Abstract
With India’s increasing focus on South-East Asia, the Pacific region and North-East Asia, this book has indeed been very timely. The author who served as India’s Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (ROK) from 2008 to 2011 has shown considerable scholarship and research in producing this volume. He was obviously the right man at the right place at the right time. This has enabled him to trace this important relationship from its very modest beginning to becoming a strategic partnership by 2010 when the then President of the ROK, Lee Myung-bak, was the Chief Guest at the 61st Republic Day celebrations of India on 26 January 2010. The two countries had indeed come a long way.
The book is well structured and easy to read. In 12 chapters, it delves into the very early contacts between the two countries, including those based on legends and myths. Then follows the somewhat turbulent period in the aftermath of World War II and the subsequent Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The then strong man of the ROK, President Syngman Rhee’s misgivings about India, the role played by India’s Medical Ambulance Unit as part of the UN Command and subsequently India serving as the Chairman of the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission are all covered in lucid detail.
The decision to establish formal bilateral relations was taken in 1961 when the two countries agreed to open Consulates in their respective capitals. The ROK opened its Consulate General in New Delhi in 1962, but India due to financial constraints opened its Consulate General in Seoul only in 1968. In pursuit of its policy of balanced relations between the two Koreas, North and South, India took similar action in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Ultimately, in December 1973, these relations were upgraded to full diplomatic level, once again simultaneously with both the South and the North. As the author observes, ‘With this background India–ROK relations were set to evolve in a positive direction in the 1970s’, slowly transforming, as the author puts it, the period of apathy (1953–1972) to the period of increasing interaction (1973–1992).
The 1970s did not witness any major activity or interaction between India and the ROK. This was a period of some turmoil on the Indian domestic political scene. First, the internal emergency followed by a change of government, the relatively weak coalition government of the Janata Party. Under such circumstances, external relations took a back seat. But with the change of the political scene in 1979, with the return of the Congress Party and Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister, the atmosphere changed again. This change in atmosphere resulted in a high-level interaction, with Foreign Minister level visits being exchanged in the first half of 1983 between India and the ROK. India was also gradually veering away from its policy of absolute equivalence in its dealings with the two Koreas. Since 1980, with President Chun Doo-hwan taking over as the President of the ROK, a change in Seoul’s foreign policy was also perceptible. The earlier focus, mainly on the US and Western countries, was being supplemented with a conscious attempt at reaching out to the developing and nearby countries. President Chun Doo-hwan’s five-nation tour to Burma (Myanmar), India, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand was a major diplomatic initiative on the ROK’s part. However, on its very first stop in Burma, a bomb explosion that claimed the lives of 17 members of the Presidential party, including four Cabinet ministers, forced the postponement of the visit. Meanwhile, trade was slowly picking up between India and the ROK, rising from a mere $ 12 million in 1971 to $ 223 million in 1980 to $ 500 million in 1982, making India the ROK’s the 10th largest export market.
From the 1990s onwards, there was a true blossoming of relations between India and the ROK. To quote, the author himself writes:
In the 1990s, both India and the ROK had undergone momentous changes. India was an emerging economic giant, a nuclear weapons power and a more confident nation. The ROK was well established as a mature democracy with an enviable economic growth. At the beginning of the new millennium, the two countries rediscovered each other as partners in addressing global issues related to trade and environment as well as for their own socio-economic progress. The international situation was conducive to a realization by the policy makers and diplomatic practitioners in both countries to find novel and innovative ways to deepen and strengthen their bilateral relationship. This sentiment found a ready response from the leadership in the two countries. The time was propitious to raise the relationship to a qualitatively higher level.
In the years to follow, this relationship witnessed what may be termed as its natural further culmination to a strategic partnership by 2010. The two-way trade by 2011 had touched $ 20 billion. South Korean investments in India were by now an important landmark on the Indian economic scene with names such as Hyundai, Samsung, LG and Posco virtually becoming household names. Big Indian enterprises too were discovering South Korea as an attractive investment destination with Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra, Novelis Inc., a subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group, L&T Infotech, Mahindra, Satyam, the Tata Consultancy Services, to mention a few, leading the pack, so to say. Even if some glitches develop from time to time, the bilateral relationship has now reached a level of maturity to be able to tackle and overcome them. The future indeed looks promising.
In the chapter ‘The Way Ahead’, the author takes an optimistic view of the further growth potential of this strategic partnership with the possibility of even an India–Japan–South Korea trilateral dialogue strongly hinted at. The recent (January 2014) visit of the Japanese Prime Minister to India as the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations, preceded less than a couple of months by the visit of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, is possibly a pointer in that direction.
The interesting observations of the author in the Epilogue on the Korean people, their habits, life style, cuisine, social norms, etc. deserve to be noted carefully by anyone dealing with South Korea and its people. Members of the Indian corporate sector having frequent interaction with South Korea should particularly benefit from the author’s keen observations contained in this chapter.
Altogether, a very useful book that should serve as a convenient guide to not just the practitioners of diplomacy but people from other walks of life as well seriously involved in India–ROK relations. The author deserves to be complimented for a job well done.
The only suggestions that come to mind are that a few charts and tables giving in a handy manner the trade and investment figures would have been welcomed. Also, a detailed map of the Korean peninsula could have been given alongside the few photographs to make the book more reader friendly. Finally, and this is more for the publishers to consider, for a book of 295 pages, including the Annexures and the Index, to be priced at Rs. 795 looks a little steep. Maybe a paperback edition, priced much lower, would be worth considering so as to bring the book more within the budgetry reach of serious students and academics.