South Korea’s nuclear weapons hold a place in the national consciousness
Without a commensurate education and publicity campaign, the Washington Declaration will never address the broader, underlying sense of vulnerability ingrained in the language, geography, history and culture.
2024 06 26
Is South Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy a lame duck?
Yoon’s performance has been marked by a glaring gap between rhetoric and implementation: a president that nominally supports pro-US policies, but in practice is caught cursing US lawmakers on a hot mic; a president that nominally supports freedom, but in practice stumbles in support of Ukraine; a president that nominally stands for international norms and the rule of law, but in practice sparks a debate on securing nuclear weapons.
2024 04 10
The Yoon Administration’s “Audacious Initiative”
The “Audacious Initiative” - South Korea’s key policy platform to address the plethora of problems that is North Korea.
2023 12 17
South Korea as a middle power: assumptions and misunderstandings
We rarely think deeply about the term middle power, and are prone to ignore its influence, so could using the term blind analysts to changes in South Korea’s foreign policy?
2023 10 07
South Korea and the middle power revival school
Two decades ago, South Korea was rarely called a middle power. Today, it invites ridicule to suggest South Korea is anything but a middle power.
2023 10 01
South Korea and the study of middle powers
There are a plethora of studies on South Korea as a middle power. Some argue Korea needs to change to fit the term, some reinvent the term to fit Korea, and still others just use the term without questioning.
2023 09 26
Camp David and South Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy
In a worst case scenario, the Camp David trilateral summit may ultimately be significant not as the beginning of a new era, but rather as a point marking the end of an old era
2023 08 16
Korea-India bilateral relations
South Korea needs to build domestic constituency that supports the India-Korea bilateral relationship in the longer-term. It needs to go beyond the rhetoric.
2023 07 15
Understanding South Korea’s National Security Strategy
The National Security Strategy released by the Yoon Administration is not about national strategy but about an ongoing domestic political competition.
2023 06 06
The meaningless middle powers
The academic discipline of international relations desperately needs new ways of talking about the 10-60 states - the middle powers.
2023 06 06