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Capabilities and aspirations: South Korea’s rise as a middle power

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Abstract

In November 2010, the G20 Summit was held in Seoul. The G20 has increasingly replaced the G8 as being the premier forum for international economic cooperation, but in November 2010, it was the first time that a summit was held in country that was not a G8 member. It was by the Korean government seen as evidence of the country finally having achieved the goal of becoming an advanced nation playing, while still constrained by the division of the peninsula, a global role in line with its economic standing. The article argues that this has been a constant theme in Korea’s foreign policy since it was originally formulated in 1994 as part of the country’s globalization policy. This addition of an intentional dimension, to the objective capabilities created during the previous decades, has increasingly resulted in the type of behavior associated with middle power status.

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Notes

  1. Using 1979 statistics Wood’s list of middle powers does include Korea which in 1979 had a GDP of US$65 Billion.

  2. Focusing on the ability to influence international politics, Gelber (1946), in his analysis of Canada’s post-World War II international position, argues for having been a non-permanent member of the Security Council as indicative of middle power status.

  3. In 1993 Korea’s trade dependency was 53 % with the US share of that trade above 16 %, so it made sense for the Korean government to strive for trade diversification. By 2011, trade dependency was above 113 %, but the US share of total Korean trade was down to 9 % (Korea Statistical Information Service 2012).

  4. South Korea has of March 2013 concluded FTAs with 45 countries including the United States, the European Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It is currently engaged in bilateral negotiations with a number of other countries, among them Canada, as well as having begun trilateral negotiations with Japan and China. In addition, with Japan having recently announced that it will join the US-led Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP), the USA is strongly encouraging Korea to also join the TPP.

  5. For one of the few positive evaluations of the “balancer” concept see Moon (2012, 214)

  6. Korea increased its ODA from 0.03 % of GNI in 1994, when the segyehwa policy was initiated, to 0.15 % in 2012, and has indicated its intention to raise it to 0.25 % of GNI by 2015 (Yu 2010, 8).

  7. One of the more populist, or hyped up, slogans of the Lee Myung-bak campaign was the so-called 7-4-7 plan. The plan entailed the following goals: (1) to bring about 7 % economic growth per year; (2) raise the country’s per capita income from below U.S.$ 20,000 to 40,000; and (3) to make Korea the seventh largest economy in the world. It should be noted that none of the goals were achieved during the Lee Administration.

  8. It was in connection with the introduction of the ambitious Global Korea slogan that the Lee Myung-bak government began to explicitly refer to Korea as a middle power.

  9. The Lee Administration did show significant willingness to participate in PKO activities with 635 troops deployed by June 2012 (United Nations 2012).

  10. The G20 was supposed to be a deliberative forum at best working in tandem with the more cohesive G8 (Hajnal 2007, 12–13).

  11. The establishment of the G20 Summit did not see the G7/8 disappear. The G7/8 countries do still have summits, and while initially there were some attempts at dividing the policy universe, with the increase in the number of the issues under consideration at the G20 summits the agendas of the two increasingly overlapped. In fact, the 2012 Los Cabos Summit has yet again shown that the division of tasks between the G7/8 and G20 is not settled.

  12. As President Lee Myung-bak came into office in 2008 he began to promote a ”Low Carbon, Green Growth” paradigm, that included a Green Growth Initiative which led to the establishment of the Global Green Growth Institute in Seoul (GGGI). The GGGI currently (March 2013) has 18 members and it is the first international organization that Korea has taken the initiative in establishing. See, for instance, Choe (2011).

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  1. Division of International Studies, Hanyang University, 17 Haengdang-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, 133-791, South Korea

    Carl J. Saxer

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Saxer, C.J. Capabilities and aspirations: South Korea’s rise as a middle power. Asia Eur J 11, 397–413 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-013-0361-7

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