COVER STORY • 1

Global Risks & Opportunities Under the “With-Corona” Global Order
The Fourth JEF-KRA Global Risk Symposium – Key Geopolitical
Developments in the Current Pandemic Situation
17:00-19:00 (JST), Monday 12 & Tuesday 13 October 2020

By Komatsu Research & Advisory

Dr. Keiichiro Komatsu

Sir Paul Collier

Professor Hassan Omari KayaThe Japan Economic Foundation (JEF) and Komatsu Research &Advisory (KRA) co-organised the fourth Global Risk Symposium toanalyse the current rapidly changing international climate from amultifaceted perspective. Given the pandemic, for the first time it washeld as an online conference (with simultaneous interpreters) overtwo consecutive days. Speakers joined from four countries: Japan,
South Korea, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

Mr. Nigel Inkster CMG

Dr. Dong Yong Sueng

The symposium was held under the Chatham House Rule toencourage frank discussion among the speakers and the audience.
An exclusive audience of 50 people including government officials,
business persons, researchers, scholars and media personnel
attended the event.
The following is a summary of the symposium produced with thepermission of the speakers.

Opening Remarksby Mr. Kazumasa Kusaka, Chairman and CEO, Japan Economic Foundation
Mr. Kusaka thanked the audience for joining the online symposium
and briefly explained JEF’s recent activities and the thinking behindholding the annual symposium.
When businesses actively operate globally, they may not be able to
make good business decisions unless they become sensitive to global
risks beyond business inherent risks. To address these challenges, it
is extremely important to understand the structure of risks and its
backgrounds. The top people from industry, academia and thegovernment are participating to discuss not only their areas ofexpertise, but taking interest in economy, security and geopoliticalrisks. Discussions are held to cultivate capabilities to grasp thingscomprehensively, to enable a holistic approach.
Otherwise, business communities or security experts will not beable to understand the other field and may take action in a one-sided
way with only partial knowledge.
This year, the theme of the global risk symposium is, what changes
is the global pandemic bringing. While we have been trying to keep it
4 Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

under control, what does it mean to live “with-Corona”, to coexist
with COVID-19. How would the world move and what does it mean
for global risks, these are themes that will be covered in this year’s
symposium.
We hope to hear from each perspective, how to not only passively
but actively respond to the risks and opportunities even with thelimitations of “with-Corona”. While the COVID-19 pandemic is a clear
and present danger in front of us, we hope this symposium would be
able to contribute to improving our response towards the riskspresented by the coming global challenge through hearing how
world-class top-level practitioners and thinkers think through andtake action.

https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

Guest Speechby Professor Yoriko Kawaguchi, Minister for Foreign Affairs (2002-2004), Minister of the Environment (2000-2002),
Visiting Professor, Musashino University, Fellow, Musashino Institute for Global Affairs
COVID-19 has upended the world for almost 10 months. The
economy, education, no field was free from the impact of COVID-19
and unfortunately the future is quite uncertain. The task given to me
today is to discuss the risks and opportunities for international
politics from COVID-19.
The international community was already facing a multitude ofproblems before the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent
pandemic aggravated these issues. There were various frictions
associated with the rise of China, in particular, rising tensions
between the US and China in political, economic and military areas.
After the inauguration of US President Trump, the America-first policy
became very evident, Brexit and conflicts in Syria and other areas,poverty, deterioration in international co-operation, fragmentation ofinternational community, the lack of leadership, and the list goes on.
According to the poll by the US Pew Research Centre on 6 October
2020, which was conducted in 14 advanced economies, it shows alack of trust in leaders in world-leading countries which is very
unfortunate.
The fact that COVID-19 became a rapid aggravating factor in a way
cannot be helped because of the nature of the pandemic. The
pandemic countermeasures are mostly domestic, such as closing ofborders, and reducing dependency on foreign countries including
supply chains. As a reflection of the constraints on domestic politics,
diplomacy is also constrained for both the US and China and theycannot but take hardliner policies against each other. Having said so,
the problem is how to reduce the risk that has increased. The root of
the problem is in the difference in principles of governance between
China and countries including the US, Europe and Japan, such as therule of law, freedom of speech and democracy. Therefore, theimprovement of the situation is extremely difficult for the short-term.
Regarding the competing relationships between the two major
powers, the US and China, so long as the competition is healthy andbased on rules, it can be a stabilising factor from the perspective ofinternational politics, in comparison to a case where one hegemonicstate is taking the leadership. It is against the interest of Japan to havepoor relations with its ally and its neighbour, so what Japan needs to
do in terms of its role is to contribute to smoothe communication
between the US and China and make sure that there are no
misunderstandings between these two countries. It doesn’t mean thatJapan should be equidistant in its diplomacy; Japan needs to maintainsolidly the position of US ally but also support mutual understanding
between the US and China by understanding both countries better.
Another impact from COVID-19 on international politics is a greater
importance of international co-operation. The pandemic crosses
borders and thus the infections cannot be controlled without
international co-operation. The pandemic also will burden more on
the vulnerable in the international community; international assistanceand resource reallocation are therefore needed more than ever.
From the experience of the pandemic this time, we learnt that there
are risks and uncertainties that are not foreseeable and controllable.
Human beings must humbly coexist with the earth to survive. It is
important to achieve SDGs, strengthen international regimes, climatechange, biodiversity, infectious disease control and abolition of
weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons. We muststrengthen such international regimes. Regarding this point, thethinking of the EU reconstruction fund provides a useful reference.
Professor Kawaguchi believes that this suggests a possible role forJapan to take leadership to advance effective international
co-operation with likeminded countries. To fulfil that role, Japan must
maintain an international status respected by other countries, makeefforts to constantly reform, to energise the Japanese economy,
internationalise Japanese people and society, and to maintain anddevelop its soft power.
It is clear that now is not an abnormal time, and we cannot expect
to go back to pre-COVID-19 days and this is both a risk andopportunity. That is all the more reason why we have to take action to
use these opportunities to realise the desirable new normal. That is
our responsibility.

The Concept of this Symposium Explained by the Moderator
Dr. Keiichiro Komatsu, Principal, Komatsu Research & Advisory (KRA)
With regards to the concept of the symposium, the reason thetheme is “With-Corona” and not “Post-Corona” is that this COVID-19
is not going to be like SARS, there is not going to be a clear exit. With
this as the starting point, discussions on both risks and opportunities
will be held during this symposium. In previous years at the annual
symposium, the term “New Normal” has been used to explain thisphenomenon. Even before the pandemic there were issues, but withthis pandemic, some issues have accelerated while other issues have

newly arisen. We hope to hear some insightful hints from the
speakers.
On day 1, Sir Paul Collier, Professor from the University of Oxford,
is the first speaker with a talk about the implications of the pandemic
on capitalism and democracy versus autocracy, not just from
economics and politics, not just looking from a narrow theme, butfrom a broader perspective including philosophical points of view aswell as values.
Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

5

The second speaker is Professor Hassan Omari Kaya from
University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. The Western
healthcare system is not well developed in most African countries.
There was, therefore, a fear and expectation that if COVID-19 spreads,
the continent would be severely affected, with dead bodies scatteredacross the streets or patients with severe symptoms. However, that is
actually not happening. While different from the perspective ofindustrialised nations including Japan and South Korea, African local
communities have over many millennia developed their own
indigenous knowledge and traditional healthcare systems, whichperhaps have been working much better than expected. From thisperspective, the African continent may be able to provide somesolutions towards global challenges.
On day 2, the first speaker is Mr. Nigel Inkster CMG, IISS Senior
Adviser, and former No. 2 at the so-called MI6. Speaking of MI6, inJapan and elsewhere, we think of James Bond and he was actually inthat world. He specialises in China so we hope to hear about the
future US-China relationship, and he is also an expert on cybersecurity so that would be another theme we could hear from him.
Our second speaker is Dr. Dong Yong Sueng, who was a memberof the Council of Policy Advisors to the President of the Republic ofKorea as well as a member of the Council of Advisors on foreign andsecurity policy to the Blue House, the South Korean Presidential
Office. He is now the Secretary General of Good Farmers. He will betalking about the impact of the pandemic on the Korean peninsula aswell as the surrounding East Asia, not from a medical perspective but
from a comparative view of different political structures.
The symposium is held under Chatham House Rule to encourage
frank discussions.

Presentation Title: “Democracy vs Autocracy” in the Context of Tackling a New Crisis
Speaker: Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of
Oxford and a Director of the International Growth Centre, and the ESRC research network, Social Macroeconomics
Note: This presentation was made in English and simultaneously translated into Japanese for the Japanese speaking audience.
Sir Paul Collier raised the question of “Democracy vs Autocracy” inthe context of tackling a new crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
He started by explaining the three characteristics that a successful
society needs.
The first characteristic is a degree of social cohesion. It is possible
to have any amount of difference within the society as long as there issome overarching concept of shared identity, shared purpose, sharedunderstanding about how things work and don’t work, and sharedobligations. Social cohesion is enormously important in building
willing compliance not only for individual citizens but also for firms,
families and local communities around some common purpose andsome common understanding of the strategy that is needed. The
genius of social cohesion is a community in which people are able tohave a dialogue, a conversation between equals and can search
together for a common understanding.
The second characteristic is an ability to discover, the capacity tolearn as you go. The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of what iscalled in economics “radical uncertainty” where if you asked anybody
back in January “What should we do?”, the honest true answer was“we don’t know”. There was no knowledge of how to deal with
COVID-19, because nobody had ever had to dealt with it, it was
something new. Such situations are very common. There are two
massive global examples in the last 12 years; the global financial
crisis and now the COVID-19 pandemic. To find out what to do as
quickly as possible, you need a very different approach, from top
down.
When it is clear what to do, a hierarchical structure works, butwhen we do not know what to do, a hierarchical structure is very
dangerous because the top is inclined to claim that they know best
6 Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

and insist everybody does the same thing, whereas if you do notknow what to do, what you need is experiments in parallel. For that itis necessary to decentralise, devolve the power of decision down tothe bottom of society and devolving the agency to try come up withsolutions in a team, and it is very useful because it merges two
different types of knowledge.
All good decisions in any context rest on the fusion between expert
knowledge and tacit knowledge. What is needed is to push therelatively shareable expert knowledge down towards the people, whileat the same time practitioners who have practical knowledge, which ismuch harder to share because it is particular to context and time andmore than often unwritten, try and push that practical knowledge up
towards the people at the top. By devolving a system, it not only
facilitates rapid learning but also creates a structure that empowers
the people on the ground and creates an active participatorycommunity dialogue.
The third characteristic of a successful society is that you needleaders who can be trusted. A trusted leader is not “commander inchief” issuing orders but a “communicator in chief”. In a situation likethis pandemic, what the leader needs to do is to communicate asense of common purpose; we all need to struggle to find out asolution to this problem; we all need to do our best. Since the answer
is not known, we must expect sometimes to fail and there is nodisgrace in experimenting and failing. In top down societies, there is aterrible fear of failing.
Professor Collier then applied this concept to the question of“Democracy vs Autocracy”. He pointed out that China is not a great
successful autocracy but that its remarkable success over the last 40
years is a result of previous investments in social cohesion and rapid

experiment built over 2,000 years and made worse by the recent
move to top down. The old emperors had responsibilities towards
citizens and the leader earned the Mandate of Heaven by working
towards a common purpose.
For 40 years, until recently China not only had this social cohesion,
but it also acknowledged that it did not have all the answers.
Repeatedly the Chinese leadership tried to build common goals,
typically objectives lasting over the next four years. The leadershipwould say that this is what we are trying to do, and then they
decentralised and experimented by sending young bright party
officials to regional governments and saying: “you experiment, you
try something”, and that created very rapid experiment in parallel andhence they learned from both failures and from successes. China hasrecently moved to a very top down centralized system and that has
actually amplified the COVID-19 problem. It took a long time for newsof COVID-19 in Wuhan to move up the system because people werescared of failure so there were delays in the first instance. If you arescared, you hide failure and do not report it.
In East Asia, in the face of COVID-19 Japan, Singapore, South
Korea and Taiwan all shared these features of having very strongsocial cohesion and trusted leadership and ability to build newcommon purposes very rapidly. In Western democracies, what was

happening over the last 40 years was actually a widespread
derailment of capitalism. Capitalism can work for everybody if there isgood public policy that enhances the innovations that capitalism
generates whilst compensating for those who lose out, so that people
still trust the whole system. In much of Europe and America that did
not happen and social cohesion was lost. There were huge new
spatial rifts, a big divergence between the successful metropolis andbroken provincial cities, as well as new educational divergence, a newclass system. The tragedy politically was that nothing was done about
this because the people losing out from the system also lost their
voice and it was no longer a community in dialogue. Insider groups ofthe successful did not even notice that the less successful were
suffering. Drawing on examples, Professor Collier then explained theneed for leaders whom the people listen to when the word “we” isused, instead of half the society saying, “you are not ‘we’, you are an
enemy”.
To conclude, Professor Collier pointed out that what we need is abalance within hierarchy. We need leaders who at times would set
rules for us and say: “This is what you need to do”. But we also needan adaptive community because so much of the knowledge of what to
do is at the bottom of the society, not at the top.

Presentation Title: Africa Building on Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Global
Challenges: the Case of COVID-19
Speaker: Professor Hassan Omari Kaya, Ph.D. in Sociology of Development and International Political Economy, Directorof the DSI-NRF Centre in Indigenous Knowledge Systems, the University of KwaZulu-Natal
Note: This presentation was made in English and simultaneously translated into Japanese for the Japanese speaking audience.
Professor Hassan O. Kaya pointed out the fact that the impact of
the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa has been less, compared to otherglobal regions, and that this demonstrated the efficacy of African
indigenous knowledge systems and the philosophy of people working
together as a community.
There is a tendency to look at Africa as a country, while of course
Africa is a continent covering 30 million square kilometres withdiverse indigenous knowledge systems based on over 2,000 distinct
languages and cultures, 54 countries and a population of over 1.2
billion. Throughout colonisation, Africa’s diversity was looked at as aproblem of development, while in the context of African indigenous
knowledge systems (AIKS), cultural diversity is an asset. This isbased on the holistic and multi-transdisciplinary nature of the AIKS
which advances the complementarity and democracy of knowledge
systems in combating global challenges such as COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Kaya defines African indigenous knowledge systems as
bodies of knowledge, technologies and innovations, belief systems
and value systems which communities in diverse cultures andecosystems produce in order to sustain life. In contrast, westernways of looking at knowledge tend to be limited to explicit knowledge
that can be written, while African indigenous knowledge is often tacitand exists in different ways such as oral knowledge, artistic, spiritualforms, and is more holistic. For instance, when looking at the issue ofland, in African indigenous societies, land is not something you own,
because there is a symbiotic relationship between nature and humanbeings. They depend upon one another.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global phenomenon that affects all
sections of society. It is not only biological but also has social,economic, environmental, cultural and political dimensions. Thismeans that it needs a complementarity of knowledge systems forsustainable solutions. In most African societies, indigenous forms ofknowledge on traditional medicines and healing systems are used.
These are not only about treating the biological aspect of health, butalso involve the holistic dimensions of health embedded andarticulated in indigenous languages and philosophies. For instance, inSouth Africa, there is an African indigenous philosophy called“Ubuntu”, which promotes solidarity, compassion, human dignity,
consensus and respect, to mitigate common challenges.
What colonialism and apartheid did was to destroy a sense ofconfidence among African people towards their own cultures,
including value and knowledge systems. The concept of building on
the indigenous, as articulated in this presentation, is not necessarily
Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

7

what is traditional but whatever the African people themselves in theirdiverse cultures and ecosystems consider to be an authentic
expression of themselves. Building on the indigenous creates
confidence and thereby active citizenry. The success of African
communities in dealing with the pandemic shows that African
indigenous knowledge systems can contribute towards the global
pool of knowledge in order to tackle global challenges. What COVID19 is showing is that when Africa, like other regions in the world
including East Asia and Europe, builds on the indigenous andmobilises grassroots knowledge and innovation systems, homegrown philosophies and indigenous languages so people become
actively involved in mitigating global and community challenges. It
creates a common purpose in which communities build a sense ofconfidence and self-reliance in all levels of societies.
Contrary to Western thought, that before colonisation African
people had no social institutions nor history, African historical andarcheological testimonies such as the remains of the ancient city ofGede in Kenya, Great Zimbabwe, the Great Pyramids, Timbuktu andother historical landmarks, show that Africa is the cradle ofhumankind and is where the oldest record of scientific andtechnological achievements are located. These historicalachievements could have only been guided by highly sophisticatedAfrican indigenous socio-economic, political, spiritual and cultural
institutions developed by African people’s themselves. However, postcolonial African countries have not managed to leverage these
Indigenous Knowledge Systems, including historical scientific andtechnological achievements and resources for sustainable
development.
For instance, the African continent is positioned in the strategic
global navigation routes, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian
Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Recently there is thefree and open Indo-Pacific Economic zone, which is not just an
economic zone but also a cultural zone that connects the Pacific, theIndian Ocean, both in Africa and in Asia. Therefore, African countries
can harness the rich potentialities of the blue economy, agricultural,
wildlife, mineral and human resources, cultural and linguistic
diversity, together with its historical legacy and heritage assustainable developmental assets in the global economy.
The important thing to recognise is that these cultural diversities
are not characteristics of African countries only, they exist
everywhere, within the UK, Europe, Japan, Korea and China. Each has
its own diversity of indigenous knowledge, value systems, which
communities use in all aspects of life to mitigate against different life
challenges.
Building on the indigenous and advancing complementarity ofknowledge systems as an asset paves the way for: (i) creating highlevel multilateral platforms and strategic partnerships that advanceinternational human understanding, mutual cooperation, social andepistemic justice; (ii) development of strategic programmes andpartnership to produce unique products and services for competitive
advantage in the global market economy through the interface of
AIKS and resources with other knowledge and technological systems;(iii) building a new generation of global human capital conversant in
the significance of Indigenous Knowledge Systems for international
peace-building, sustainable and dynamic global market economy; and(iv) develop global educational programmes to promote knowledge
and awareness on Africa’s rich cultural diversity and historicalcontribution to the global pool of knowledge.
Professor Kaya concluded that when diversity is seen as an asset
these could be harnessed for the benefit of humankind and to mitigate
global challenges.

Presentation Title: B ritish Perspective of the Impact of the Pandemic on US-China
Relations and its Implications
Speaker: Mr. Nigel Inkster CMG, Senior Adviser to IISS and former Assistant Chief and Director of Operations andIntelligence at the British SIS (also known as MI6)
Note: This presentation was made in English and simultaneously translated into Japanese for the Japanese speaking audience.
Mr. Inkster CMG opened his talk by explaining that it is probably too
early to say how the change brought by the COVID-19 pandemic will
manifest itself over the long term, while what we can say with greater
confidence is that this pandemic has exercised a catalytic effect on
trends that were already apparent. He then explained, from a British
perspective, the impact of the pandemic on US-China relations, whichwere already undergoing a period of significant deterioration – fromstrategic alignment to one of strategic competition. This was a trendthat was driven by China’s rising power, which the US perceived as achallenge to its role as global hegemon, and the competition has beenplaying out in the realms of trade, finance and technology but always
with the potential to turn kinetic. He then elaborated on the role
8 Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

technology, in particular information and communications technology(ICT), have played in the way this relationship has developed.
He explained how of particular concern for America was China’s
technology ambitions and the Chinese state’s efforts to reengineer the
global internet, and to become the standard-setter of a gateway
technology, fifth-generation mobile technologies (5G), massively
investing in the areas of advanced technology including quantum
computing, quantum encryption, and biotechnology. He pointed outthat US concerns were a complex mixture of economic, national
security, and geo-political and boiled down to a conviction thattelecommunications networks critical to national security and national
prosperity should not be in the hands of a company so closely linked

with and susceptible to control by the Chinese Party-state. US
concerns about China’s national ICT champion Huawei were further
enhanced by a set of scenarios by Australia’s signals intelligenceagency, which showed that in the event of a conflict with China,
reliance on Huawei-enabled technology would present serious
challenges.
Meanwhile, the pandemic tipped already tense Sino-US relations
over the edge and eventually led to the US national security complex
banning any companies anywhere in the world seeking to sell to
China large technologies based on US intellectual property, by
requiring them to first obtain a licence from the US Department ofCommerce. The ban on the sale of the advanced microchips on which
Huawei is still dependent for its 5G systems and which China isunable to manufacture for itself is potentially very consequential.
The corona virus pandemic came at a time when globalisation had
peaked and the pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities of global
supply chains that were highly efficient but not resilient and in which
certain countries, particularly China, had become single points offailure in the supply chain. Already before the Pandemic, companies
had begun to address these concerns by moving some manufacturing
away from China to achieve greater resilience and to escape an
increasingly restrictive environment within China.
This process is what has been termed “The Great Decoupling” andit has economic, financial and technology components. It is very hardto predict how this process plays out because the US and China,technologically speaking, have become so closely entangled that acomplete untangling seems difficult to imagine. But the general
direction seems to point towards an eventual technology andeconomic decoupling involving a global bifurcation in which otherstates will find themselves pressed to choose sides, as the UK wasrecently forced to do. But it is clear that the measurable costs of any
such decoupling would be high and the intangible costs even higher.
While China’s contributions thus far in these technologies have notbeen in the area of foundational science but rather in the developmentof existing technologies, it seems highly probable that in due course
the focus and resources China is devoting to hi-tech programmes willproduce genuine innovation.
The challenge we are facing in the technology area is between alaissez-faire approach and an all-of-nation approach. It is the sort ofdilemma that Britain faced in the early stages of World War I, when it

rapidly became clear that the laissez-faire approach to munitions
production was no match for the all-of-nation approach to warfare ofImperial Germany. It remains to be seen how the US will respond tothis, whether it might actually move in the direction of developing
something like an industrial strategy fit for the 21st century. We could
end up with a kind of technology bifurcation, in which some countries
are using one model of communications technology and the others a
different one, the Chinese one. There are questions here of technicalcompatibility and the risk that actually countries in the middle areforced to reduplicate and actually operate both sets of technology
with all the additional burdens that this composes.
Mr. Inkster CMG concluded his remarks by asking the question ofwhat is to be done. He noted that it is hard to make predictions
because the progress of technologies is hard to anticipate but in geopolitics, the shift of power from West to East is happening and the US
appears to be losing its appetite for exercising the role of global
hegemon but is not yet ready to relinquish that role, nor is China yet
ready to assume it. We could find ourselves in the “Kindleberger
trap”, a reference to the global situation in between the two World
Wars during which the US had implicitly assumed the hegemonic rolepreviously exercised by Britain but then failed to exercise it, thereby
giving rise to an international climate of instability that resulted in
World War II. Even if the US does continue to play the role ofhegemon, its allies are going to have to learn to take greater
responsibility for their own security, including in the realm oftechnology, and are going to have to adapt to a reality in which great
power contestation conditions all facets of life.
He highlighted the need to acknowledge that we live in a world ofuncertainty by referring to his own former profession. He pointed outthat the profession of intelligence is about managing uncertainty. He
shared that he always used to say to young colleagues entering theorganisation: if you like a world coloured in black and white this is not
the profession for you, because we only ever deal in grey. We areconstantly operating in a situation where we don’t know what theanswer is, where we have to make pragmatic judgments based onevidence, and where conviction, zeal and ideology are anything otherthan helpful. This is something that all countries are going to have tolearn to adapt to, to become comfortable with uncertainty, torecognise its inevitability and for governments to be honest with their
populations in terms of acknowledging that this is the case.

Presentation Title: The Impact of the Pandemic on the Korean Peninsula and East Asia
Speaker: Dr. Dong Yong Sueng, former member of Council of Policy Advisors to the President of the Republic of Korea aswell as a member of Council of Advisors on foreign and security policy to the Blue House; Secretary General of Good
Farmers (NGO)
Note: This presentation was made in Korean and simultaneously translated into English and Japanese for the non-Korean speaking
audience.
Dr. Dong Yong Sueng started his talk by pointing out three kinds ofchanges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic which were likely

to stay even after vaccines and drugs are developed to tackle it: 1)
The expansion of non-face-to-face communication, including using IT
Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

9and AI; 2) Changes in the Global Value Chain (GVC), turning from a
global supply chain to a more regionalised one; and 3) Strengtheningof central government functions. He then explained the impact of thepandemic on the Korean peninsula and on East Asia.
Dr. Dong then examined the situation of North Korea before andafter the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, after the Kim Jong-un
administration was established in 2012, foreign relations weresevered and the focus was on the development of nuclear weapons
until November 2017 when they declared the completion of a nuclear
programme, together with the improvement of relations with South
Korea and the US. Meanwhile, between 2012 and 2017, there were
two major changes taking place domestically: 1) Reform and 2)
Opening of the country. Reform was known as the socialist corporate
responsibility management system and ownership changed fromstate ownership to a more communal ownership. This operational
policy has been clarified in the April 2019 revision of the constitution.
In order to open the country, four central special economic zones and
23 regional economic development zones were designated in order toattract foreign capital. Furthermore, in 2016, they created andadvanced a five-year economic development strategy for the first timesince the Cold War ended. In this way, the North Korean policies werevery ambitious. However, after the collapse of the February 2019
Hanoi summit between North Korea and the US the policies changed
dramatically and North Korea declared that if the US would not be
moving in the direction it wanted, it would be moving to a new path.
Until then North Korea was moving with the improvement of relations
with the US in mind, but after the collapse of the summit, it shifted to“frontal breakthrough strategy with the might of self-reliance”. Since
then, North Korea severed relation with the US and South Korea,
strengthened relations with China and Russia and switched to aninternal self-reliance strategy. They also declared that nuclear
weapons are no longer on the table for the negotiations advocated forthe sophistication of nuclear weapons.
After the pandemic started, in terms of non-face-to-facecommunication, North Korea closed its national borders, imposed a
voluntary ban on assemblies, and mask wearing became mandatory.
In terms of changes in the Global Value Chain, North Korea used the
pandemic to their advantage and accelerated the self-reliancestrategy. Meanwhile, it was acknowledged that the very ambitious
five-year economic development plan was a failure and it was
declared that a new five-year economic development plan is to be
implemented starting in 2021.These are developments that may
suggest a switch to self-reliance strategy; instead of globalisation,
more of a regionalisation or centering on its own country. Dr. Dong
also explained the attempts to solve the energy problem, foodsecurity under self-reliance, swift recovery from natural disasters aswell as North Korea’s attempts to combat the weakening market
functions.
Dr. Dong then elaborated on South Korea’s efforts under the Moon
Administration to reopen dialogue with North Korea throughproposals including joint epidemic prevention, proposals to start fromsmall trade, and exploring leads for the declaration of the end of thewar. However, North Korea has consistently not responded and with
10 Japan SPOTLIGHT • March / April 2021

the pandemic response and the dramatic shooting incident of a South
Korean government officer in the Yellow Sea, there is a slowdown of
the reconciliation momentum. There is concern in South Korea that it
will be forced to choose sides between the US or China, or risk
alienation. He also noted the fact that some point to the stubborn
attachment to the pre-Hanoi Summit methodology in spite of thechange in environment after the collapse of the Summit.
When looking from the East Asian point of view, there was a world
centering around China before the 15th century and it turned to aWest-centric society after the beginning of that century, when Admiral
Zheng He of the Ming Dynasty went on eight overseas expeditions toconnect with the Eurasian continent, but because of domestic issues
this was not successful. 50 years or so later Europeans adventured
into East Asia. The concept of “the Pacific” probably did not exist atthat time, however, and Columbus tried to reach China through the
Atlantic resulting in the discovery of a new continent. From the 16th
to 20th century, China, South Korea and Japan remained regional
powers. Europe was trying to connect East and West and a Western
centric world order was established. In the West, Europe did not try
to go through the Eurasian continent to enter the East because there
was the Ottoman Empire, so Europe had to advance through the
Pacific. In the 20th century, after World War II and the Cold War, it
has become a US-centric world. Today China, though dormant for a
few centuries, is once again expanding and trying to enjoy thebenefits of economic advances through opening markets andtechnological advances. China is trying again to reconnect thecontinent, to achieve what it tried in the 15th century. It also has theambitious objective of venturing out into the Pacific. With China trying
to expand both continents and oceans, the US is trying to check andcurb those moves.
Dr. Dong noted that after the pandemic started, with non-face-toface and border closures, every country is heading towards more
self-reliance and more nationalistic or authoritarian approaches.
These countries are likely to show solidarity and this could connect
the Middle East and then Europe, leading to an acceleration of
conflicts between the US and China and a new geopolitical East-West
Cold War may be witnessed in East Asia, leading to the Thucydides
trap. The pandemic is likely to increase the power struggle between
the US and China, but it is the countries in the middle who may beable to prevent both sides from going into conflict and minimise
tension by playing the role of mediator.
After the talks, panel discussions among all four speakers were
held with questions from the moderator and the audience.

Komatsu Research & Advisory (KRA) was established by Dr. Keiichiro
Komatsu in March 2005 in London as an independent think-tank and advisory
service, specialising in business promotion and country risk analysis. Its clients
include governments, government agencies, private-sector companies (bothmedium and large companies) and non-governmental organisations.