Seoul’s Indo-Pacific strategy will not make big waves in Southeast Asia
Seoul’s Indo-Pacific strategy will not make big waves in Southeast Asia
WRITTEN BY ALESSANDRO VESPRINI AND MATTEO PIASENTINI
28 February 2023
At the 23rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Republic of Korea (ROK) Summit in November 2022, South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol, announced the centrepiece of his administration’s foreign policy — his ‘Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region’.
In his speech, Yoon stated that peace and prosperity in the region can only be maintained and preserved within the frame of a rules-based, fair, and economically open regional order. He also stressed that these principles are central to his Indo-Pacific Strategy and constitute the bulwark of South Korea’s entire stance towards the Indo-Pacific. The importance of Southeast Asia for Seoul, as highlighted in the Strategy, does not come as an absolute novelty. In fact, the New Southern Policy (NSP), designed by Yoon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in, had also aimed to upgrade the ASEAN-ROK economic and trade relationship — mainly to balance South Korea’s economic dependence on China.
The goal of reducing the ROK’s reliance on Chinese imports and exports is arguably one of the most pressing reasons why Seoul aims to improve its relationship with the countries of the Indo-Pacific region (especially Southeast Asian states). In this regard, the Yoon administration is aligned with its predecessor. For example, during his trip to Southeast Asia in November 2022, the South Korean president launched the Korea-ASEAN Solidarity Initiative (KASI). The KASI is a platform for cooperation embedded in Seoul’s Indo-Pacific Strategy and is meant to develop economic interchange between the ROK and ASEAN Member States (ASMs). The Yoon administration is clearly continuing on the previous administration’s course and has shown a willingness to intensify strategic cooperation with Southeast Asian countries even further.
The best option for South Korea is to double down on diplomacy, economic ties, and military sales, as well as tighten the dialogue with like-minded middle powers in the region.
However, there are several problems within Yoon’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. For one, it cannot be taken for granted that the ASMs will embrace Seoul’s plans beyond simple rhetoric. Additionally, although Yoon’s remarks on the rules-based international order and respect for human rights may place South Korea strategically closer to the United States — and further away from China — Seoul cannot distance itself that easily from Beijing. Yoon’s speech in November and the strategy released in December 2022 both mark different approaches to the same geopolitical goal: deeper strategic involvement with Southeast Asian countries.
Greater strategic and defensive involvement
The NSP was built around three pillars: People, Prosperity, and Peace. Announced in 2017, Moon’s policy strategy promoted five initiatives: an institutional background for trade and investments, promotion of connectiveness, support to SMEs and middle-market companies, new industry cooperation, and country-tailored cooperation. In 2020, the NSP evolved into the NSP Plus, maintaining the same three pillars, while adding seven more initiatives. The Moon administration’s foreign policy regarding Southeast Asia revolved around economic cooperation and bilateral relationships. Conversely, Yoon’s Indo-Pacific Strategy has expanded the scope of the previous policy, taking into account security and multilateral — better still, minilateral — dimensions.
Yoon’s Indo-Pacific Strategy is similarly built on three pillars. The first two have been directly adopted from the NSP, ‘Prosperity and Peace’, with the third substituted for ‘Freedom’. Still, while the current South Korean administration has not significantly changed its economic policy towards ASEAN from the previous administration, Yoon does show a different security — and defence — policy. The new ‘Freedom’ pillar underlines Seoul’s will to elevate its strategic relationships with Southeast Asian countries, in an attempt described by some observers as “mimicking the United States”.
The three pillars are intertwined with ‘principles of cooperation’: ‘Inclusiveness, Trust, and Reciprocity’. The ROK is willing to work with every partner who shares the same principles, meaning that it does not exclude cooperation with China a priori. To implement its strategy, Seoul proposes nine core lines of effort, among which four significantly differ from the NSP: i) building regional order, based on norms and rules, ii) cooperating to promote rule of law and human rights, iii) strengthening non-proliferation and counter-terrorism efforts across the region, and iv) expanding comprehensive security cooperation. While the NSP did not include the security and defence domain, the Indo-Pacific Strategy makes it the centrepiece.
Notwithstanding the differences between the strategies of the two administrations, Yoon’s Indo-Pacific policy underlines the importance of ASEAN states for Seoul. The KASI itself is meant to improve economic cooperation, especially regarding the ASEAN-ROK, the Mekong-ROK, and other cooperation funds. Furthermore, strengthening economic and security ties through the KASI represents a step toward a possible comprehensive strategic partnership with ASEAN itself, without neglecting bilateral relations with individual member states. It is worth mentioning that, while Moon Jae-in’s NSP was meant to be the so-called ‘twin’ of the Northeast Asia-oriented New Northern Policy (NNP) strategy, Yoon Suk-yeol’s Indo-Pacific Strategy embeds the two regions into a single strategic plan. This is most likely because the NNP did not achieve any noticeable results regarding its goals of gathering strong support against Pyongyang — apart from official or unofficial expressions of solidarity from the international community.
Regarding the fusion of strategic regions, only time will tell whether they will remain merged in Seoul’s vision. One of the reasons that Moon Jae-in’s administration launched two different policies regarding the ‘North’ and ‘South’ was to keep the security and economic realms separated and because his foreign policy stance was rather ambiguous. However, it should be noted that Seoul’s first and foremost security concern has always been the Korean Peninsula. The approach to the North Korea issue may differ according to the ruling party in Seoul, but the ROK is, given its geographic location, in a position where it is forced to deal with Beijing and Pyongyang for its own safety. Therefore, including North Korea in the new Indo-Pacific Strategy is undoubtedly in line with the tradition of the South Korean conservative party: strengthening the non-proliferation effort is explicitly aimed at the denuclearisation of the peninsula.
The current conservative government is keen to distinguish itself from its progressive predecessor, and domestic politics have a major impact on South Korea’s foreign policy. Still, when dealing with economic ties in Southeast Asia, the two main parties find themselves quite aligned. It does not look like the Yoon administration is motivated by the need to differentiate itself from its predecessor, even though this is a common aspect of South Korean politics. Ultimately, it makes sense for both political camps in Seoul to look at Southeast Asian countries as strategic partners for South Korea. Seoul needs to reinforce its ties in the region and as these relationships have been evolving steadily over the last decade, strategic partnerships are the next logical step.
Working for a tighter relationship
The bonds between South Korea and the ASEAN countries are steadily and quietly improving. It is indisputable how, over at least the last ten years, the positive results of Moon’s NSP are visible in numerous aspects of Southeast Asian countries’ economies and societies. In particular (and unsurprisingly), the main field of growth has been economic cooperation, with countries like Vietnam seeing a sharp increase in South Korean foreign direct investment and the participation of the ROK in many ASEAN-led multilateral trade deals, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Cheaper labour and relatively short supply chains turned the attention of the Korean government and companies toward Southeast Asia. In terms of business and trade growth, they have started to reap the first results of this cooperation in the last few years. It is also worth mentioning how favourably Korean culture is seen in many Southeast Asian countries, and the export of Korean television and music products has given an indisputable boost to people-to-people communication and exchanges, increasing the image of the ROK overall as a cultural hub and an inspiring societal model.
However, the relevance of Seoul in influencing regional matters in Southeast Asia and beyond is fairly limited. Scoring seventh in the Asia Power Index (just above Singapore and Indonesia, two of the most important countries in Southeast Asia in terms of economic and military power), and considering that much of the ROK’s military attention is focused on its border with North Korea and East Asia in general, it is a hard task for Korea to have a direct impact on the security realm in Southeast Asia. In other words, the ‘Peace’ pillar of the NSP, together with Korea’s rightful concern about how to maintain and pursue a hedging strategy between China and its competitors (namely the US and Japan), made South Korea adopt what is already the common strategic posture of ASEAN. In fact, Korea’s Indo-Pacific Strategy goal of ensuring peaceful and rules-based regional order is consistent with the conceptualisation of regional stability as promoted in the ASEAN Outlook on Indo-Pacific (AOIP), an Indonesia-sponsored outlook that constitutes ASEAN’s approach to regional stability.
One of the main aspects of the AOIP is inclusiveness. As ASEAN and its members are located at the heart of the Indo-Pacific and strive to maintain their centrality in managing regional security affairs, the Association seeks to include as many third countries as possible in ASEAN-led mechanisms of conflict management to preserve regional peace and stability. In this sense, without the necessary material capabilities to influence the balance of power in the region (and suffering the same problem of being ‘caught in the middle’ like its southern neighbours), Seoul’s approach matches in great lengths the one of ASEAN. A vivid example of this approach can be found in the latest ASEAN-ROK declaration at the 2022 ASEAN Summit in Cambodia. Along with the usual reaffirming and praising of socioeconomic cooperation, the parties expressively mentioned their respective security concerns only once. South Korea acknowledged the necessity of peacefully managing the situation in the South China Sea, while ASEAN praised efforts to find a way to ease the recent tensions with North Korea.
The ROK is the perfect example of a state behaving in accordance with the ASEAN principles and centrality, and it is useful for the Association to keep a consistent number of such countries aligned with this stance to keep the influence of regional superpowers in check.
In sum, a soft approach works bilaterally and it is mutually convenient. The ROK is the perfect example of a state behaving in accordance with the ASEAN principles and centrality, and it is useful for the Association to keep a consistent number of such countries aligned with this stance to keep the influence of regional superpowers in check. But how soft is this approach in reality? Even if both South Korea and the ASEAN countries have been discrete in managing their respective strategic alignment, there is a growing interest among ASEAN member states in the Korean military and defence industry.
South Korea’s ambitions are likely beyond its capabilities
South Korean military equipment is technologically advanced, reliable, and relatively affordable, and during the last years of Moon’s administration, the sector enjoyed conspicuous investments and growth. Some ASEAN states like the Philippines, currently lagging behind in terms of military strength with respect to their population and the potential threats posed by Chinese assertiveness in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, are growing more and more interested in what Seoul has to offer. From this perspective, South Korea is actively working on establishing government-to-government military supply ties with Southeast Asia, and this can perhaps be the ‘stepping stone’ for future, and more consequential, implementations of the Indo-Pacific Strategy in the security realm.
With the ROK defining itself as a ‘Global Pivotal Power’, this rhetoric supporting Seoul’s Indo-Pacific Strategy as part of its global ambitions overestimates South Korea’s actual capabilities. Given its current military capabilities and the strategic constraints posed by North Korea, it is unclear how strategically impactful South Korea will be for ASEAN and some of its more powerful members — other than being a participant in ASEAN-led forums and security dialogue initiatives. Seoul can surely be seen as a pivotal power regarding the geopolitical issues of the Korean Peninsula, but it is difficult to define it as a pivotal power in other regions and scenarios — even in neighbouring areas.
The ROK will not reach the status of ‘Global Pivotal Power’ as long as it is locked in a permanent state of tension with North Korea. Additionally, looming and intensifying US-China competition in the Indo-Pacific gives Seoul little room to develop an autonomous foreign policy without huge concessions or compromises with either of the two superpowers. Seoul lacks the hard-power capabilities to freely project power without diverting strength and attention away from Pyongyang. Sure enough, the best option for South Korea is to double down on diplomacy, economic ties, and military sales, as well as tighten the dialogue with like-minded middle powers in the region. Things will only change if inter-Korean relations improve, combined with a relatively stable and less volatile power dynamic between the superpowers. In this case, Seoul may have more time and a more favourable international environment to project power in the Indo-Pacific without incurring retaliation or setbacks.
Nonetheless, South Korea has the potential to exert its soft power, and the initiatives of the two administrations promise much and have great potential. However, given the current state of security and strategic issues in the region, it would be safe to assume that the extent to which any Korean policy remains unchanged in the long term is rather low. For one, Indo-Pacific geopolitics are changing shape at a fast rate, so today’s goals might not be the same as tomorrow’s. South Korea’s political landscape is also highly polarised, and thus priorities can and do change even within the same administration for political reasons. After all, even though Seoul may style itself as a ‘Global Pivotal Power’, it has a constrained margin of manoeuvre, just like the countries to which it aims to pivot.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biographies
Alessandro Vesprini is a Junior Fellow at the research centre Geopolitica.info. His field of research includes South Korean domestic and foreign policy, economic integration and trade in the Indo-Pacific, and China-U.S. decoupling.
Matteo Piasentini is a Junior Fellow at the research centre Geopolitica.info and a PhD student at the University of the Philippines in International Relations and Comparative Politics. His field of research includes the Philippines and Southeast Asia politics, security relations, and export controls and sanctions. Image credit: Flickr/Republic of Korea.