Analysis of Indonesian Policy as Middle Power towards North Korea

This study aims to analyze the policies of the Indonesian government as a middle power in maintaining relations with North Korea. The Indonesian government's policy is in the midst of a global trend that tends to stay away from North Korea. The North Korean government is shunned by the international community because of its controversial foreign policy, especially


INTRODUCTION
While many countries around the world are aiming to distance themselves from North Korea diplomatically, Indonesia is moving closer to North Korea as an emerging nuclear power yet isolated. Maintaining relationship between the two countries as the founding fathers did, Indonesia has not followed international trends to distance itself from North Korea.
Sharing a history since 1961 in the establishment of Non-Aligned Movement which formally aligned by states group against the majority of power bloc, Indonesia and North Korea maintain the good relationship., Soekarno as the first president hosted Kim Il-Sung including a tour to Bogor Botanical Garden during the 1960s. Soekarno named the newly bred flower after Kim as the result of his admire expression for one of the orchids in the Botanical Garden (Cook, 2018). Kimilsungia orchid become a beautiful and powerful symbol of North Korea and often during the celebration every April as Kim Il Sung's day and explicitly features in flower concatenation by state (Manurung, 2020).
Since the era of Soeharto, who replace Soekarno in 1967 coup, even though the main office of Non-Aligned Movement was still in Jakarta, Indonesian's policy under Soeharto regime as a state confidentially became closer to the US and South Korea (Cook, 2018).
Under President Megawati Soekarnoputri, the relationship between two countries reconfirmed by her visiting Kim Jong-Il in 2002 in order to reinforce the connection that built since the era of their fathers. Maintaining of the relationship between both countries occurred while George W. Bush, US president, addressed on a speech in 2002 and branded In Kim Jong-Nam murder, Vietnam earnestly react that its citizen is a fall guy in the case that they strongly believe sponsored by North Korea itself. In the other hand, Indonesia supported its citizen, an household assistant who believe that it was a part of a prank, but Indonesia did not show an intense standing on the court (Cook, 2018).
Despite the fact that many countries under the United Nations are giving economic and political sanction to North Korea. Not only sanctions, but also within the relations of Indonesia and North Korea, there were problems occurred during the last few decades, from the North Korean missile test to the case of Kim Jong-nam assasination which caused Indonesian citizen to receive death penalty. Despite all of the aforementioned events, Indonesia still becomes one of the closest countries to North Korea and does not seem to take some distance anytime soon. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons why Indonesia still keeping the good relations with North Korea despite all the problems using middle power as a theoretical approach. However, understanding middle power concept alone apparently being inadequate in explaining the behavior of one country toward its middlepowerness. Thus, as suggested by Moch. Faisal Karim, incorporating role theory into the concept of middle power would enhance our understanding of the concept better.
There is a hypothesis that can be drawn from this problem. While implementing the viable and active foreign policy, as a country, Indonesia has a great attitude and willingness to highlight the state of affairs as a middle power. This is because, first, Indonesia has been acting as a regional power in ASEAN since its establishment and recently Indonesia can be seen trying to broaden its influence to the Asian region. Second, Indonesia has an experience in solving problems within ASEAN countries, namely the Vietnam-Cambodia war through 1988-1989 Jakarta Informal Meeting (JIM) and the conflict involving the border of Thailand and in 2011. Thus, Indonesia that has a good relationship with both North and South Korea, may have a good chance to soothe the Korean Peninsula circumstances.

The Middle Power Status
We might understand middle power, in a simple word, as those countries who are literally in the middle. They are not great or major powers that are powerful enough to change the international order because they still do not have the capability to do so. However, it is also ambiguous to categorize them as a small or minor power because they quantitatively have more capability, and qualitatively more power to create some changes internationally.
Giovanni Botero, Italian Renaissance philosopher put forward the concept of "middle power" at the end of the sixteenth century by providing a definition of three types of states in the world, namely grandissime (imperial), mezano (middle power), and piccioli (small power). This division is based on the role of a country, whether large, medium or small according to the status assigned to them. If seen specifically, it can be marked the ranking of a country in the international hierarchy related to the national strength of that country. The ranking is characterized by military and economic power as keywords of a country's strength.
The other rank markers of the states-for example, in the eighteenth century's dynastic marriages -stay more or less impressionistic and vary with cultural context and historical era (Schweller, 2017) The definition of middle power is referring to the state that placed in the midst of minor and major power. It described specifically in the featuring character of those states.
Middle power is categorized as having mixed criteria of big power and small power. Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evan expressed: "The attempt to explain "middle power" is not easy because of the precision with which we want to define the concept resulting in a list of twenty, thirty, or more countries. As universal traits, physical capability and military strength, GDP, and population are used to describe the concept. If applied, Australia, which is included in the list, is in the fifty sequence all over the world even though based on GDP and population, Australia is ranked thirteenth (Cooper & Jongryn, 2012)." Jordan concluded that a middle power country is a country that has neither great nor small international strength, capacity and influence, and usually provides support for world cohesiveness and stability (Jordaan, 2003).

Middle Power as a Role
There is a need to make a conceptual distinction between "middle power status" and "middle power role" as a step towards incorporating role theory into the literature. The clarity of the relationship between role and status is essential because the concepts of "role" and "status" are often found in various kinds of literature. However, more literature mentions that middle power tends to be a status rather than a role (Karim, 2018). It means that the indicator such as, GDP, population, geography, etc become a benchmark whether one country concluded to be a middle power or not. In the other hand, middle power's role is different with its status. One country can be considered a middle power when we categorize it by its size only, but the country may not have any willingness to act like one. Thus, Faisal explains that differentiating status and role can be useful for better understanding of middle powers.
There is a lot of literature on role theory in international relations, but these literatures do not take role theory seriously to explain the behaviour of middle powers. Several literatures have been found that try to use role theory (Easley, 2012), but do not provide a thorough analysis of middle power seen from the role theory.
In the international relations literature, role theory is not a new theory. Students have used this theory to analyse foreign policy. in the 1970s K. J. Holsti introduced the analysis of foreign policy behaviour to international relations scholarship. The concept of the national role is one of the basic concepts introduced by Holsti. The role conception is explained as a set of norms that shaping the foreign policy (these norms include attitudes, decisions, responses, functions, and commitments made by the government (Holsti, 1988). In the international system, the role conception refers to the views of policy makers on the state's position in the system. Related to the behaviour of the state in the international world, the conception of the role becomes an explanatory variable as the embodiment of the independent variable. When it is seen as the dependent variable, the conception of the role formed based on the dynamics of interaction between the country and the international world and the changing political situation inside of the country. In conclusion, the role conception is essential in linking the foreign policy agenda and status seeking activities (Karim, 2018).
Moreover, in an international system it is possible for a country to have multiple roles. of these roles will lead to the role conflict (Karim, 2017). The role conflict is a condition where a country has several different roles that are contradictory. The roles that seem contradictory in regional and global arrangement is an explanation of role conflict (Karim, 2017).

METHODS
This research used qualitative research methods. Alan Bryman asserts that an emphasis on words rather than quantification in the collection and analysis of data constitutes a qualitative research strategy (Bryman, 2012). This is analytical descriptive research. This research strategy uses qualitative descriptions to analyse the social phenomena. The social phenomenon in this research is Indonesia foreign policy towards North Korea. Information and data from secondary sources are used as analytical material in this study.
Literature study is a data collection technique used to obtain information related to the object of study. To answer the questions that have been determined, this study uses data analysis. Data analysis is an attempt to simplify the presentation of data using grouping as a way of obtaining data that is easier to analyse (Moleong, 2014). According to Silalahi (2012) data analysis activities are a series of data reduction activities, data presentation, and conclusion drawing.

Indonesia as a Middle Power
As an implication of the development of political, economic and material capabilities, has status-seeking behavior as evidenced by its massive involvement in governance. manage the international community (Karim, 2018).
Even though it is classified as a country with medium material capabilities, Indonesia has a foreign policy that implies a major role in its involvement in global governance. Marty Natalegawa, former Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs stated that Indonesia is a country with regional power but has global interests and global concerns in its foreign policy.
The term of middle power has finally been officially included in the official medium- Based on Faisal explanation, in the second term of Yudhoyono's presidency, the middle power status was pursued through four main conceptions namely as a regional leader, leader of democracy, voice for developing countries, and as a liaison. This is caused by domestic conditions that are starting to change, expectations from the international community, and the past history.
Indonesia is given primus inter pares status by member countries and other external actors who are actively involved in the Southeast Asian region. This status was obtained as an impact of changes in the democratic political system, Indonesia's strategic position in Southeast Asia, and Indonesia's material capabilities. Based on these conditions, there is great hope for Indonesia to be able to play its role as a regional leader in managing and developing the Southeast Asia region.
In the Yudhoyono era, Indonesia's role was not only aimed at being a regional leader in Southeast Asia but also as a trigger for increasing Indonesia's status in the global world as a middle power. In several important forums in the world, Indonesia is increasing its influence. Trade Organization, and IMF (Nguitragool & Rűland, 2015).
The rise of China and the reduced influence of the United States which resulted in various changes, Indonesia has the opportunity to become a balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region Chairil, 2016). Therefore, Indonesia must involve external actors in ASEAN multilateral activities, for example the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Plus Three, the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting and the East Asia Summit. Based on this, it is understandable that Indonesia is not trying to reassemble its role in the international world through its foreign policy according to the characteristics of the emerging middle powers.
Furthermore, Indonesia is strengthening itself as a regional leader and using this label to gain a place on the global stage. It was concluded that Indonesia's foreign policy uses the concept of role as a regional leader in order to deepen the characteristics of a middle power that has grown since Yudhoyono's second term even though this conception had appeared long before (Karim, 2018).
Along with its role as a carrier of developing countries voices, Indonesia continues to strengthen its position as a link in solving various problems at the global level. Indonesia is strengthening efforts to build consensus, respecting differences, demonstrating the importance of unity over differences in interests, and paying special attention to the problems faced by developing countries. Indonesia which acts as a liaison can be categorized as one of the middle power characteristics. Although in some cases the role as a liaison contradicts with other roles (for example: as a supporter of the democratic system). Karim explained that Indonesia's role as a defender of democracy was hampered by its role as a liaison between democratic countries and non-democratic countries. As a supporter of democratic systems in Joko Widodo's leadership, which is known as a regime that promotes populist ideas, pays more attention to nationalism and domestic problems. Joko Widodo's government tends to block efforts to seek status as a middle power, even though this concept has been adopted as a policy during his reign. Indonesia is increasing its role as a voice for developing countries, but the contradiction occurs because its role as a strengthened of democracy weakened during Jokowi's leadership due to the few advantages of this role. This explanation supports the idea that the role of supporting democracy as a new role for the middle powers is less established when compared with a more institutionalized role, namely a voice for developing countries which has become a routine in the history of the Indonesian nation. During the Joko Widodo era, Indonesia took more revisionist actions considering its role as a channel for developing countries' aspirations and tended to reject liberal ideas from the west as defenders of democracy (Karim, 2018).

Indonesia Foreign Policy Towards North Korea
Good relations between Indonesia and North Korea continue to run well despite changes in leaders both in Indonesia and in North Korea. Indonesia as much as possible maintain good relations with North Korea by carrying out various cooperations that can strengthen relations between the two countries, and promote prosperity in each country.
The strongest and most developed relationship between Indonesia and North Korea occurred during Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's presidency. In 2012, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and President Presidium Kim Yong Nam held a bilateral meeting. This meeting discussed many cooperations that were agreed upon and would be carried out by the two countries in the fields of economy, trade, investment, as well as social and cultural fields (Dianpuri, 2016).
In 2012, Indonesia agreed to provide aid worth US$2,000,000 to North Korea. The assistance was manifested in the form of shipments of 1465 tons of palm oil. This palm oil will later be used as a mixed food ingredient and then will be distributed directly to the poor people of North Korea. Cooperation between Indonesia and North Korea does not only provide mutual assistance but also manifests in several collaborations in other fields such as:

CONCLUSION
Going back to our main purpose on why Indonesia still maintains a good relationship with North Korea can be seen through its attitude as a middle power. First, not only Indonesia is expressing its willingness to take a bigger role as a middle power, but also Indonesia perceives itself as a bridge-builder which oftentimes clashes with its role as an advocate of democracy. This means that despite its position as a democratic country, Indonesia is also maintaining its relationship with more abusive governments, including North Korea.
In this conflict between North and South Korea, Indonesia is using its free and active Indonesia has also repeatedly expressed its concern to the major power, the US, regarding the disturbance of peace and economic growth not only in South East Asian region, but also in overall Asia if the tense in the Korean Peninsula does not ease. In this case, Indonesia acts as a voice for developing countries, since the majority of Asian countries are still developing. For Indonesia, instead of taking a big role in the global level as a middle power, Indonesia is active regionally. This is due to its national role perception that perceives