Focusing on South Korean biologists and their efforts to establish national parks in the 1960s and 1970s, I illuminate the ways in which they negotiated their relationship with the ecological diplomacy of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the anti-communist and developmentalist diplomacy of the South Korean government. To justify their activities, these South Korean biologists emphasized the importance of nature conservation activities in the competition for international recognition and economic development with their northern counterparts. The national-park initiative was thus subsumed into the politics of this legitimacy competition between the two Koreas, or what I call ‘victory-over-communism’ diplomacy. The IUCN's influence over South Korea was limited to the extent that both the government and scientists recognized the diplomatic merit they could gain in the context of their Cold War competition and developmentalism. It is also shown how, during the short detente period of the two Koreas, South Korean biologists used victory-over-communism diplomacy to renew their government's attention to their activities. This Korean episode contributes to the wider perspective of decentralizing the Cold War history of environmental diplomacy in the free-world bloc by illustrating the importance of its entanglement with the Cold War politics surrounding Asian developmentalism.

In 1605, not content with having found key positions at court for his favourite Scottish physicians, some of whom were known Paracelsians, James VI of Scotland and I of England ensured their acceptance as members of the London College of Physicians by having the College statutes altered. As a Scot (and therefore a foreigner), Thomas Craig, James's chief physician during his Scottish reign, should have been automatically excluded, and the Comitia of the College, which met on 3 January 1605 to discuss, among other matters, the eligibility of Craig for membership, duly explained its predicament to James.