The Republic of Korea: Russian ambassador’s view on the “Land of the morning calm” and beyond

The article is devoted to the book review “The Republic of Korea: Russian Ambassador’s View on the “Land of the Morning Calm” and beyond” of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia in the Republic of Korea in 2005-2009, Mr. Gleb A. Ivashentsov. The review characterizes the book features, its structure and content as well as emphasizes practical importance of the topics and issues discussed in contemporary reality. The author’s book is not just the memories of a diplomat with many years of experience about his service as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to the Republic of Korea during 2005-2009. Rather it offers a comprehensive view on this country, its relations with Russia and other countries of the region and features of diplomatic training and diplomatic lifestyle in the Republic of Korea in terms of personal experience. By its structure, the book consists of seven chapters, each of that contains several sections on more specific topics. The author’s approach to the compilation of the book is interesting, because due to such an approach, the book can be classified, first, as an autobiography, second, as a short training manual on international and diplomatic relations between Russia and the Republic of Korea and, third, as a brief multifaceted historical feature story about South Korea. The author of the book offers his own subjective perspective; however, it is presented with justification and argumentation, and therefore is indicative in understanding the accumulated generalized knowledge about South Korea and the general political situation on the Korean peninsula and in the Northeast Asia. Based on this logic, this review consistently examines each chapter, highlights and analyzes the author’s key ideas given in the book. It is important to note that the vertical historical comparison method used by the author as well as the comparative method make it possible to analyze events not only in historical retrospective, but also in comparison with the current political and socio-economic development of the Republic of Korea. In addition, the book arouses interest because of an integrated approach to highlight historical moments and political and economic realities of the Republic of Korea that allowed the author to reflect all the key events and features briefly. The chosen logic of structuring the material offers quite diverse palette of styles: from scientific to literary, from memoirs to expert-analytical reasoning, recommendations and conclusions. Such a stylistic choice and presentation format makes it possible to convey not only theoretical and background information to the reader, but also reveal the author’s practical experience more fully, which the book is based in this case on. Thus, the reviewed book of Mr. Gleb A. Ivashentsov is of scientific and practical importance, because it contains both a detailed expert analysis and reasoned positions of the author, as well as practical recommendations based on his own perennial diplomatic work experience.

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