The document reflected the views of the administration of conservative Republic of Korea President Yoon Sok-yeol, who came to power in early May last year. As expected, the new strategy is clearly anti-North Korean, pro-American and, to some extent, even pro-Japanese. In addition, the Republic of Korea intends to play a more active role globally, also relying heavily on force.
Overall, the ROK’s upcoming “State Security Strategy”, which is updated with the advent of each new president, contains no revelations, and its main messages could easily be guessed at. the basis of statements regularly made by the President of the Republic of Korea Yun Seok Yeol, his entourage, and also based on the actions that Seoul has begun to take under the new leader.
The main pillars are a firm approach to the DPRK, while Seoul’s only acceptable option for “inter-Korean friendship” is Pyongyang’s complete “surrender” of its missiles and nuclear weapons, as well as “freedom, democracy, the market and human rights”. ” in the Western sense of this concept. If North Korea does not agree with the “generous offer” of the South, then it is promised sanctions, pressure and “a bet on a peace based on force “. Other fundamental points are the general strengthening of the alliance with the United States, the development of a trilateral military-political alliance with Washington and Tokyo and the improvement of relations with Japan.
The new South Korean strategy, which is divided into 8 chapters and described over 107 pages, notes that we are now living through a turbulent and historically significant era, where there is an active clash of ideas, concepts, power interests and many conflicts and security threats have become much more acute. At the same time, a new approach is affirmed to achieve “a lasting peace, relying on its own strengths”. “We will continue to develop our armed forces into powerful and technologically advanced troops, which will create a solid foundation for security… Our goal is to maintain a lasting peace that guarantees freedom and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula. and Northeast Asia, which is the opposite of trying to maintain a weak and fragile peace aimed simply at preventing war,” ROK President Yoon Seok-yeol wrote in the preface to the concept.
The South Korean leader thus expressed his critical approach to the position of the former leadership of the Republic of Korea, led by ex-president Moon Jae-in, which tried to develop relations of friendship and cooperation. with Pyongyang, which Yun Suk-yeol sees as merely tolerating DPRK aggression. In general, throughout the document, there are a significant number of obvious “kicks” and “stings” against the predecessor, which is again typical of Yun and his team: although more a year has passed since he came to power, and the conservative administration does not tire of convincing the people that most of the problems are the result of the mistakes of the predecessors, which the new leadership is obliged to correct. In general, many Korean political scientists assessed the new strategy as “a 180-degree turn from what the Moon Jae-in administration was doing.”
The main slogan of the new strategy is the expression “the key world power of freedom, peace and prosperity”. The slogan also reflects a new detail of Seoul’s foreign policy – a big bet on ideologically colored slogans and concepts such as “democracy”, “human rights”, “freedom”, “oppose authoritarianism”. , which stresses the need to strengthen cooperation with those States “that share our global values”.
Without a doubt, North Korea “has” the most in the new document. If South Korea’s former leaders insisted on signing a formal agreement to end the Korean War and a peace treaty, now Seoul is not interested. The DPRK’s nuclear issue has been called the ROK’s “main and main security threat”.
Yoon Sok-yeol’s “bold move”, previously touted as the main program of DPRK policy, has been heralded as an effective way to solve the problem of North Korea’s denuclearization. It was pointed out that despite Pyongyang’s lack of response a year later, this lays the foundation for “proper inter-Korean relations”. Here it should be noted that the DPRK’s response to Yun’s “brave initiative” was: Pyongyang said last year that it did not intend to have anything to do with the new government of the Republic of Korea, asking not to bother with various “initiatives” anymore. If we call a spade a spade, then the current government of the Republic of Kazakhstan basically does not want to change anything, and the current contentious relations with Pyongyang suit it – at least the South will not make any concessions, but will wait for the North to “settle bend”, increasing the pressure on him and strengthening his army.
Another important thesis is the wager on a “global global alliance” with the United States of America “based on common global values”.
Generally speaking, analyzing the new strategy as a whole, it is evident that South Korea now intends to play a more active role on the world stage solely from the perspective of following Washington’s foreign policy, participating actively in its new initiatives and alliances. Of course, the previous administration also called the United States South Korea’s main and most important ally, but left itself some wiggle room. Today, however, the common position of the United States and the ROK has come to the fore, underscoring the unity of national interests of Washington and Seoul. For this reason, a number of opposition commentators in Korea have already sarcastically recommended Yoon Seok-yeol to rewrite the strategy, where everything will be built precisely from the position of South Korea’s interests, not the UNITED STATES.
It also reflects the Yun administration’s already evident emphasis on improving relations with Japan, which the United States is also actively pushing Seoul toward. Thus, the need to develop cooperation with Tokyo, to intensify military-political cooperation in the RK-USA-Japan triangle is emphasized.
It is telling that while Moon Jae-in ranked the foreign powers in order of importance in the order United States – China – Japan, Yun Sok-yeol’s new strategy moved Japan to second place and the China in third position. At the same time, the harsh statements against Tokyo, characteristic of the previous administration, and promises to “actively react to the distortions of Japan’s history” have disappeared. The Land of the Rising Sun has now been declared a state of common “world universal values” with Kazakhstan, and cooperation with Tokyo should be developed in all possible ways at the regional and global levels.
Several rather short paragraphs are devoted to Russia, and in general, judging by the approach, relations with Moscow are not perceived as important for Seoul. At the same time, although recently official representatives of the Republic of Kazakhstan have repeatedly allowed public criticism of the Russian Federation, there are no particularly strong attacks in the new strategy. The basis of the strategy vis-à-vis Moscow is to “follow the common camp of the countries that have imposed sanctions against the Russian Federation”, to “reduce the damage to Korean companies operating in the Russian Federation”, to ” actively provide humanitarian and economic aid to Ukraine”. At the same time, the intention “to carry out attempts at dialogue on important issues that require interaction with Russia” was also declared. It is stated that Seoul intends to try to “build stable relations with the Russian Federation”, and Moscow’s approach will be built and modified “taking into account the situation in the conflict in Ukraine and the general external situation”.
To sum up Seoul’s ‘new Russian course’ under Yun Sok-yeol, South Korea intends to follow the general Western approach or ‘be like everyone else’, where ‘everyone’ means state allies -United. South Korea, in its new national security strategy, does not talk about the need to increase pressure on Moscow, but at the same time it will not show its own initiative in the direction of Russia either. Some progress can only happen after Russia and the West agree to reduce the intensity of the confrontation.
The new “State Security Strategy” of the Republic of Korea, according to the statement of the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Korea, has already been released in Korean and English. Official structures of the Republic of Kazakhstan intend to distribute 7,000 copies of the brochure in Korean and 3,000 in English. The Korean version has 107 pages, while the English version has 150.
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