While the EU is responding positively to President Biden´s overtures to allies and is ready to extend its Transatlantic engagement with the US to an Indo-Pacific partnership, both partners have to find common ground which takes into account their interests. The EU´s tryptic towards China – partner, competitor, rival – resonates with the US. The EU´s focus is on providing a level playing field, applying multilateralism and openness when and where possible, a policy China´s assertiveness and infringement of human rights renders difficult. Engagement of the EU in the Indo-Pacific…

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have wrapped up the second day of their visit to South Korea. The fact that Japan and South Korea were the first two countries visited by Blinken and Austin shows the importance that the Biden administration affords to its allies in East Asia and, more broadly, in the Indo-Pacific region. In this respect, the Biden administration seems to see Seoul as a key partner as it tries to shore up Washington’s foreign policy and international standing following from the Donald Trump administration.

Understanding the characteristics of the Pacific Alliance provides valuable policy recommendations for South Korea’s involvement in the region. Notably, one of South Korea’s foreign policy priorities is to strengthen diplomatic relations to increase trade and economic ties with other countries. However, improving South Korea-PA relations as geopolitical neighbours and allies will to a great extent be contingent on the perspectives and views they have of each other, as well as the possibilities they see to maximise the benefits of already existing links.

On 4 January 2021, less than a week before the scheduled visit of South Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun, Iran seized the South Korean chemical tanker Hankuk Chemi and its 20-member crew near the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. South Korea immediately dispatched the Cheonghae anti-piracy unit to waters near the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian government insists that a “technical” matter of marine pollution triggered the seizure, but Tehran has so far not presented the evidence according to South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held from 5 to 12 January in Pyongyang. A total of 7,000 delegates participated in the congress, almost five years after the 7th congress of May 2016. Nominally, the congress is the highest body of the Workers’ Party of Korea, tasked with reviewing the party’s work and setting up policy guidelines until the next congress. The centrepiece of the congress that just finished was Kim Jong-un’s nine-hour work report, in which he addressed key domestic and foreign policy issues. For the most part, the report seems to have consolidated messages that the North Korean government and state media have been laying out in recent months.

President Moon Jae-in delivered the traditional presidential New Year’s Address on Monday. With his non-renewable five-year presidential term coming to an end in 2022, the speech served Moon to highlight the key goals and policies that he seeks to push for during his last full year in office. As usual, the speech focused heavily on domestic issues but also touched on foreign policy issues including inter-Korean relations. With his popularity at record lows but still higher than his predecessors at the same point in their presidency, the New Year’s Address also served Moon to discuss some of the main concerns for the South Korean population. These include the starting date for the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine programme.

The EU and South Korea are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their strategic partnership this year. Throughout the past decade, South Korea has become the Asian country with the deepest relationship with the EU. It was the first country in Asia to sign and implement a free trade agreement with the EU, which also doubled down as the EU’s first-even new generation FTA. Brussels and Seoul also have a Framework Agreement in place to underpin their political relations. Furthermore, the EU and South Korea have also signed and implemented a Crisis Management participation agreement allowing South Korean troops to join EU missions. As of 2020, South Korea is the only Asian country with these three key agreements covering economic, political, and security relations with the EU in operation.

The EU and South Korea are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their bilateral strategic partnership in 2020. We asked leading Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia security experts based in Europe to reflect on the successes, failures, and potential areas of future cooperation between the two partners (the responses were collected by December 4th). A total of twelve experts participated in the survey. 

There was good news for South Korea’s defense industry in the second half of 2020. As part of the Australian Army’s modernization projects, the K-9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer was selected as the preferred negotiator for a 833 million USD artillery acquisition project. In 2015-19, South Korea’s arms exports increased by 143 percent with its share in global exports increasing from 0.9 to 2.1 percent. South Korea’s world ranking as an arms exporter rose in 2018 from 12th to 10th, in line with a year-on-year increase in sales volume from 10.47 billion to 11.18 billion USD. Overall, these are hopeful signs for the defense industry, but they are too weak to promise a “new dawn” and a return to its former glory.

The Korea Matters for Europe/Europe Matters for Korea publication maps the relationship between the Republic of Korea and the European Union’s 27 Member States. Covering a diverse range of topics including security, trade, investment, educational exchange and cultural connections, this publication highlights the importance of the Korea-EU relationship.