Set amidst growing global challenges and great power politics, this article asks how middle powers might best promote global collective action. Adopting a historical approach, it explores four case studies on middle power multilateralism in (1) post-1974 UN New International Economic Order; (2) post-1989 Bretton Woods institutions; (3) post-1992 European Union expansion; and (4) post-2003 UN South- South cooperation. These inform a policy framework and an ensuing alternative termed “resilient multilateralism.” Adopting a foreign policy standpoint, this alternative entails principles on context specificity, complementarity, consensus building, and non-confrontation. By opening space for global action, it offers a timely approach to countering future shocks and coordination failures—whether wrought through nature or through hands of our own.

This article explores how a leading Korean literary critic, Kim Kirim (1908-?), understood the controversial term “fascism” in his writings. If we associate fascism with wartime Japanese totalitarianism, it is difficult to understand why and how he warned against fascism in liberated Korea. By interpreting his use of the term “fascism” from the colonial to the liberation period, we are able to gain a better understanding of the international relations between imperial Japan and colonial Korea, as well as of the internal relations between North and South Korea from 1945 to 1950. Such an approach allows us to see the struggle for mutual respect among Korean writers experiencing the ideological conflict and exclusive sectarianism immediately before the outbreak of the Korean War.