South Korea’s expanding economic, technological and diplomatic reach underscores its evolution from a regional to a global power, as it seeks to leverage alliances, minilateralism and its so-called ‘pragmatic’ diplomacy to shape global agendas beyond its immediate region.
While South Korea continues to face challenges on the Korean Peninsula and within Northeast Asia, Seoul has notably demonstrated expanded ambitions and capabilities beyond its immediate region, not least during and after the Yoon Suk Yeol administration. The country’s growing economic reach, technological leadership, security partnerships and soft power have allowed South Korea to project itself outside of the Korean Peninsula, thereby straddling the boundary between a middle and great power. At the same time, the country has leveraged its alliance with the US to develop and sustain ties with regional and minilateral forums in East Asia and beyond.
The Yoon administration notably promoted South Korea as a significant actor on the world stage by describing the country as a ‘global pivotal state’, a slogan that exemplified the government’s vision of South Korea as upholding the core pillars of the postwar liberal international order. Although Lee Jae-myung has predictably eschewed phrases such as ‘global pivotal state’ – not least to differentiate himself from his conservative predecessor to domestic audiences – South Korea’s economic, political and cultural rise is likely to continue in the future regardless of the political transition.
In its rhetoric, the Lee administration has made clear how a core component of South Korea’s foreign policy will be the prioritization of ‘national interests over values’. For the Lee government, emphasizing the importance of national interests over values serves as a reminder both to domestic and global audiences of the government’s aim to differentiate its foreign policy from the values-based diplomacy of the Yoon administration, which many South Korean progressives saw as being overly ideological in nature. Nevertheless, in practice, South Korea’s current emphasis on national interests is unlikely to signal a retreat inward. Instead, Seoul is likely to maintain an outward-looking diplomatic approach, wherein despite the change in government, the country will continue to diversify and strengthen its partnerships outside of its alliance with the US and engage with multilateral institutions and actors beyond the East Asian region.
From bilateralism to minilateralism
Since the country’s establishment in 1948, South Korea’s foreign policy has been dominated by bilateralism, manifest predominantly through its alliance with the US. While prior to taking power, Lee warned that South Korea should not ‘put all [its] eggs in one basket’ – highlighting a willingness towards engaging with adversaries of the US, such as Russia, China and North Korea – he affirmed after his election that the US–South Korea alliance remains the ‘bedrock’ of Seoul’s foreign policy. Thus, although South Korea should continue to strengthen its ties with the US, the limits to bilateralism have emerged as the security challenges faced by South Korea and the East Asian region have become increasingly interconnected, whether with respect to Sino-US competition, supply chain vulnerabilities or North Korea’s nuclear development.
Within a changing global geopolitical environment, South Korea has strengthened its engagement with minilateral frameworks, allowing the country to pursue issue-specific areas of cooperation with a smaller number of partners. In Northeast Asia, over the past five years South Korea has been increasingly active in attempts to strengthen trilateralism with the US and Japan, particularly in terms of military exercises and dialogues. For instance, the landmark Camp David summit of August 2023 and the proposal of the ‘Chip Four’ alliance in 2022 offer useful cases where South Korea has been able to mitigate overdependence on the US while sustaining the robust US–South Korea alliance, and widen its cooperation in valuable industries, such as semiconductors and critical technologies. Seoul’s minilateralism, however, has not been limited to Northeast Asia. South Korea has sought deeper engagement with forums such as the Quad and AUKUS (the Australia–UK–US trilateral security pact). Although South Korea is unlikely to become a formal member of these partnerships, not least as the future of AUKUS remains uncertain, Seoul’s participation in these joint initiatives underscores how it recognizes the overlapping mutual security concerns faced by other Indo-Pacific partners and the need to strengthen collective responses.
Strengthened and longer-term engagement with NATO has epitomized South Korea’s growing influence not just as a recipient of security guarantees from the US but as a provider of and contributor to security beyond its vicinity.
Despite having just had a change of government, South Korea was invited to the NATO summit in June 2025 for the fourth consecutive year since 2022, alongside the three other members of the ‘Indo-Pacific Four’ namely, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Of the invited government leaders from these countries, only the prime minister of New Zealand participated in this year’s summit; Lee Jae-myung’s national security advisor, Wi Sung-lac, attended in his place. Such strengthened and longer-term engagement with NATO has epitomized South Korea’s growing influence not just as a recipient of security guarantees from the US but as a provider of and contributor to security beyond its vicinity. At a time of increasing interconnectedness between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres, as evidenced by the deployment of approximately 14,000 North Korean troops to assist Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea serves as a useful bridge between these two theatres. This growing South Korea–NATO engagement makes clear how not only are security threats – whether in terms of cyberthreats, supply chain disruption or falling victim to China’s coercive behaviour – indivisible, but South Korea’s vulnerability to Chinese political and economic coercion together with North Korean belligerence can also offer useful lessons for NATO with respect to balancing deterrence with engagement of adversaries, and maintaining robust alliances. From NATO’s perspective, Seoul’s influence is no longer confined to the Korean Peninsula.
One such manifestation of South Korea’s international role is its hosting of global summits. The city of Gyeongju held the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum from 31 October to 1 November, which underscored South Korea’s ongoing ambitions to become a global power. This was the second time that South Korea had hosted the forum – after the 2005 summit in Busan – and demonstrated Seoul’s increasing international role and its institutional entrepreneurship in setting and shaping regional and global agendas. Prior to the 2025 APEC summit, the Lee government made clear how it intended to stress the importance of supply chain resilience and artificial intelligence within the Indo-Pacific, where Seoul has a comparative advantage.
Such global summits can serve as a useful litmus test of the Lee government’s ‘pragmatic’ diplomacy. On the one hand, the participation of US president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping at the APEC forum evinces Seoul’s ability to engage both Washington and Beijing against a backdrop of intense competition, not least in relation to trade. Seoul has already demonstrated its willingness to engage with allies, partners and competitors, as underscored by the visit of South Korean foreign minister, Cho Hyun, to China on 17 September, to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. On the other hand, many global forums involving great powers, such as APEC, rely upon consensus-based decision-making. For instance, if Washington or Beijing oppose Seoul’s proposals with respect to supply chain alignment or trade concessions, Seoul will have limited influence and flexibility. Moreover, Seoul’s ability to shape global agendas through these forums will also be constrained by the actions of an unpredictable second Trump administration. Prior to the APEC forum, the South Korean government refused to rule out a possible meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un on the sidelines of the meeting. Although no Trump–Kim meeting took place, the APEC summit demonstrated the ease at which great power politics could distract international attention from South Korea’s own global ambitions. Seoul must ensure, therefore, that partisan political objectives do not usurp its national interests and longer-term global goals.
