This book talk will be joined by JaeEun Shin, Head of the business department at Korea NGO Council for Overseas Development Cooperation for a critique of the book. We hope to see many interested researchers from on and off-campus at our second book talk of the SNU Book Talk series on Thursday, November 21st.

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On November 21st, the second lecture of 2019 SNUAC Book Talk Series was given by Professor Taekyoon Kim (SNU Graduate School of International Studies), the author of Oppositional Coexistence: The Asiatic Reproduction of Global Accountability in SNUAC Series in Asian Studies. The event was facilitated by Suk-Ki Kong (Research fellow, SNUAC), while the presentation was discussed by JaeEun Shin (Director of Business, Korea NGO Council for Overseas Development Cooperation).

Prof. Kim illustrated that the developmental accountability, newly reproduced by the Asian civil society integrated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and NGO Forum, shows differentiation from existing models of other multilateral development banks. ‘Oppositional coexistence’ as the special trajectory of Asian developmental accountability, or the third model of developmental accountability presents the uniquely Asian mechanism and relationship that achieve compromise and consent for co-existence while maintaining an oppositional relationship. It is also a mechanism that can trace how the concept and institution of global accountability are transformed and reproduced in the Asian context. Furthermore, Prof. Kim emphasized that we can find an Asian distinctiveness in how the ADB and the civil society form the productive style of unique relational accountability in the time and space of conflicted politics.

In the discussion session that followed, Director JaeEun Shin gave an assessment of the argument, agreeing with Prof. Kim that there are not sufficient discussions on the accountability of international development in the Korean academia and field of development. Some of the major issues raised included whether the ADB’s subsumption and compromise upon the civil society can only be seen as the result of governmentality, the relationship between and roles of NGO Forum’s major funders, the specific resolutions for the internal conflicts and dilemma of solidarity within the NGO Forum, and the necessity of reilluminating accountability from the human rights perspective. Dr. Suk-Ki Kong concluded the presentation and the discussion by agreeing that the leadership circulation and communicative system are critical for resolving the dilemma of solidarity in Asian civil society.