South Korea-Southeast Asia Ties from Moon to Yoon: What Has Changed and What Has Stayed the Same?

In 2022, President Yoon Suk Yeol unveiled South Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy, positioning South Korea as a “Global Pivotal State” (GPS) and a more active security actor in an increasingly volatile international environment. The Yoon administration also introduced the Korea-ASEAN Solidarity Initiative (KASI) to engage with Southeast Asia, supplanting the New Southern Policy (NSP), the flagship foreign policy initiative of former President Moon Jae-In. How has KASI unfolded and what has been the region’s response to this initiative?

Supported by a qualitative content analysis of all articles discussing either the NSP or KASI published between 2017 and 2024 from eight Southeast Asian news outlets*, this analysis finds that despite Seoul’s apparent “security turn”, economic activities continue to form the bedrock of its regional engagement. It also finds that President Yoon’s globalist aspirations and alignment with the West have attenuated the positive discursive gains that Seoul accumulated in Southeast Asia under the Moon administration.

Economic activities remain the central focus of South Korea’s engagement in Southeast Asia, receiving over 80% of regional media coverage on the NSP (2017-21) and KASI (2022-24). This media emphasis mirrors South Korea’s substantial economic activities in the region, highlighting the enduring importance of the economic underpinnings in the ASEAN-Korea relationship. For instance, South Korea’s investments into ASEAN steadily increased from 2017 to 2021, and doubled from US$7 billion in 2021 to about US$13 billion in 2022 – the year Yoon became president. Likewise, between 2015 and 2021 South Korea sustained an annual average of US$500-600 million in official development assistance (ODA) to the region. This commitment is poised to grow as South Korea increased its global ODA budget by 21.3% in 2023.

President Yoon’s administration has also signalled its intention to increase security cooperation with Southeast Asian countries. Seoul pledged to participate in multinational exercises with Indo-Pacific countries, support the development of naval capacity for ASEAN countries, and collaborate on non-traditional issues such as anti-piracy and cybersecurity. This has generated some discursive wins for South Korea. For instance, news media references to South Korea’s efforts to play a greater security role in regional media have steadily increased between 2022 and 2024.

Seoul’s “shift to security” in Southeast Asia, however, remains underwhelming. Even though Yoon has touted South Korea’s credentials as a provider of “K-Defense”, the absolute number of major conventional weapons transferred to Southeast Asian countries gradually declined, from about 400 major arm exports in the NSP era to only 19 in 2022. Korean arms transfers in the first two years of the Yoon administration have been spread globally rather than focused regionally, with the share of arms transferred to Southeast Asia dropping to only 9.1 per cent in 2022. This was a decrease from an average of about 50 per cent of Seoul’s total arms transfers in under the previous Moon administration.

Beyond arms transfers, South Korea has stepped up its cooperation with regional states on maritime security issues. In the 2023 progress report on its Indo-Pacific strategy, South Korea reported engaging in commander-level discussions and providing training for coast guards from ASEAN countries, notably Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. Seoul also reported its participation in military exercises in the region, including major ones such as Cobra Gold, Talisman Sabre, and Kamandag.

In total, Seoul participated in or observed a total of eight regional exercises in 2023, placing it alongside France as the 5^th most active security partner in the region, behind the US, China, Japan and Australia, and ahead of India. Still, Seoul’s security engagement in Southeast Asia remains modest compared to its capabilities. According to the 2023 Lowy institutes’ Asia Power Index, Seoul ranks 5^th among regional peers in both economic and military capabilities. It far surpasses regional actors such as Australia in both measures, while also holding its own against far larger actors such as Japan and India. Nonetheless, Seoul’s ability to build stronger security ties with Southeast Asia remains hampered by its preoccupation with the perennial security threat from North Korea.

In terms of diplomatic engagement, President Yoon’s globalist shift from his predecessor’s Southeast Asian focus has meant reduced diplomatic attention towards the region. While Moon pursued an extensive regional diplomatic campaign that made him the first South Korean president to visit all 10 ASEAN countries, Yoon has spread his attention between regional states and like-minded partners, such as the US, Japan and Europe. The framing of ASEAN’s role in the ROK’s foreign relations has shifted from the Moon administration’s goal of elevating Korea-ASEAN ties “to the level of major powers” to the Yoon administration’s identification of ASEAN as its “most important cooperative partner”.

As a result, there appears to be a significant reduction in Southeast Asia’s media attention to South Korea’s regional initiatives. In 2023, the number of articles referencing KASI (27) was lower than the coverage of the NSP between 2018 and 2021, which reached its peak at 83 articles in 2019 – the year South Korea held a commemorative summit with ASEAN and the first ROK-Mekong summit. President Moon also visited six Southeast Asian countries in 2019.

Overall, KASI has built on some of the groundwork laid by the NSP, most notably in its economic engagements with Southeast Asian countries. However, Seoul must undertake further efforts to boost its diplomatic and security profile in the region. If Yoon is committed to making ASEAN the “most important cooperative partner” of South Korea in the Indo-Pacific, he may need to rethink the current balance of his Indo-Pacific strategy. The State of Southeast Asia Survey between 2020 and 2024 consistently ranks South Korea behind eight other Dialogue Partners in terms of its ability to maintain a rules-based order. As Seoul seeks to elevate its relationship with ASEAN to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2024, expanding its economic ties while stepping up its engagement in regional security issues should be the pathway forward.

*These newspapers are The Bangkok Post (Thailand), The Jakarta Post (Indonesia), The Phnom Penh Post (Cambodia), The Straits Times (Singapore), The New Straits Times (Malaysia), The Vietnam News Agency (Vietnam), The Philippines Daily Inquirer (Philippines) and the Irrawaddy (Myanmar).

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