Seoul has a chance to take a leading role in shaping the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.
South Korea must not relinquish its agency and allow others to define the Indo-Pacific without it. As President Lee Jae-myung has stated, South Korea “cannot repeat the mistakes of 120 years ago,” because “in the past, we failed to keep up with the changing international trends and were caught between the great powers and pushed around, ultimately losing our sovereignty.”
South Korea today possesses capabilities to navigate a volatile regional and international environment that its 19th-century self could only have dreamed of. South Korea has emerged as a G-20 economy, a leading actor in critical and emerging technologies of AI and semiconductors, and a global cultural exporter with soft power reaching far beyond Asia. It is also a resilient democracy that recently weathered the turbulence of a short-lived declaration of martial law by former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was impeached for his constitutional violations.
However, Seoul has not consistently translated its strengths into regional agenda-setting or leadership that reflects its substantial economic, cultural, and security advancements. Yoon began to change this oversight with the Camp David Summit, South Korea’s first Indo-Pacific Strategy, and founding membership in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. It will be under Lee that South Korea’s larger regional role can truly start to take shape…
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Matthew F. FLEMING 