Navigare Necesse Est! Maritimity and the Prospect of a Korean Blue Water Navy

Alexander Supan (1847-1920), an Austrian geographer, was a major contributor to German geopolitics with his work “Guidelines of General Political Geography” (Leitlinien der allgemeinen politischen Geographie). The quantitative aspect of his work consists of two innovations: (1) the maritimity quotient quantifying the relation of maritime borders to land borders and (2) the pressure quotient quantifying the relation of external pressure to internal pressure in terms of power. In this paper I use adaptations of these formulas to deliver results for several countries that have relevance for Northeast Asia, explore the relationship to naval expenditure and, in the light of those results, discuss the implications and prospects for the two Koreas.