Public Diplomacy of South Korea (Routledge Studies on Think Asia)

This book introduces South Korea’s public diplomacy and identifies and evaluates the goals and corresponding areas of. It discusses implication for the foreign policy of the current Yoon Suk Yeol administration under the competitive geopolitical landscape.

By establishing political diplomacy, economic diplomacy, and public diplomacy as the three pillars of its diplomacy, South Korea has endeavored to enhance its international image and credibility, deepen foreign nationals’ understanding of South Korea’s foreign policy, and expand its soft power across the international community. However, as current U.S.–China competition continues to expand to the domains of the political system and its organizing values, middle powers are struggling to hedge the risk of competition between liberalism and anti-liberalism, which closely relates to every middle power’s state identity and potential coalitions used to pursue certain value via public diplomacy. With that context, the contributions to the book examine the public diplomacy of South Korea and its achievement, the range of domains that it prioritizes, and future directions for such diplomacy amid the competition of great powers. Focusing on the Yoon Suk-Yeol administration’s foreign policy goals and how public diplomacy has been adapted to this framework under the intensifying great power competition between the U.S. and revisionist powers, the book addresses the ideological dimension in the ongoing power to explain how countries’ respective alignments could affect South Korea’s ability to conduct public diplomacy.

This book is a novel contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in international relations, South Korean foreign policy, and Asian politics.

Kuyoun Chung is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Kangwon National University, the Republic of Korea.