등록일 2022.09.30
Lee Ji‐hyuk (Researcher, the Export‐Import Bank of Korea)
Although the temporary dormancy continues due to the unexpected interruption of the Covid‐19 pandemic, Korea and Southeast Asia have been moving closer in the past few decades through the expansion of Korean companies into Southeast Asia, the Korean wave, and the exchange of tourists and international students. Recently, South Korea has been focusing on Southeast Asia as an alternative to reduce its trade dependence on China and diversify its diplomacy, which has been politically entrenched with its neighbors. This trend extends beyond cooperation between Korea and ASEAN, a regional community, and cooperation between Korea and individual ASEAN countries to the ‘sub‐regions’ of ASEAN. For instance, Mekong river basin countries (Thailand‐Cambodia‐Laos‐Myanmar‐Vietnam) and South Korea formalized the Annual Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Republic of Korea and Mekong countries in 2011 and the meeting was upgraded it from a ministerial level to a summit level meeting in 2019.
While the Korea‐Mekong summit is a sub‐region encompassing the continental Southeast Asian region and Korea's cooperation, BIMP‐EAGA is on the antipode. The BIMP-EAGA, which may be somewhat unfamiliar even to those familiar with Southeast Asia, refers to the "East ASEAN Growth Area" that connects the borderlands of Brunei (B), Indonesia (I), Malaysia (M), and the Philippines (P) that make up maritime Southeast Asia. At the ASEAN‐ROK Commemorative Summit held in Busan in 2020, as part of the cooperation initiative between Korea and the Marine Southeast Asia sub-region, the Korean government established a cooperation initiative with BIMP‐EAGA and has held two senior officials’ meetings so far.
In the 1990s, ASEAN began to promote economic cooperation between adjacent regions and to establish institutionalized cooperative measures, which devised IMS‐GT, IMT‐GT, BIMP‐EAGA, and GMS based on the concept of subregionalism or so-called multilateralism. Triangles, quadrangles, and even hexagons, which are ‘growth zones’ or ‘geometric metaphors’, combine with the regions to form new sub‐regions. The theoretical underpinning of sub‐regions, designed with the active support of ADB, is based on the concept that ‘the mobilization of complementary factor‐endowment’ can be achieved in adjacent regions that transcend borders. In other words, by procuring scarce resources from adjacent regions across borders, an integrated economic zone would be created, and it would lay the foundation for infrastructure construction, institutional building, and private capital investment. In theory, if there is no external interference and economic complementarities are established, subregions will naturally form due to economic principles.
However, there is a huge gap between theory and reality. Based on ASEAN’s experience, subregions were not formally formed by market principles, but rather by the political declarations of political leaders and the will of the central government. In particular, BIMP‐EAGA is a region with slow development compared to any other sub‐regions in ASEAN. BIMP‐EAGA, officially launched in 1994, includes all of Brunei and Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, Maluku, Papua in Indonesia, Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan in Malaysia, and Mindanao and Palawan in the Philippines. Except for Brunei, all of the BIMP-EAGA regions are located far from the centers of their respective countries, and have been described as "an association of neglected regions".
Although the regions that make up BIMP-EAGA are close to each other, the geography of the Kisil Archipelago and jungles, as well as the lack of infrastructure, means that realistic travel distances are much greater than physical ones. Moreover, territorial disputes, which often exist between neighboring countries have continued, and there are many difficulties to form economic complementary relationships, prompting an almost absence of exchanges between those regions. It is difficult to carry out infrastructure projects led by local governments without the political determination and financial support of the central government.
However, it does not mean that the BIMP‐EAGA region has remained static for the past 30 years without any changes. BIMP‐EAGA, which was established to solve the socio‐economic problem of the outlying regions away from the center, remained at a standstill for a while during the Asian financial crisis. However, starting with the first summit in 2003, a roadmap, blueprint, and vision were announced to set the direction for development. Shortly after, the direction of development was elaborated by announcing the Roadmap to Development in 2006‐2010, Implementation Blueprint in 2012‐2016, and Vision 2025 in 2017‐2025.
China’s involvement in the BIMP‐EAGA has recently stimulated Japan and Australia, the existing core partners of BIMP‐EAGA, to increase investments and economic support in the region, which has created a competitive dynamic. China signed the framework of cooperation with BIMP‐EAGA as a ‘strategic development partner’ in 2009, but there has been no progress for 10 years. It was only in November 2018 that China wished to establish a more comprehensive and multi‐layered relationship with ASEAN by holding its first ministerial meeting with BIMP‐EAGA, and agreed on the need to strengthen cooperation with each other. In addition to the priority areas identified in the 2009 Cooperation Framework at the Second Ministerial Meeting held a year later, the digital economy and poverty alleviation have been added as new areas of cooperation.
Although the participation and competition of various partner countries have become a new driving force for the development of BIMP‐EAGA, it is only fundamentally an external stimulus. Hence, it is worth paying attention to the relocation of Indonesia's capital as an internal change that will become a new driving force for the development of BIMP‐EAGA. The Indonesian government has selected part of the Penajam Paser Utara region and part of the Kutai Kartanegara region of the eastern Kalimantan province to develop its new capital by 2024. The relocation of Indonesia's capital can be the beginning of a new change that will shake the land axis of BIMP‐EAGA.
The relocation of the Indonesian capital would not only bring a big change to connectivity, which is a chronic problem of BIMP‐EAGA, but above all, it would create an economically complementary relationship between adjacent regions as well. In order for the economic exchanges to work, there must be a motive for exchanging resources with each other. In the meantime, all regions constituting BIMP‐EAGA have become underdeveloped, and due to connectivity issues, transportation and logistics had to bear high costs. In terms of economic effects and market opportunities, the relocation of the capital is expected to bring a trickle‐down effect to neighboring regions beyond borders. Borneo Post, a media outlet in Borneo, describes the relocation of Indonesia's capital as a 'rare opportunity’ for the 'hardly ever comes by' region development. As the center of Indonesia, which has the largest population and market in Southeast Asia, moves, it becomes feasible for BIMP‐EAGA to move away from its status as ASEAN's underdeveloped sub‐region.
The Indonesian government has announced the name for the new capital as ‘Nusantara’. Nusantara is a Malay word meaning the ‘archipelago’ which encompasses Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines. Although the name of Indonesia's new capital, which aims to become the center of Southeast Asia, may sound a bit provocative to neighboring countries, it is expected that it will be an excellent opportunity for the development of BIMP‐EAGA.