This article was originally posted by Foreign Affairs.
Seoul Must Embrace a More Expansive Role in Asia and Beyond
In just over half a century, South Korea has undergone a dramatic transformation from a poor, authoritarian country devastated by war to an economically dynamic, culturally rich, and resilient democracy. It is a major trade hub and a technological powerhouse. And its pop culture has gone global in recent years, as the boy band BTS and the hit Netflix series Squid Game have become household names.
The country has come a long way, but it can become an even more responsible and respected member of the international community. The incumbent South Korean administration has been guided by a parochial and shortsighted conception of the national interest. A foreign policy tailored mostly to improving relations with North Korea has allowed Seoul’s role in the global community to shrink. Most importantly, the U.S.-South Korean alliance has drifted owing to differences between the two countries on North Korea policy: Seoul has focused on cooperating with Pyongyang whereas Washington has prioritized confronting North Korea over its nuclear threats and human rights violations.
Dealing with North Korea is an important task for any South Korean government. But it should not represent the whole of Seoul’s diplomacy. Dialogue with the North was once a specific means to a specific end: the complete denuclearization of North Korea. Under President Moon Jae-in, however, dialogue with the North has become an end in itself. Meanwhile, as U.S.-Chinese tensions have grown, South Korea has failed to adapt, maintaining an approach of strategic ambiguity without stating a principled position. Seoul’s reluctance to take a firm stand on a number of issues that have roiled the relationship between Washington and Beijing has created an impression that South Korea has been tilting toward China and away from its longtime ally, the United States.
This timidity has extended beyond South Korea’s approach to its own neighborhood. South Korea survived a long, dark period of dictatorship, but has remained conspicuously silent in the face of violations of liberal democratic norms and human rights that invited outrage from other democracies. South Korea is home to the UN-backed Green Climate Fund and International Vaccine Institute, and it is well positioned to take a leadership role on climate change and pandemic response. Yet the current government has failed to take advantage of those assets and step up to the most important global challenges of our time.
This is a moment of change and flux in international politics. It calls for clarity and boldness, and for a commitment to principles. South Korea should no longer be confined to the Korean Peninsula but rise to the challenge of being what I have described as a “global pivotal state,” one that advances freedom, peace, and prosperity through liberal democratic values and substantial cooperation.
A DEEPER, STRONGER ALLIANCE
The intensifying competition between the United States and China poses a strategic dilemma for South Korea and many other countries in East Asia. They cannot neglect their longstanding cooperative relationship with the United States. But their growing economic ties with China make them reluctant to join multilateral initiatives to which Beijing objects. Having experienced Beijing’s anger in the past, Washington’s three partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—Australia, India, and Japan—are wary of cooperating in ways that would explicitly antagonize China. In 2010, when Japan seized a Chinese fishing vessel near the island chain known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan, China retaliated by suspending exports to Japan of rare earths, an essential material for semiconductors. Following Australia’s call for an extensive investigation of the precise source of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, Beijing suspended imports of coal, Australia’s main export product.
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Yoon Suk-yeol served as Prosecutor General of South Korea from 2019 to 2021. He is running for president of the Republic of Korea as the nominee of the People Power Party.
