Who is allies with south korea

However, the sheer proliferation of its projects sometimes makes it difficult for partner countries to discern an overarching strategy or key priorities. During the pandemic, South Korea has also managed to enhance its reputation as a responsible stakeholder on global priorities like public health and the responsible use and development of emerging technologies.

With more significant partnerships with other Asian countries, Seoul hopes it can gain more strategic autonomy in its decisionmaking. When Moon came into office in May , South Korea was in the middle of a crisis over the deployment of a U. K-pop concerts in China were canceled, certain cosmetics and tech exports were banned due to unverified safety concerns, and travel agencies were ordered to stop selling tours to South Korea.

South Korea accomplished its miraculous economic development through a strategy of export-led growth and industrialization. Seoul has been extremely careful in its rhetoric about U.

While official materials on the NSP often repeat ambitions to elevate relations with India and ASEAN countries, it never directly references strategic vulnerabilities created by the disproportionate influence held by Beijing and Washington.

As long as North Korea poses a grave threat, the U. This approach reflects the clear reality laid bare by challenges like the coronavirus pandemic and climate change: transnational, nontraditional security threats can be highly disruptive, have far-reaching effects, and even cause traditional definitions of security to be reappraised.

Even so, while the rationale behind the NSP is clear, its outcomes are often difficult to pin down. It is no accident that Seoul launched the NSP at a business forum. Both in its development and implementation, the policy is most focused on its prosperity pillar and economic cooperation. The reason for this focus is twofold. Under NSP Plus, the prosperity pillar has three initiatives, each with multiple tasks and subtasks. Delineating how responsible the South Korean government is for any given trade and investment developments under the NSP is often difficult.

Some initiatives, like trade agreements and development assistance, are directly reliant on the government. Others, however, are driven by the private sector, and in these cases the NSP and the government can only play a supporting role. The direct impact of the policy versus that of independent private businesses is difficult to parse. In addition to liberalizing tariffs under FTAs, the South Korean government has tried to build and support infrastructure projects to foster sectoral diversification in private sector—led partnerships and to assist South Korean SMEs looking to expand in Southeast Asia and India.

However, Afghanistan was chosen as the first destination for those endeavors, and it is unclear if or how that will continue after the U. The countries agreed to expand development cooperation in five flagship areas: digital innovations, higher education, the Mekong region, smart cities, and transportation. One key development is the establishment of a new government agency known as KIND, which the Moon administration established in KIND supports public-private partnerships for South Korean companies looking to expand overseas in transportation infrastructure, urban development, power and energy, hydrocarbon and industrial industries, and water resources and environmental infrastructure.

Because infrastructure development projects are usually implemented by public-private partnerships, this focus on infrastructure benefits South Korean businesses as well as ODA recipients. The pandemic may also present new opportunities for development assistance. Its overall ODA allotment fell by 8. Development cooperation is perhaps the most well-branded initiative clearly associated with the NSP.

Seoul not only has set clear empirical goals and subject area targets under the policy, but also has featured development cooperation prominently in high-level summits with ASEAN and the Mekong region. This initiative has focused specifically on niche projects like smart cities and transportation, so its areas of emphasis have been clearer than those of other key NSP initiatives.

In addition to development and trade, the NSP is focused on cooperation in future industries through support for startups, research and development in science and technology, and technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The many organizations and funds listed here are only a handful of those that have been bolstered or established to support the prosperity pillar of this initiative. That said, many of these projects—including new FTAs, increased funding for infrastructure, and support for SMEs and startups—will take time to truly impact economic cooperation between South Korea and the NSP countries.

At this time, most new projects under the prosperity pillar only have been established in the past two years. There has also been a proliferation of these projects, and South Korea will need to ensure that it is evaluating and taking stock of the efficacy of these initiatives going forward.

People-centered engagement is also critical to the prosperity and peace pillars of the NSP, which benefit from stronger networks of professionals and businesses. South Korean popular culture and consumer products have been a boon for sociocultural engagement in India and Southeast Asia for many years.

Though Hallyu—which refers to the wave of heightened demand abroad for South Korean pop culture—has only recently become mainstream in the United States, it first crested in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. The appeal of South Korean culture is also a big driver of tourism, interest in learning the Korean language, and study abroad programs in South Korea.

In , nearly 2. Of all the priorities under the people pillar besides pandemic cooperation the South Korean government has the most power to influence immigration policy and protections for immigrants from NSP partner countries. South and Southeast Asians also make up a growing percentage of foreign residents in South Korea see table 1. As South Korea confronts the looming economic and social impacts of population aging, immigration is increasingly important, so the South Korean government has adopted a multicultural brand and narrative to support and attract immigrants to the country.

Nevertheless, the pandemic also presents valuable opportunities for cooperation. South Korea and Southeast Asian nations like Singapore and Vietnam alike have been widely praised for their effective responses at the beginning of the pandemic, though they have since experienced subsequent outbreaks. South Korea is also well-equipped to help in critical areas where India and Southeast Asia need capacity building, particularly on digital infrastructure. Despite its limitations, South Korea has had some notable achievements under the peace pillar, most visibly in terms of diplomatic engagement and high-level exchanges.

Not only does Seoul have more room to maneuver on these issues, but the fact that the military is not necessarily responsible for managing these threats gives developing nations and small states that may not be able to compete in terms of hard power more opportunities to collaborate with South Korea on security challenges.

Moreover, the focus on nontraditional security links the peace pillar to the prosperity and people pillars. In focusing on capacity building in terms of disaster response, environmental security, and public health, the peace pillar acknowledges the deep connection between development and peace.

Over the long-term, nontraditional security issues, and especially climate change, will likely become a more important organizing principle in international affairs. Without activism on regional security issues, South Korea has limited its ability to realize its full potential as an influential middle power. Even though India and many ASEAN countries are cautious about directly confronting China, their most trusted strategic partners in the region are countries that have taken a stronger stance.

The fewest respondents perceived Seoul as most reliable, as South Korea ranked behind even China and Russia. India, particularly in the aftermath of its conflict with China around the Line of Actual Control, has become further invested in the Quad and more willing to face Chinese criticism.

Another impediment to robust South Korean political and security cooperation with India and Southeast Asia is their differing hierarchies of priorities. They could serve as mediators, like Singapore and Vietnam did as hosts of U. The one notable exception in the traditional security realm where the NSP still can add value is in defense industry cooperation. Under the Moon administration, Seoul has prioritized arms exports, co-development, and co-production with several NSP countries.

However, while several promising initiatives in Southeast Asia have been established under the NSP, that has not been the case. But at the same time, South Korea has often focused on Vietnam over other Southeast Asian countries in its NSP projects, rather than investing more heavily in countries where cooperation historically has been more limited. From to , and again in , South Korea was the largest foreign investor in Vietnam, though it fell to second place behind Singapore in In , Vietnam accounted for But the South Korean government has also set goals and launched projects that favor Vietnam.

Vietnam is a natural destination for South Korean corporations to relocate or establish regional offices and manufacturing hubs. China is an increasingly risky place to do business, and South Korean companies are seeking to better diversify their supply chains amid U. Cambodia and the Philippines were the next largest recipients at 16 and 17 percent, respectively.

The South Korea-U. Starting with the Korean War, the two countries are allies forged by blood that fought side by side in the U. The South Korean forces participated in the U. South Korea to date also dispatched 57, troops to 30 countries including Iraq, at the request of the United States or the United Nations. There are only a few allies that fought together on battle grounds as much as these countries have since World War II.

Now, in the face of a new era, the two countries are faced with many challenges and issues that need to be resolved. They can start with the United States looking at South Korea with a new perspective that befits the pride the U.

South Koreans felt offended in the South Korea-U. No one would object that the biggest issue between the two countries at this moment is the North Korean nuclear issue.

It is an undeniable fact that the two countries have shown subtle differences in their points of views regarding the issue. For the first factor underlying subtly different perspectives of the two countries about North Korea's nuclear program, it is necessary to examine how they analyze North Korea.

It has been 20 years since the North Korean nuclear crisis began on the Korean Peninsula. These views have elements of truth in them and can coexist with one another. What is important is that we do not over-interpret the situation as such that North Korea may possibly use its nuclear weapons to launch an all-out invasion and occupation of South Korea as doing so may lead us to make wrong judgments.

Of course, the North Korean military power should never be taken lightly, given the recent emphasis North Korea has put on the development of missiles and nuclear weapons. However, such asymmetrical military power held by North Korea must be distinguished from its ability to conduct long-term all-out warfare. Moreover, to cope with North Korean nuclear threats, the U.

This means that South Korea and the U. To get to the nature of the problem, it would be wise to analyze North Korea for its ability to single handedly launch an all-out war. That North Korea can start a war but is not capable of sustaining it on a full scale, would probably be the correct judgment here. In other words, it may be possible for North Korea to engage in local provocations, but anything bigger than this scale, say an all-out war, may be realistically difficult.

Although the data is a bit outdated, the U. North Korea's energy shortage is still known to pose a great risk to society. There are many analyses that argue the training time involving major North Korean military equipment such as fighter tanks has been reduced drastically as compared to the past. Unless there is a guarantee that China or Russia will continue to provide war supplies such as oil, North Korea will not dare to engage in an all-out attack. At this point, it is very skeptical whether China or Russia can support North Korea's blitz invasion and an all-out war.

Of course, North Korea's ability to launch a surprise attack should not be underestimated, but unless it can occupy South Korea in a short period, such an attack is meaningless. It will be difficult for a surprise attack to determine the outcome of the war. Rather, it is obvious that North Korea will suffer a devastating blow from a massive retaliatory attack by South Korea-U.

Even if - a scenario that is only remotely possible - North Korea successfully occupies South Korea in a short period of time, it is not equipped to rule South Korea. Currently, South Korea's military expenditure is more than 20 times that of North Korea and its economic power, which serves as the basis of military power, is 33 times that of North Korea.

If the total economic power of the two Koreas is , South Korea would be 97, and North Korea only 3. No matter how irrational North Korea is in its thinking, it is almost insane to plan an invasion on South Korea when there is such a marked difference in their national powers. From the mids, when the economic power gap between the two Koreas began to widen significantly, North Korea started to focus on securing an asymmetric deterrent power to deter attacks from the outside rather than on building military power assuming an all-out war.

These two facts may not be un-related to each another. In addition, the number of Chinese residents in South Korea exceeds 1 million and there are also over 50, Russians in Korea. Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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