2010).

  9. The EU accepted Croatia as its 28th member state in July 2013. There are candidate countries—Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia, FYROM, and Turkey—which are under the negotiations with the EU for their membership at the moment. Some of them are expected to accede in the foreseeable future. For related information on the future EU enlargement, see http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/on-the-road-to-eu-membership/index_en.htm (accessed 15/Aug/2013)

  10. The treaty entered into force on 01 December 2009, when the 2009/2010 interviews were being undertaken. Yet, there were few interviewees who addressed this treaty.

  11. There are some scholarly criticisms on the effect of the Lisbon Treaty. The evaluation of the Lisbon Treaty, however, is out of focus of this paper.

  12. The perspective of Korean media’s coverage on the Korea-EU FTA is analysed in Yoon, Chaban and Chung (2010).

  13. EU-Korea FTA took effect on 01 July 2011.

  14. They had their concerts in Paris, first, and in London. This was the first tour to Europe made by Korean K-pop stars. The participating stars are Girls’ Generation, Tong Vfang Xien Qi, Shinee, Super Junior and F(X). Thousands of young fans crowded from across Europe. European local media reported that this is a meaningful start of expanding the Korean Wave to Europe. (http://news.sbs.co.kr/section_news/news_read.jsp?news_id=N1000928705)

  15. They include not only the most recent enlargements in May 2004 and January 2007 but also the prospective enlargements including the accession of Croatia in July 2013.

  16. For the related analysis, see Yoon, Chaban and Chung (2010).

  17. As of June 2014, there are five EU academic centres operating in Korea—three in Seoul (HUFS-HRI EU Centre, KU-KIEP-SBS EU Centre and Yonsei-SERI EU Centre), one in Pusan (PNU EU Centre), and the other one in Daegu (YU EU Centre).

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Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by a Korea University grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University, 145, Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 136-701, South Korea

    Sung-Hoon Park

  2. Department of Global Business, The University of Suwon, 17, Wauan-gil, Bongdam-eup, Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, 445-743, South Korea

    Sung-Won Yoon

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  1. Sung-Hoon Park
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  2. Sung-Won Yoon
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Correspondence to Sung-Hoon Park.

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Park, SH., Yoon, SW. The EU in the views of Korean ‘elites’: new findings and some lessons. Asia Eur J 13, 1–21 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-014-0397-3

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