Watching South Korea: Beware assumptions

Over the past year, long-suppressed strategic debates have re-emerged in South Korea

Over the past year, long-suppressed strategic debates re-emerged in South Korea: accepting a less-involved United States, strengthening relations with China, securing an independent nuclear weapons capacity, or combining all of these and steering a path towards a unified Korea that could sustain some form of armed neutrality. Yet many analysts outside South Korea either fail to recognise or are unwilling to accept the gravity of these debates. Exploring the reasons why provides insights into emerging analytical challenges that will become more prominent as South Korea explores its foreign-policy options.

First, and most obvious, the policy community that focuses on South Korea is small and weighted heavily in favour of analysts who focus on North Korea. Despite its position as the world’s 12th largest economy, South Korea is dwarfed by the amount of reporting on its northern neighbour. Further, English-language reporting on North Korea is skewed. It focuses overwhelmingly on a narrow r…