한국의 경제제재 대응 결정요인 분석: 제재국에 대한 기회/제약인식과 제재 대응의 상이성 = Exploring Determinants of South Korea’s Response to Economic Sanction: Focusing on Opportunity/Constraint Perception of Korean Leaders

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

South Korea encountered two different economic sanctions from China and Japan partially because of a conflict of THAAD deployment and partially because of Korean supreme court’s decision to cite Japan’s illegal activity of forced labor during its colonial rule on the Korean peninsula. The sanctions surprised Korean leaders and public because they came from the two countries with which Korea has maintained normal and amicable relationships for decades. What is more interesting is that Korea has responded to the sanctions in very different ways. Regarding China’s sanction, Korean leaders just issued a series of complaints devoid of any government’s countersanction efforts while making prompt and even aggressive efforts to neutralize negative effects Japan’s sanction might incur to Korean economy. To explain the variation in Korea’s response to the sanctions, the paper proposes an argument that sanctionreceived countries’ response to sanction-senders varies with their opportunity/constraint perception on the senders if they maintain normal and amicable relationships. The opportunity perception prompts the receivers’ passive and even delayed response to the sanction while the constraint perception leads to their agile and aggressive response.
This argument is tested against a crucial case-i.e., Korea’s responses to the economic sanctions from China and Japan respectively. The evidence from the case studies lends a strong support for the opportunity/threat perception argument. The paper concludes by offering a short summary and policy implications.