Korean foreign and national security policy

Abstract

Even though the Cold War has ended, South Korea’s acute sense of insecurity has not decreased. On the contrary, Jong-Yun Bae argues in Chapter 9 that its security situation has worsened with mounting conventional and nuclear threats from North Korea. Moreover, shifting US global strategic interests, the rise of competing actors in the region, expanded policy objectives, and a growing number of domestic actors have made the process of foreign and national security policy-making harder and more complicated. In particular, legislative intervention, mass media oversight, and civil society activism with varying interests and preferences have fundamentally delimited the scope of foreign and national security policy by the executive branch. The president and presidential staff are still dominant in the policy-making process, but they are fundamentally constrained by other actors. These changes make it ever more critical to coordinate conflicting interests among multiple actors in the decision-making process of South Korea’s foreign and national security policy.