Perks and Perils of Strategic Choice: South Korea’s Iran Policy Under Moon Jae-in

Abstract

After some two decades of growing partnership between Seoul and Tehran, South Korea’s bilateral relationship with Iran reached a bottom of absolute gloom under the leadership of Moon Jae-in. Most of his presidency coincided with the administration of Donald Trump who followed a relatively contrasting approach toward the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues. Washington’s Pyongyang and Tehran policies were naturally bound to create opportunities as well as troubles for the Moon-led Korean government’s dealing with North Korea and Iran. Arguing from a perspective of strategic choice, this study asserts that Moon almost forfeited the ROK’s commercial interests in Iran for the sake of advancing his North Korean agenda. As a corollary, the South Korean–Iranian ties sank to an all-time low, culminating in unprecedented diplomatic tensions between the two countries over the issue of Iran’s oil incomes frozen in Seoul. The Mideast country’s subsequent resort to gunboat diplomacy by seizing a Korean oil tanker in the Persian Gulf did also little to break the gridlock over the dilemma of blocked assets because any satisfactory and lasting solution regarding this intractable trouble largely hinged on resolving the fate of Iran’s nuclear deal between Tehran and Washington.