South Korea's missing middle power diplomacy

Without middle power diplomacy, South Korea allows its foreign policy to be steered by North Korea and the United States

Taking a contrarian view on this topic provides significant insight into the shortcomings of current South Korean foreign policy. This has recently come to the fore in South Korea’s attempts to address issues relating to North Korea.

In 2017–18, South Korea understandably pursued crisis diplomacy as the threat of immediate conflict increased with inflammatory US and North Korean rhetoric. This required high-level decision-making, close coordination between partners and allies, clear initial signalling, limited and achievable goals, and a willingness to compromise. South Korea’s crisis diplomacy was highly successful and managed to rein in US and North Korean excesses and reduce the risk of miscalculation and conflict.

But the effectiveness of crisis diplomacy is limited by time and does not provide tools to transform the root causes of tension.

Assuming a behaviour-based definition of middle power, South Korea’s crisis diplomacy should have immediately been followed by characteristic mid…