South Korea’s Middle Power Activism and the Retooling of Its Public Diplomacy

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Understanding Public Diplomacy in East Asia pp 107-129| Cite as

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• Sook Jong Lee

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Part of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy book series (GPD)

Abstract 

South Korea’s history and political system. As Koreas is located in Northeast Asia and surrounded by larger countries such as China, Japan, and Russia, its foreign policy has long been focused on guaranteeing its independence. The Korean War and the country’s subsequent division into two Koreas forced South Korea to engage in active public diplomacy vis-à-vis North Korea in international society. During the Cold War period, the United States, its strongest ally since the Korean War, was supportive of South Korea’s public diplomacy, which was based on anticommunism. South Korea’s democratic transition in the late 1980s, together with its successful economic development, provided a more solid basis for its post-Cold War public diplomacy, which employed economic and cultural resources.