[Citizen College] Understanding Southeast Asian Politics

On July 27, 2018, the 15th lecture of “Citizen College: Citizens Between Life and Knowledge” was held by Seongbuk Village Citizenship Education Center and the Korea University Peace and Democracy Institute(PDI). The 16th speaker was Professor Jae Hyeok Shin of Korea University.

The topic of the lecture was “Understanding Southeast Asian Politics”. From broadly overviewing of Southeast Asia, Professor explained the history and politics of that region. Southeast Asia refers to areas from the Philippines to South Indonesia and inland from Vietnam of Indo-China to west Myanmar. Southeast Asia is made up of 11 countries, of which 10 are ASEAN, with the exception of East Timor. Currently, Southeast Asia has 620 million people, about 1/10 of the world’s population. As a result, the size of the market is very large and ASEAN has become the second trade target of Korea after China. The most important part of Southeast Asian history is the colonial period. At that time, the gap between the rich and the poor grew and the low development of Southeast Asia continued. This led to a fierce independence movement of nationalism and communism, and Southeast Asian countries became independent from the Western powers. On the other hand, the political system in Southeast Asia varies in democracy, semi-democracy, and authoritarianism. There are reasons such as the modernization theory, and the resource curse. (Summary: Moon Hyung Lee)