South Korean Public Diplomacy vis-à-vis the United States: Finding Support for Policies in Washington DC

Introduction

South Korea (hereafter Korea) and the US have had a very close alliance since the independence of the former from Japan with the help of the latter. Alliance and relations with the US have always been the center- piece of Korean foreign policy. Recently, as Korean public diplomacy evolved to become a mainstream diplomatic tool for the country, public diplomacy vis-à-vis the US also became more strategic, with an emphasis on influencing the policy elites in Washington, DC, primarily through mainly think tank-centric activities. In this chapter, I aim to explore Korea’s public diplomacy strategy vis- à-vis the US with an emphasis on the “policy public diplomacy” that was introduced in 2016. Korea has employed public diplomacy towards the US at two different levels: at the policy elite level, the main objective being to generate support for Korea’s foreign policies including in inter-Korean relations; and at the grassroots level, creating more favorability among the general American public. The former is more based on agenda-setting and framing Korean Peninsula-related issues, and Korea’s increasing role for global governance. The latter is more diffuse and attempts to increase the country’s visibility and improve its brand value. Here, I focus mainly on public diplomacy that targets policy elites, with a brief discussion of public diplomacy vis-à-vis the general public. …

BibTeX citation

@incollection{ayhan_south_2024,
    title = {South Korean Public Diplomacy vis-à-vis the United States: Finding Support for Policies in Washington {DC}},
    pages = {105-128},
    booktitle = {Divided America, Divided Korea: U.S.-Korean Relations During and After the Trump Years},
    publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
    author = {Ayhan, Kadir Jun},
    editor = {Fields, David and P. Lerner, Mitchell},
    date = {2024},
    note = {Type: Book Section},
    doi = {10.1017/9781009119269.006}
}