1 week Ago
For most Indians, South Korea is synonymous with major brands like LG, Samsung, Hyundai, and Kia, among others, or with K-pop and K-drama. For Koreans, India is where they export these too. If you take them out of the equation, the bilateral relationship isn’t very exciting and may be even a tad boring.
For Delhi-Seoul relations to go beyond this, the two sides have to have bold ideas. What struck me during my recent visit to South Korea to attend the Seoul Diplomacy Forum was the poverty of such ideas to forge a bilateral strategic partnership, despite a keen desire to do so. The strategic circumstances that can foster these ideas exist.
What is missing could be political will. While New Delhi is too preoccupied, Seoul may be moving a bit too slowly. Let’s first understand Seoul’s new strategic context that could potentially change its slow-paced relationship with India.
North Korea getting away with its nuclear weapons programme — by wooing Donald Trump, partnering with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and manipulating Beijing — along with Kim Jong Un’s garbage balloons has sent alarm bells ringing in Seoul. North Korean nuclear adventurism and the international community’s inability to check this has convinced many Korean strategic thinkers that should Kim unleash an attack on South Korea, the United States (US) might not come to its aid. The recent North Korea-Russia defence agreement has sharply heightened Seoul’s concerns.
Then, there is China’s ever-increasing assertiveness in the region. For Seoul, this presents a four-stroke security puzzle. This has forced an otherwise strategically cautious South Korea to look for new partners, solutions, and strategies.
It seems to have come up with a multi-pronged approach — some official, some gaining momentum within the Korean strategic community, and others still taking shape. First of all, there is a fast-growing nuke-for-nuke narrative among Seoul’s strategic elite. The more Kim’s nuclear arsenal matures, the less the international community seems to be able to keep him in check.
And the more uncertain the American security guarantees become, the sharper the Korean nuclear argument gets, even though South Korea’s official position continues to be anti-nuclear. The second piece of the Korean response to its security dilemma has been to reconcile with its former coloniser, Japan. Kim’s threats, China’s aggression, and America’s ambivalence — many of Seoul’s challenges are Japan’s as well.
For Seoul today, contemporary security challenges are far more consequential than memories of historical subjugation. Last year’s Camp David summit between Japan, the US, and South Korea was just the beginning. South Korea is also slowly shedding its strategic ambivalence, not just regarding China.
Having abandoned its initial hesitation regarding Indo-Pacific and Quad (for fear of getting caught in a geopolitical competition between the US and China in the region), Seoul today has an Indo-Pacific strategy and might even be open to working with Indo-Pacific mini-laterals such as Quad. It also launched a New Southern Policy aiming to broaden its strategic periphery, emerge from China’s sphere of influence, and engage with new actors in the wider neighbourhood as it seeks to be a “global pivotal state”. This is where India comes in.
The rising geopolitical tensions in the Korean peninsula, South Korea’s determination to come out of Beijing’s strategic orbit, and India’s growing interest in the Indo-Pacific provide an opportunity for Seoul and Delhi to discover each other’s strategic potential and infuse new energy and direction into their strategic partnership. The two have a lot more in common than is generally understood. The two sides have hardly any disagreements, have lots of positive sentiments regarding each other, and there are many areas for potential cooperation.
Both view China as a challenge but are careful about how to address the challenge given the physical proximity and strong economic relationship. More so, the fact that both Delhi and Seoul today are less concerned about what Beijing will think of their respective strategic postures further creates possibilities for the two to work together. China is indeed the biggest military and economic power in the region, but a coming together of like-minded countries in the region has enough ballast to deal with it, or at least make Beijing think twice before it gets too aggressive.
Consider this: With or without the US, if regional States in the Indo-Pacific, such as Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea, engage in strategic consultations, work together on regional security issues, and collectively send out the right messages, it would work as a formidable force of dissuasion towards Chinese aggression. Coming back to Delhi-Seoul relations, the resetting of the Seoul-Delhi relationship must have at least four parts: A deeper and structured political engagement, upgrading the relationship from the current joint commission level to a 2+2 format, defence co-production including for third-country markets, and most importantly, a joint India-South Korea initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) like the one between New Delhi and Washington. As the two strategic communities deepen their engagement, a touch of pop culture can further enhance mutual understanding.
So, when South Korean diplomats in India recreate Naatu Naatu, it’s only fitting that Indians give Gangnam Style a shot. Happymon Jacob teaches India’s foreign policy at JNU, and is the founder of the Council for Strategic and Defence Research. The views expressed are personal.
