South Korean Diplomacy Between Domestic Challenges and Soft Power

Abstract

South Korean diplomacy abroad is constrained by peninsular concerns and, recovering from the national political trauma in 2016-17 and instructed by the presidential Blue House, the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is focusing more on consultation with the domestic public than ever before. The North Korean issue is all too familiar for Korean diplomats, and it has the remarkable capacity of paralysing the South’s diplomacy, whilst the latter is taking an ambitious government into largely uncharted territory.