[Insight & Opinion] Korea-ASEAN Strategy: The Challenge Is Implementation

[Asia Economy] President Yoon Suk-yeol attended the Korea-ASEAN Summit held in Cambodia in November and announced the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and the Korea-ASEAN Solidarity Initiative (KASI, hereafter KASI). The core message was to further upgrade and strengthen South Korea’s ASEAN-focused diplomacy. ASEAN leaders also welcomed this. Let us examine its significance from several perspectives.

The IPS is a plan to strengthen tailored strategic cooperative relationships across regions including the North Pacific, Southeast Asia-ASEAN, South Asia, Oceania, the Indian Ocean coastal Africa, and Europe, based on three core principles of inclusiveness, trust, and reciprocity under the three visions of freedom, peace, and prosperity. The key focus areas include establishing a rules- and norms-based order, promoting the rule of law and human rights, comprehensive security cooperation such as non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, maritime, cyber, and health security, expanding economic security networks, bridging the digital divide, climate change and energy security, customized development cooperation, and two-way cultural exchanges?nine agenda items in total.

Within this broad regional and thematic framework of the IPS, KASI corresponds to a strategy specialized for ASEAN. KASI aims to strengthen political and security cooperation in addition to the economic, social, and cultural sectors emphasized by previous administrations. In the political and security domain, comprehensive security is the core cooperation agenda. In the economic sector, to enhance cooperation in future industries of high interest to ASEAN such as electric vehicles, batteries, and digital technologies, it proposes strengthening the Korea-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) by including digital trade cooperation and expanding environmental and vaccine/bio cooperation. In this process, South Korea clearly expressed support for ASEAN centrality and ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP), where ASEAN takes the driver’s seat and leads. This maintains the consistency of South Korea’s foreign policy that prioritizes ASEAN.

Our IPS emphasizes inclusiveness as one of its three core principles. Inclusiveness is also a principle highly valued by ASEAN. South Korea, ASEAN, and India particularly emphasize inclusiveness. South Korea, like ASEAN, sends a message that it will actively expand mutually beneficial cooperative spaces without targeting or excluding any specific country amid intensifying US-China competition.

Furthermore, for the future development of Korea-ASEAN relations, South Korea proposed to ASEAN leaders to elevate the Korea-ASEAN dialogue relationship to the highest cooperation level of 'Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP)' in 2024, the 35th anniversary of establishing Korea-ASEAN dialogue relations. To practically promote future cooperation with ASEAN, South Korea pledged to double the ASEAN-related cooperation fund by 2027. This clearly expresses South Korea’s intention to establish the highest-level partnership with ASEAN beyond a simple economic partnership, through all-round cooperation including diplomacy and security.

The broad ASEAN strategy framework is now established. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and the challenge lies in implementation. It is important to establish an effective implementation plan to enhance mutual benefits for both South Korea and ASEAN. Especially since Indonesia, the ASEAN chair and leader next year, intends to emphasize the implementation of AOIP priority areas (maritime cooperation, connectivity, UN Sustainable Development Goals, economic cooperation), it is necessary to listen carefully to ASEAN’s voices and reflect them in South Korea’s future ASEAN policies.

Seo Jeong-in, Former Ambassador to ASEAN