South Korea’s Global Vision: Opportunities for UK–South Korea Partnership

South Korea is a middle power in the Indo-Pacific region that has been seeking to articulate a global role through partnerships with like-minded countries, including the UK. In November 2023, South Korea and the UK signed the Downing Street Accord (DSA) that promised to raise their bilateral ties ‘to the highest level of strategic ambition, to endure for this century and beyond’. The relevance of the UK–South Korea bilateral partnership is clarified by common challenges to the rules-based international order as manifested by the growing influence of illiberal states and their undemocratic behaviours, such as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Such developments have further led to the strengthening of illicit ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Against such a backdrop, the political turmoil in Seoul that began in December 2024 with the short-lived martial law declaration by ousted president Yoon Suk Yeol creates uncertainties not only for its domestic politics, but also for its foreign policy projection. The purpose of this Policy Brief is to situate UK–South Korea ties in the context of Seoul’s larger strategy and outline the implications of South Korea’s global vision for its relationship with the UK. Despite South Korea’s political embroilment, enhancing the UK–South Korea partnership is important because the two countries complement each other – Seoul’s aspirations to increase its capacity as an important global stakeholder remains unwavering, while Westminster continues to expand its engagement with the rising Indo-Pacific region.

This Policy Brief examines South Korea’s foreign policy trajectory and its relevance for the UK. The research is based on a review of key official documents and speeches released by former South Korean administrations to understand Seoul’s global vision. It briefly outlines the historical development of South Korea’s ambitions as a growing middle power and how Seoul pursues its goals. It goes on to argue that the UK should extend its efforts to strengthen the bilateral ties that will also promote its own global status in the Indo-Pacific. The brief concludes with practical policy recommendations for enhancing UK–South Korea cooperation.

South Korea as a Global Middle Power

South Korea’s goal of globalisation was set in the 1990s after achieving democratisation and economic development. Since then, every successive South Korean government, regardless of political complexion, has endorsed the mission to put itself forward as an active global stakeholder. From the 2000s, South Korea’s policy began to be branded as a ‘middle-power’ diplomacy seeking an enhanced role in the world. By the early 2020s, Seoul described its heightened global status as ‘standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the G7’, with reference to two G7 summit invitations in 2020 and 2021. These narratives illustrate South Korea’s enthusiasm to play a role in global ordering institutions.

Most recently, the Yoon administration carried this mission further and actively promoted the vision of South Korea becoming a Global Pivotal State (GPS) and set this as one of six key policy goals. Compared to the previous middle-power diplomacy, Yoon’s GPS concept projected Seoul’s aspiration to be not merely a ‘middle’ power but a ‘pivotal’ one, carrying greater global influence. Prior to assuming office, Yoon’s presidential transition committee announced its 110 key policy tasks, of which one was to strengthen a role as a GPS that befits a country’s elevated status, thus becoming an ‘influential power rather than one being influenced by others’. To this end, the Yoon administration released two policy documents (the Indo-Pacific Strategy and the National Security Strategy), elaborating Seoul’s revitalised global ambitions and the strategic objectives required to play such roles.

The GPS goal was pursued through a two-track approach. First, it enhanced strategic partnerships with like-minded partners based on shared values. As an Asian democracy with a developed economy, South Korea strengthened ties with those who share such values – the US, Australia, Japan and European countries. Second, Seoul increased its engagement with the Global South by enhancing its development assistance capacity. In recent years, its official development assistance budget each year has been the largest on record, marking $3.94 billion in 2025. South Korea aims to become a top 10 donor country by 2026 and is reaching out to different corners of the world, including Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, seeking to play a global role extending beyond the scope of its traditional foreign policy, which was limited to the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul’s Indo-Pacific Strategy: More than a Regional Framework

When its region began to be reframed from ‘Asia-Pacific’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’, South Korea was initially hesitant to embrace the new concept. Although it had been advocated by the first Trump administration and others in the region since the mid-2010s, the administration of then-president Moon Jae-in maintained an ambiguous position as the idea of the free and open Indo-Pacific began to imply a growing US–China rivalry. Instead, Seoul sought to walk a fine line between its ally and largest trading partner.

While acknowledging the regional developments based on the new framework, South Korea laid out its own New Southern Policy (NSP) aimed at enhancing ties with Southeast Asia and India. The NSP allowed Seoul to continue its Asia-Pacific rhetoric and cooperate with regional stakeholders on its own terms. It was only in May 2021 that the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ was officially endorsed by Seoul at the US–ROK summit under the Biden presidency, when the two countries agreed to ‘work to align the ROK’s New Southern Policy and the United States’ vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific’.

After a political change from a liberal to a conservative government in May 2022, the Yoon administration announced Seoul’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) during the ASEAN–ROK Summit in November 2022, and the official document was published a month later. In accordance with the NSP, Seoul indicated its mindfulness of ASEAN centrality as emphasised in the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific when embracing the Indo-Pacific. Similar to other countries in the region, such as India and ASEAN member states, South Korea’s new strategy noted China as a cooperation partner, rather than framing the Indo-Pacific as part of an anti-China narrative.

What differentiated Yoon’s IPS from Moon’s NSP and the Indo-Pacific strategies of other countries is that the IPS was a global rather than a regional strategy. It was at the centre of Seoul’s GPS ambitions and stretched beyond the geographic scope of the Indo-Pacific, promising to ‘work closely with Europe and Latin America’. It also embraced the universality of liberal values, vowing to ‘uphold international norms and strengthen a rules-based order built on universal values including freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights’. This was central to Yoon’s foreign policy as its emphasis on values featured prominently in the country’s diplomatic overture towards like-minded states and organisations such as the UK, the G7 and NATO.

A Value-Based Diplomacy and UK–South Korea Partnership

South Korea finds liberal democracy to be one of its defining national identities. Despite polarised domestic politics, liberal values such as freedom, democracy and human rights are embraced across all political spectrums. The Yoon administration took this a step further by placing such values at the heart of its foreign and security policies. In addition to the IPS, its National Security Strategy also placed significant emphasis on values. It pinned value-based diplomacy as one of the five ‘core strategic tenets’, and two of six strategic tasks laid out in the document were related to this theme: ‘conducting diplomatic cooperation grounded in freedom and solidarity’ and ‘defending liberal democracy and contributing to global prosperity’.

Based on such notion, Seoul has been strengthening its foreign and security relationships with like-minded partners, most notably the US and the UK. These relationships are enhanced through several bilateral and multilateral meetings, bolstered by new cooperation frameworks such as the Washington Declaration with the US and the DSA with the UK that have laid out cooperation in various sectors where South Korea has a competitive edge, such as cyber, economy, energy and security.

The partnership with the UK is of particular significance as the DSA is the only major framework that Seoul has established besides Washington, its only treaty ally. This illustrates the importance of the UK in Seoul’s foreign policy thinking, which deserves greater recognition and reciprocation. While cooperation with other regional like-minded partners, such as Australia and Japan, are deemed important and necessary, South Korea’s prioritisation of enhancing ties with the UK demonstrates its ambition to step up as a global actor, forging a ‘global strategic partnership’ with a P5 (permanent UN Security Council member) and G7 member.

Underscoring such significance, the UK should set out the areas of bilateral cooperation with South Korea that would assist the UK’s outreach to the Indo-Pacific, as well as accommodating Seoul’s engagement with Europe and NATO, which has expanded over recent years. Since 2022, when NATO began to increase its ties with like-minded Indo-Pacific countries amid deepening Russia–China ties, South Korea took part in every annual NATO summit and NATO–South Korea cooperation has rapidly developed. Seoul signed the Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes in July 2023, indicating a more concrete security cooperation. Moreover, South Korea became NATO’s first Asian partner to sign an agreement on mutual recognition for military airworthiness certification, and joined the Science & Technology Organization Partnership with the aim of enhancing military interoperability and collaborating in defence research. These developments are significant as Seoul deepens its defence engagement with Europe as a partner for defence manufacturing and procurement, as well as a model of maintaining powerful and efficient military power.

Internal and External Challenges

The UK–South Korea partnership is faced by shared challenges both from within and outside. Yoon’s abrupt martial law declaration jeopardised both South Korea’s status as a mature democracy and its future policy orientations. While democratic processes that nullified the martial law – followed by Yoon’s impeachment – demonstrated the country’s democratic resilience and the rule of law, the future trajectory of Seoul’s foreign policy is still in question, particularly given the diverging foreign policy outlook held by different political groups.

Too often Seoul lacks bipartisan foreign policy as political groups take different stances on its relationships with key partners such as the US, China and Japan. Under such circumstances, Yoon’s value-based diplomacy has been criticised by opposition parties. They also drafted the first impeachment bill against Yoon, criticising Yoon’s value diplomacy as it had ‘ignored geopolitical balance, provoked North Korea, China, and Russia, and pursued an unusual pro-Japan stance’. Instead, the oppositions argue that South Korea’s national interest is served best by pragmatic diplomacy that seeks to balance between the great powers, given geopolitical realities.

In his speech at the Korean Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul argued, in defence of Seoul’s value diplomacy, that it is imperative for Seoul to ‘strengthen our solidarity with democratic nations to uphold universal values and the rules-based international order – both of which have helped the Republic of Korea come as far as it has today’. While acknowledging the internal foreign policy debate, Cho asserted that South Korea ‘must reduce swings in our foreign policy and be steadfastly consistent in our vision and our goals’. However, as the diverging views stem from fundamental differences in attitude towards the country’s important neighbours, questions remain regarding policy sustainability, as a leadership change is often followed by a dramatic turn in the country’s foreign policy orientation.

A change in policy direction following a political change is also a feature of UK politics. The most recent change of government brought uncertainty about its engagement with the Indo-Pacific. In the Labour Party’s manifesto, there is no mention of the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ and its primary prescription for ‘rebuilding [external] relationships’ is with the EU, while the AUKUS partnership and the UK’s relationship with China are only briefly noted. It should be remembered that there had been scepticism over the sustainability of Britain’s Indo-Pacific tilt even during the Conservative government that initiated it. For the UK to strengthen its global relevance, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, the Labour government needs to reassure its regional partners that its engagement with the region will continue to grow.

South Korea and the UK are also faced with greater external challenges, particularly the prolonged effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led to a convergence of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security theatres. Since the outbreak of Russia’s aggression, Seoul has been providing humanitarian support to Ukraine, equipped other supporters of Ukraine with munitions and joined international sanctions against Russia. In turn, Moscow has sought external support, reaching out to Pyongyang. Since the signing of mutual military assistance from the Putin–Kim summit in June 2024, North Korea has deployed troops and munitions to the battlefront. Such illicit development of the alliance between the two illiberal states jeopardises the security of both Europe and the Korean Peninsula.

Policy Recommendations for the UK

For the UK, South Korea has become an emerging economic and security partner. The UK’s services exports to South Korea have more than doubled in current prices to £3.8 billion in 2023. According to the UK’s Department for Business and Trade, the two countries ranked as the 25th-largest trading partners to each other in 2024, indicating that there is potential for improvement. To this end, the ongoing negotiations to upgrade their free-trade agreement, signed shortly after Brexit in 2019, will help strengthen their economic interdependence. Their partnership has also been growing in the security realm, with increased joint military exercises and cooperation in the defence industry.

As a major Indo-Pacific partner alongside other like-minded countries, such as Australia and Japan, Seoul’s rise as a middle partner capable of playing a greater global role is beneficial for the UK. South Korea will support upholding the rules-based international order, in which the UK’s national interests also lie. As the US now challenges the traditional international norms it had set since the end of the Second World War, cooperation with the Indo-Pacific is needed more than ever to uphold Britain’s regional and global interests.

Moreover, UK–South Korea cooperation supports the UK’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific by developing another key partnership that links Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Enhancing ties with regional partners helps to ease the region’s scepticisms over the UK’s interest and commitment, as well as answering calls for a more constructive engagement. It is therefore in the UK’s interest to continue supporting South Korea’s vision to play such an expanded role, with the UK as a key partner. Several practical policy recommendations can be made in this respect.

First, the UK should be more proactive in developing the bilateral partnership with the South Korean government. It is therefore necessary for the UK to take the initiative in setting out a more ambitious bilateral agenda. In this respect, the UK’s response to Seoul’s political turmoil was adequate to reiterate the UK–South Korea global strategic partnership. To further these efforts, the UK should reappraise the DSA and take concrete steps to follow up on implementing promised cooperation frameworks that would prompt Seoul to reciprocate the commitment. The signing of the DSA demonstrated South Korea’s recognition of the UK as an important partner for its global ambition. Despite Seoul’s temporary leadership vacuum, the UK’s lead in reappraising the bilateral cooperation will reiterate the significance of the partnership and allow the UK to set priorities for bilateral cooperation with the next South Korean government.

Second, the UK should hold an ASEAN or Indo-Pacific Policy Dialogue with South Korea to pursue its cooperation mechanism with Southeast Asian countries in a more effective manner. When pursuing diplomacy with ASEAN member states, the UK should work with other regional partners to efficiently manage resources and maximise policy goals. South Korea serves as an ideal cooperation partner in this area as it has experience in holding these dialogues with like-minded partners such as Australia, the US and France, as well as trilateral dialogues with Australia, Japan and the US (US–Australia, US–Japan and Australia–Japan, respectively) to map out their respective Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific policies and find areas of collaboration with each other and with ASEAN countries.

Discussing ASEAN and Indo-Pacific policies with Seoul will be a constructive channel for the UK to effectively distinguish areas where it can make a visible contribution without overlapping agendas with other regional stakeholders, which could overshadow the UK’s role, and continue its engagement with Southeast Asia as anticipated. Most countries in Southeast Asia are developing countries and thus a collaboration between the UK and South Korea can complement each country by bringing together their development cooperation experiences. The UK is a prominent donor nation, but its expanded G7. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the G7 has become the most active and influential international organisation promoting democracy, freedom and a rules-based international order as the world becomes increasingly challenged by a bond between authoritarian governments and ongoing major conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. At a time when the UN Security Council is losing its effectiveness due to veto powers held by Russia and China, the stakes have become higher for the G7. 

South Korea is a capable like-minded partner for G7 members and has participated in two of the most recent four G7 meetings – in the UK in 2021 and in Japan in 2023 – upon invitation by the host countries. Its failure to be invited in 2024 was criticised by South Korean opposition parties, indicating bipartisan aspirations to join the club. As seen in NATO’s increasing collaboration with Indo-Pacific partners, Seoul is ready to play a more constructive role in promoting a rules-based international order. As the solidarity of the group faces internal challenges following the return of the Trump administration, South Korea remains an ideal partner for alternative partnerships that could help leverage the possible internal friction within the G7.

Last, the UK should carefully consider the ways to involve South Korea in the AUKUS partnership. Whilst the pact remains a trilateral cooperation mechanism, working with other regional partners is essential as its goal is regional security. The joint statement from the 2+2 meeting between South Korea and Australia in 2024 noted that Seoul expressed its interest in the project as it ‘welcomed that the AUKUS countries are considering cooperation with additional partners on Pillar II’. The possibility of involving key regional partners including not just South Korea but also Japan, New Zealand and Canada in AUKUS Pillar 2 was confirmed in the third anniversary joint statement in September 2024. Up to now, rather than creating a constructive discourse, the lack of information on expanding the AUKUS partnership has caused confusion, with speculations and calls for JAUKUS (Japan) or CAUKUS (Canada). A more controlled dialogue with the existing AUKUS members will help to maximise the benefits of the partnership.

Conclusion

South Korea has attempted for decades to define itself in various ways on the global stage. In recent years, its bilateral and multilateral relationships with like-minded countries, and with the developing world, have deepened – demonstrating Seoul’s capacity to live up to its global goals. During this process, its elevated partnership with the UK has been a key anchor.

For the UK, its ambiguous stance on engagement with the Indo-Pacific concerns regional stakeholders as to whether its actions will follow its words. While the challenges in Europe may take priority, its overtures in the Indo-Pacific should not be overlooked. Moreover, supporting South Korea’s global vision can be constructive for European security, as Seoul increases its defence ties with the UK and other European partners.

Despite its continuing political upheaval, South Korea is still an important global stakeholder. The UK should take advantage of this opportunity to step up its partnership with South Korea, even though there remain challenges from internal and external factors that hinder realising its full potential. The perennial challenge of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities development, as well as its deepening ties with Russia, is alarming not only for South Korea, but for the global liberal international order. As Seoul seeks to enhance its global profile, the limitations to its domestic and international capacity could be supplemented by support from like-minded states.

Against such a backdrop, it would be in the interest of partners such as the UK to endorse and support Seoul’s quest to play a greater role on the global stage. In turn, South Korea’s enhanced global status and the increased responsibilities it will assume can complement the UK’s efforts to sustain the liberal international order.