Kadir Jun Ayhan

Ewha Womans University · Graduate School of International Studies

Korea’s public diplomacy vis-à-vis the US is the centerpiece of the country’s overall public diplomacy policy, with an emphasis on influencing the policy elites in Washington, DC, primarily through think tank-centric activities. This chapter explores Korea’s public diplomacy strategy vis-à-vis the US with an emphasis on the “policy public diplomacy...

Soft power has become a catchall phrase that suffers from analytical ambiguity. Extant literature on soft power often conflates it with other kinds of power. In this article, I suggest examining soft power from the power recipient’s perspective, emphasizing the latter’s agency. I introduce three ideal-type explanations for power recipients’ complia...

Following the last meeting of the Six-Party Talks in 2007, and the election of two consecutive conservative governments in South Korea who took a harsher stance against North Korea, there has been little breakthrough in establishing a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. The election of Donald Trump in the United States (U.S.) and Moon Jae-in in S...

The people of the two Koreas cannot communicate directly with one another. Since the early 1990s, South and North Korea have allowed a limited number of people-to-people exchanges. In this chapter, we map the South Korean government’s theories of change regarding inter-Korean exchanges based on policy documents and semi-structured interviews with f...

This book explores the state of play on the Korean peninsula, where old conflicts remain latent. Regarding security on the Korean Peninsula, however, this book challenges the belief that the internal affairs of states should be discounted and posits that to have a fuller perspective of comprehensive peacebuilding on the Korean Peninsula, all aspect...

This study explores whether South Koreans’ superordinate identification with North Koreans leads to increased humanization of and empathy for North Koreans as well as reduced negative feelings toward North Koreans. This study also examines whether superordinate identification intensifies support for people-to-people exchanges and unification using...

The people of the two Koreas cannot communicate directly with one another. Since the early 1990s, South and North Korea have allowed a limited number of people-to-people exchanges. In this article, we map the South Korean government’s theories of change regarding inter-Korean exchanges based on policy documents and semi-structured interviews with f...

Throughout the six decades evolution of the public diplomacy concept, international relations approaches have remained at the margins of the field. An important international relations theory that has been virtually non-existent in the public diplomacy literature is the English School of international relations. This theory has been the centerpiece...

Governments sponsor student-mobility programs with the expectation that students will build a more favorable and informed opinion of the host country which, in turn, will determine more favorable behavior towards the host country. Nevertheless, assessments of this logic are rare. Based on a survey of the Korean Government Scholarship Program’s alum...

Through international student mobility programs, such as Global Korea Scholarship (GKS), countries aim to influence international students’ beliefs about and attitudes toward the host country. In this article, we explore GKS’s role in bringing international students to the country and analyze changes in GKS students’ and alumni’s affective and cogn...

The COVID-19 pandemic caught almost all countries unprepared. Some countries, including South Korea (hereafter Korea), managed to deal with the pandemic relatively more successfully than others and had a proactive global posture from early on, including providing aid, and public diplomacy campaigns. In this paper, I explore Korea’s COVID-19-related...

Over the past few decades, South Korea has increasingly sought to attract international talent. Every year, hundreds of students are invited to study in the country on a competitive scholarship provided by the government. Upon graduation, students are equipped with a tertiary degree, as well as knowledge of the Korean language and culture. This stu...

Extant research has examined the significance of interpersonal relationships in affecting public diplomacy outcomes. Relational public diplomacy is a long‐term approach to public diplomacy which posits the importance of people‐to‐people exchange programs that facilitate two‐way interactions between people from two different countries. Using survey...

en Most governments offer scholarships for international students as part of their public diplomacy toolbox. However, empirical assessments of these programs are relatively rare. The limited number of existing works often concern Western countries, while international student mobility programs in non-Western countries remain insufficiently research...

This study examines South Korea’s international scholarship program based on responses to the Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) alumni survey to find how the participants perceive the host country’s dimensions of justice and diversity. We employ the concept of justice in terms of redistribution, recognition, and representation. Analysis of GKS alumni...

Sponsored international student mobility programs are important public diplomacy tools for governments. These programs’ positive outcomes are usually taken for granted and are rarely assessed. International students’ satisfaction with life in the host country is an important variable for their behavioral outcomes related to the host country. This s...

Government change across opposite ends of the political spectrum can lead to dramatic foreign policy changes despite the absence of structural changes in the security environment. We analyze the extent to which shifts between conservative and progressive administrations in South Korea have changed the country’s foreign policy interests and behavior...

In this chapter, we were tasked with finding correlations between State Inclusiveness Index (SII) and soft power in world politics. As we suspected, this was not an easy task since measuring power, particularly soft power, is not straightforward. In Joseph Nye’s words “[p]ower is also like love, easier to experience than to define or measure, but n...

we are glad to introduce the Journal of Public Diplomacy (JPD), currently published by the Korean Association for Public Diplomacy (KAPD). To our knowledge, KAPD is the only academic society with a focus on public diplomacy. JPD aims to be part of the global conversation on public diplomacy, not only as followers but also leading initiatives to hel...

Country images have been notoriously difficult to capture and measure effectively. In this article, we propose a methodological approach that combines designed and found data to capture public attitudes. We demonstrate how a mixed-method design with survey data and digital data – namely tweets and Google Trends – make it possible to better capture...

본 절에서 우리는 국가포용성지수(SII)와 세계정치에서의 소프트파워 간의 상관관계를 찾는 일 을 맡았다. 예상했던대로, 권력, 특히 소프트파워를 측정하는 일은 단순하지 않기 때문에 이것은 쉬운 과제가 아니었다. Joseph Nye의 말처럼, “권력은 사랑과 비슷해서 정의하거나 측정하기보 다는 경험해 보는 것이 더 쉽지만, 그렇다고 실재하지 않는 것은 아니다”(Nye, 2004: 1). 국가의 소프트파워를 측정하는 지수나 세계정치의 다른 차원에서 국가의 영향력에 순위를 매기는 다른 지수들은 모두 저마다의 개념적, 방법론적인 문제점을 가지고 있다. 대부분의 측정 방법은 강압 및 유인을 통제하지 못하고, 하드파워와 소프트파워...

International student-mobility programs are one of the core programs countries employ as part of their public diplomacy portfolio. Policymakers assume that sponsored foreign students would develop positive beliefs about and emotions towards the host country, which in turn would lead to favorable behavior towards it. However, evaluations of such pro...

As communication moves to social media, countries are losing control over what messages are being circulated about themselves. This article explores how South Korea’s country image is reflected within this contemporary networked communication context. We argue that country images, defined as the perceptions of countries by foreign audiences, can be...

There is great confusion over what constitutes public diplomacy (PD), who its actors are, and the relevance of non-state actors. In the Korean context, in addition to the general fuzziness of the concept, linguistic peculiarities of the terms gonggong and gongjung both of which refer to public, waegyo, which is interchangeably used for internationa...

Instructors of courses in international relations increasingly use films to facilitate students’ learning of abstract concepts and to deepen their understanding of theories. This paper introduces how the fictional universes presented in films can be utilized as platforms for students to learn about the application of analytical frameworks. This met...

Call for student papers on Korean public diplomacy. The details can be found here: https://publicdiplomacygpd.wixsite.com/website

It is no secret that measurement presents formidable challenges to the scholars and practitioners of public diplomacy alike. CPD Faculty Fellow Robert Banks drew our analytical attention to the issue around a decade ago in his CPD Perspectives publication. Since then, there have been various attempts, including the reports by the Advisory Commissio...

Diplomacy as a practice is as old as when people began interacting with estranged others. Down to its cores, diplomacy entails performance of established communication and representation practices to maintain peace between estranged polities. I define people-to-people (P2P) diplomacy as intentional, political, and transboundary communication-based...

CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Issue Theme: Methodological Approaches in Public Diplomacy Guest Editors: Kadir Jun Ayhan (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies) Efe Sevin (Towson University) The term public diplomacy has been around since the 1960s. Throughout the decades, literature has grown richer in conce...

Due to the growing popularity of digital platforms, social media conversations have been proposed and used as an indicator of public diplomacy outcomes. Despite this, existing research has found that most publics were unwilling to engage with foreign countries on social media. Considering this, this study seeks to identify factors that motivate and...

Due to the growing popularity of digital platforms, social media conversations have been proposed and used as an indicator of public diplomacy outcomes. Despite this, existing research has found that most publics were unwilling to engage with foreign countries on social media. Considering this, this study seeks to identify factors that motivate and...

South Korea’s (hereafter Korea) recent middle power diplomacy has attracted worldwide attention. Korean administrations have attempted to steer the country along a middle power path, where it can play a more active global role that is commensurate with the size of its economy. Most accounts take Korea’s self-declared identity as a middle power for...

Blog post about my article https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/eky010

Public diplomacy (PD) lacks an agreed-upon definition and boundaries. The ambiguity surrounding the conceptualization of the term leads to confusion among scholars and practitioners and hinders the consolidation of PD as an academic field. This article surveys 160 articles and books on PD, categorizes diverse perspectives into a taxonomy, and explo...

(For the original article, please go to this link: https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/eky010) The Boundaries of Public Diplomacy and Non-State Actors: A Taxonomy of Perspectives Public diplomacy (PD) lacks an agreed-upon definition and boundaries. The ambiguity surrounding the nature of conceptualization of the term leads to confusion among scholars and...

Editorial for Special Issue: Soft Power and Public Diplomacy in East Asia

My column for Donga Ilbo Newspaper on our Korean Government Scholarship Program alumni survey.

The role of non-state actors in public diplomacy remains an unsettled question in the literature. However, various transnational activities of non-state actors are often called public diplomacy, without discrimination. The lack of empirical studies on non-state public diplomacy is to blame for this conceptual confusion. Analytical and empirical stu...

INTER-KOREAN PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE DIPLOMACY (blog published on USC PD blog: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/inter-korean-people-people-diplomacy) Feb 5, 2018 There is much discussion in the blogosphere (Hayden, Brown, Riordan, Hone, Conway, Hone) on what (public) diplomacy entails. When it comes to people-to-people exchanges, most scholars simply...

As a consequence of changing domestic and international socio-political environment, public diplomacy policies require relational, networked and collaborative approaches for more effective and long-term outcomes. This article explores the relevance of non-state actors to public diplomacy and suggests why and how collaboration takes place between st...