Comparative Analysis of Soft Power Between South Korea and the United States: A Theoretical Mechanism Approach

Abstract

Since Nye’s introduction of the soft power concept, there have been scholarly debates on whether it is real and how it works. Despite the vast volume of studies, there is a void in the literature on theoretically explaining and empirically testing if soft power can be generated without the support of hard power. To fill this gap in the literature, we developed two theoretical mechanisms that describe the mechanism of US soft power (great power) and Korean soft power (small country). We applied these theories to the US and Korean cases to demonstrate that (1) soft power across countries is not generated in the same way because countries do not have the same level of hard power; and (2) soft power can be generated without the support of hard power.