Country Report: South Korea (December 2022)
In the months of November and December, as in previous months, Pyongyang continued its missile salvo firing 25 ballistic missiles in 12 rounds, amounting to a total of […]
trilateralism
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Tracking the Downswings in a ‘Virtual Alliance’: Japan’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula over a Decade
This year, 2022, could be critical for Japan-ROK relations. The relationship has been in free fall for a decade—although there were a couple of moments at which the […]
Introduction
The period 2013-2015 in South Korean foreign policy was transformative for three reasons: (1) it exposed the fallacies in Seoul’s assumptions about the future of Northeast Asia more […]
A Trustpolitik approach to denuclearization and unification
Ever since the Korean War, North Korea has posed the most menacing and intractable national security challenge to the South. Every South Korean leader has tried to reduce […]
Trustpolitik, middle power diplomacy, and partisan narratives
On the heels of Park Geun-hye’s election—and the introduction of her “trustpolitik”—there was a sense that South Korean foreign policy was undergoing a sea change. After a dizzying […]
Managing four great powers
Succeeding another conservative, President Park Geun-hye was intent on seizing the initiative despite the difficult environment she faced as four leaders geared up for more active regional policies. […]
The US-Japan-ROK Trilateral in the Indo-Pacific Era: Strategic Alignment or Still in Flux?
After hitting rock bottom in the final years of the 2010s, prospects for the trilateral of the US-Japan-ROK have looked up in 2021, despite serious, lingering barriers. Four […]
A US perspective
The undisputed evaluation of the summit is that it was a bilateral success. US media and think tanks alike acknowledged that each side gave the other enough to […]
A South Korean perspective
The summit between President Moon Jae-in and President Joe Biden on May 21 was critical for Moon and the South Korean public in two key ways: 1) it […]
A Japanese perspective
For the Japanese government, the US-ROK relationship after the establishment of the Biden administration is a difficult puzzle. The guiding principle was presumed to be the unfolding of […]