Mar 23,2017 Country Reports

Country Report: South Korea (March 2017)

In the first months of 2017, the cloud of impeachment hung heavily over South Korea’s foreign policy, while China’s anger at the THAAD deployment kept growing, and signs of the Trump administration taking a tough stance against North Korea’s increasingly serious threat capacity were growing too. Seoul’s relations with Tokyo were more troubled than before, […]

Editorial Staff (prepared by Han Minjeong)

Arms Race , ASEAN , comfort women , Eurasia Initiative , impeachment , India , Kaesong Industrial Complex , Kim Jong-nam , missile tests , NAPCI

Feb 24,2017 Open Forum

The Limitations of “Global Korea’s” Middle Power

2010 was a pivotal year for the Republic of Korea: as host of the G20 Leaders’ Summit—the first non-G7 and non-Western country to do so—the relatively small country earned international recognition as a significant force in the global arena. If the 1988 Seoul Olympics was South Korea’s debut on the international stage, then the Seoul […]

Balbina Y. Hwang

anti-globalization , BRICS , Cold War , G20 , G7 , impeachment , liberalism internationalism , middle power , Middle Power Diplomacy , MIKTA

Jun 10,2016 Review Article

Russian Authors on the Korean Peninsula and on Japan in Joint Publications

25-ia Godovshchina Ustanovleniia Diplomaticheskikh Otnoshenii mezhdu Respublikoi Koreia i Rossiei: rezul’taty i vyzovy (25th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the Republic of Korea and Russia: Results and Challenges) (Moscow: Aziatsko-Tikhookeanskii Issledovatel’skii Tsentr, Universitet Khan’ian, Institut Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2015). Rossiisko-Iaponskie Otnosheniia v Formate Parallel’noi Istorii (Russian-Japanese Relations in the Format […]

Gilbert Rozman

NAPCI , Putin , Resolution 2270 , Russo-DPRK relations , Shinzo Abe , Suzuki-Muneo scandal , Trustpolitik

Dec 07,2015 Open Forum

South Korea’s Middle Power Multilateral Diplomacy:¹ Optimistic and Pessimistic Views

Throughout the second half of 2015, President Park Geun-hye has engaged in active summit diplomacy and tried to play the role of reconciler-in-chief. For instance, she took credit that her attendance at the September 3 military parade in Beijing brought the dividend Tokyo had sought through resumption of the China-Japan-Korea (CJK) summit. She also obtained […]

Lee Shin-wha*

MIKTA , NAPCI , National security , Regionalism , Trustpolitik

Jun 11,2015 Special Forum

Option 4: Resuming the Six-Party Talks

The Korean Peninsula has been divided for over seventy years, and there is no sign that the division will end any time soon. The ROK and the DPRK are bogged down in a drawn-out competition, in which neither side has made decisive progress in pursuit of national unification. Recently, the competition entered a new stage, […]

Cheng Xiaohe*

NAPCI , Sino-ROK Relations , Six-Party Talks

Jun 11,2015 Special Forum

Option 5: Rethinking Middle Power Diplomacy

Since the Cold War, South Korea has never been in a lonelier position as four great powers and North Korea have appeared to bypass it in their “pivots” to or within Asia. If North Korea has pivoted to anywhere it is to Moscow, while stonewalling Seoul. The two transformative summits of mid-spring 2015 saw Abe […]

Gilbert Rozman

Eurasian Initiative , hedging , MIKTA , NAPCI , Trustpolitik , US-Japan-ROK Trilateralism

Apr 30,2015 Open Forum

Washington Insights (Vol. 3, No. 2)

Different options have recently been aired before Washington think tanks for the regional architecture of Asia/the Asia-Pacific/the Indo-Pacific. Comparisons of four of these and the responses to some by the audience should be instructive. They are: 1) deferring to China centered on the South China Sea, promoting sinocentrism; 2) endorsing an invigorated EAS, capable of […]

Editorial Staff

APC , EAS , mililateralism , NAPCI , pivot to Asia , Sinocentrism , sub-regional multilateralism , TPP

Apr 30,2015 Open Forum

A Stronger Korea-Mongolia Link in a Changing Northeast Asia

As the constellation of relationships that has dominated Asia for decades begins to evolve towards a new dynamic, the vocabulary of change has begun to foreshadow a very different regional map, with some new trends holding the promise of stronger regional integration while others, perhaps, suggest increasing stresses and frictions. Of course, there is the […]

Mark Minton

AIIB , MCA , Mongolia , NAPCI , National security , Regionalism , Ulaanbaatar Initiative

Feb 16,2015 Open Forum

Beyond Geopolitics: South Korea’s Eurasia Initiative as a New Nordpolitik

Beyond Geopolitics: South Korea’s Eurasia Initiative as a New Nordpolitik 1 On October 18, 2013, at an international conference on Eurasian cooperation in Seoul, Park Geun-hye proposed the “Eurasia Initiative.” Under the watchwords of “one continent, creative continent, and peaceful continent,” the initiative projects a unified system of transport, energy, and trade networks across the […]

Kim Taehwan*

Eurasia Initiative , NAPCI , National security , Nordpolitik , pivot state , Regionalism , trust-building

Dec 15,2014 Open Forum

The Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI): A Vision toward Sustainable Peace and Cooperation in Northeast Asia

The security environment in the Asia-Pacific is in flux. South Korea is facing the most serious and complex external security environment since the end of the Cold War. Tensions have risen remarkably in Northeast Asia in recent years, sparking growing concern in the international community and among the major players in the region. China’s unilateral […]

Lee Sang-Hyun*

Asia Paradox , NAPCI , regional collective security framework , South Korea , trust-building , trustpolitiks