The Road to Strategic Alliance : Branding of the US-ROK Alliance = 전략적 동맹으로 가는길: 한미동맹을 브랜드화 시키다

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The concept of branding is unfamiliar in the field of international relations; however, the concept of branding unconsciously, always existed in the field of international relations. The need to communicate emerged from the need to express an individual, community's, or organization's identity. Symbols were created as the apparatus for visual and verbal communication. The power of symbols could instantaneously trigger reminiscences and galvanize emotions, whether it is etched in stone like the Ten Commandments or like the white star of NATO which is inscribed on a flag or embedded in a motto or slogan such as President Obama's "Change We Can Believe In."
The US-ROK Alliance was once symbolized as "hyulmeng", blood alliance, and one of the final frontiers against communism to both the American and South Korean publics. The US-ROK Alliance has endured the last sixty years with cohesive aims and direction. This is no longer the case today, as the Alliance has been tainted by disagreements between the leaderships, generation replacement in public opinion and the depleting threat of D.P.R.K. This paper seeks to construct a framework of branding to revitalize or rebrand the US-ROK Alliance.
This paper would like to construct a marketing brand, "strong and equal alliance," which is powerful enough to communicate and symbolize the importance of the US-ROK Alliance to the American and South Korean publics. The concept of public diplomacy and place branding is explored, but not exclusively, as these concepts have their own critics and limitations, since these concepts are new to the field of international relations. Influenced and motivated by place branding, but the concept itself is too holistic to be used in this paper; therefore, this paper explores the concept of branding, which can be utilized in a narrower scope. An in-depth analysis of the American and South Korean public will provide an understanding of the current status, which is necessary for developing a scenario to increase the public support regarding the Alliance. Under such context, the intentions of this paper are threefold, to introduce the new concept of branding, "strong and equal alliance," into the field of international relations for the sake of the US-ROK Alliance, to construct a branding process model which supports the concept of branding to be smoothly incorporated into the field of international relations, and to provide an alternative scenario based on the concept of branding to enhance the public awareness and support of the US-ROK Alliance. Eventually winning back the hearts and minds of both the American and South Korean publics is the best scenario to strengthen the US-ROK Alliance.

Keywords: Brand, Branding, Branding Process Model, Place Branding, Public Diplomacy, "Strong and Equal Alliance," The US-ROK Alliance

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Table of Content
• I. Introduction
• II. Literature Review
• - Concept of public diplomacy (PD)
• - Concept of place branding (PB)
• - Relationship between the PD & PB
• III. Theorizing the framework of branding
• - Framework of branding
• - Model building: Integration of branding and international relations
• IV. Branding the US-ROK Alliance
• - The Era of the Cold War: Time of Coherency
• - The post Cold War era: Time of miscommunication and mistrust
• - Beyond Korean Peninsula: Failure of top-down transformation approach
• - Branding the "Strong and Equal Alliance"
• V. Three Phases of Branding
• - First Phase: Branding is all about timing
• .Importance of Brand Loyalty
• .Background of the US Public in recent years
• .Ambivalent background of Korean Public
• .Changing mood of both American and Korean publics
• .External factors: Political environment in Northeast Asia
• - Second Phase: Building credibility and trust with American and Korean publics
• - Third Phase: Maintaining the Brand Value of the US-ROK Alliance
• VI. Conclusion
• Bibliography