POLITICS: South Korea Wields ‘Soft Power’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Satya Sivaraman

PUSAN , Nov 18 2005 (IPS) - Not long ago if you mentioned South Korea and ‘regional power’ in the same sentence, your audience would have laughed you out of business.

Tucked in between big powers like China and Japan and facing off bitter rival North Korea, the South Koreans, despite their growing economic clout, were seen as another political pygmy in the pockets of the U.S. in Asia.

But perceptions are changing rapidly, thanks to South Korea’s rise as one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies, its growing cultural influence in the region and post Cold War global transformation making analysts describe it as a ‘soft regional power’.

The term ‘soft’ is meant to show that South Korea’s power does not come from ‘hard’ military or economic might but the country’s good image stemming from democratisation of domestic politics, export of ideas and popularity among the people in the region.

” South Korea is now on the threshold of a new role as a balancer of security in the region, due to its unique capacity now to dampen and smoothen problems before they escalate,” said Paul Bracken, a professor of political science at Yale University, attending an international symposium here on the theme: ‘Towards a new Asian Order and Solidarity’.

This is because South Korea today, poses little threat to any of the other countries in the region and it is often easier for a smaller power to work for peace and stability than for larger powers that have much higher stakes, feels the professor.

The symposium, organised by the liberal South Korean newspaper ‘Hankyoreh’, was held on the sidelines of the two-day, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, attended by leaders from 21 countries, which ended Saturday.

Contributing to South Korea’s role in recent years as a moderating force in the region are significant changes in the geopolitical equations of North-east Asia, historically a region of great power rivalry, military build-up and deep distrust.

Firstly, the introduction of the so-called ‘sunshine’ policy of cooperation and friendship with North Korea, by the previous Kim Dae Jung administration, had, in one bold step, defused the greatest source of tension in South Korea’s neighbourhood.

For many South Koreans, the view of communist North Korea as a serious security threat changed radically after the historic 2000 bilateral summit where the two Koreas pledged to work towards eventual reunification.

Since the break up of Korea into the communist north and the capitalist south, nearly 60 years ago, the two countries have been bitter enemies and constantly ready for all out war with each other. This is no longer true.

Secondly, the distancing of South Korea from the U.S. and its willingness to criticise the policies of its former mentor, has given new credibility with China and North Korea, which always treated it in the past as a ‘U.S. stooge’ in the region.

Though South Korea still maintains good relations with the U.S. and has even sent troops to Iraq, growing anti-American sentiment among its people, the quest for greater national sovereignty and regional realities have led it to assert more independent policies.

“The U.S. government is unhappy about South Korea emerging as a mediator in North-east Asia but I don’t think the U.S. has the capacity to solve these problems on their own. There is a sore need for an honest broker in this region and South Korea is the best candidate,” says Kim Bo-Geun, general secretary of the Hankyoreh Foundation for Reunification and Culture.

South Korea’s role as a mediator has been more and more evident at the recent six-nation talks aimed at dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons problem. While in the past, as a U.S. ally, South Korea would strongly criticise both North Korea and China, it has now moved closer to China and helped tone down hawkish U.S. positions that could lead to devastating conflict in the region.

Yet another factor helping the image of South Korea as a moderate force in the region, strangely enough, is the sudden escalation in tension between Japan and China.

While Japan worries about China’s rise as an Asian superpower, the latter sees the rearming of Japan with U.S. backing as a serious threat. In this context South Korea has emerged as a balancing force for peace between the two, despite being a much smaller power.

“South Korea as a friend of both the U.S. and China can play an important role in removing suspicions and starting a meaningful dialogue to settle the historical problems of this region, ” says Ye Zi Cheng, of the School of International Studies at Beijing University.

But of all factors propelling South Korea to prominence on the regional stage, the most interesting is its growing clout as an exporter of culture and entertainment, a phenomenon the called ‘hallyu’, meaning wave.

Over the past few years, South Korean television drama movies and songs have gone from relative obscurity to being immensely popular in not just east and South-east Asia but all the way to the U.S. and Mexico.

Even in Japan, where everything Korean has traditionally been looked down upon, Korean pop or ‘K-Pop’ has captivated an entire generation of young people. South Korea’s pop culture accounted for 1.87 billion US dollars in revenue, last year, from film and TV programme exports, merchandise sales and tourism related to hallyu, according to the Trade Research Institute, a government think tank.

“More than money, what all this cultural export is doing is winning the hearts and minds of people across national boundaries,” says Ubonrat Siriyuvasak, an expert on media and popular culture at the Bangkok-based Chulalangkorn University. According to her, all this goodwill makes South Korea the perfect country to promote peace, not just on the Korean peninsula, but in all of Asia.