KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
July 2024 marked the third time South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol joined a NATO summit along with the leaders of the alliance’s other Indo-Pacific partner countries (Australia, Japan and New Zealand), informally known as the IP4. This represents a new phase in South Korea’s relations with the Atlantic alliance, but building a lasting friendship will take time and requires navigating a series of challenges. Amid an emerging global division of democratic and authoritarian camps and the challenges posed by China and Russia for both the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions, it is incumbent on both Brussels and Seoul to build a more cooperative relationship. That journey, however, has just begun.
South Korea, or the Republic of Korea (ROK), and NATO nations have a lot in common, including shared values, and status as political democracies and advanced economies. In the security arena, however, NATO has long been more of a distant friend for the ROK. This has related to differing threat perceptions regarding North Korea and Russia and to geographic distance.
During the Cold War, NATO saw Pyongyang as one of the Soviet Union’s many vassal states, merely an annoyance rather than a direct threat. But from 2006 onward, the North Atlantic Council — NATO’s principal political decision-making body — began to regularly condemn Pyongyang’s repeated violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions in the “strongest terms possible.” Seoul appreciated NATO’s statements but saw them more as a supportive gesture than a decisive contribution to the security situation.
With no common threat, the difficulties of coordinating behavior and building a good working relationship between NATO and South Korea were reinforced by distance and location.
South Korea similarly regarded the Soviet Union as a communist overseer of North Korea, rather than an existential threat to Seoul. The threat North Korea posed to its southern neighbor was more immediate and overshadowed any potential Soviet threat. Since Pyongyang began its nuclear program in the 1970s, South Korea has aimed to denuclearize the north and secure Washington’s extended deterrence. Annual ROK-U.S. security talks have been the mainstay in America’s security guarantee on the Korean Peninsula, but NATO’s strategic potential vis-à-vis North Korea was not given any real attention.
The nine-hour time difference between Seoul and Brussels was also a factor. With no common threat, the difficulties of coordinating behavior and building a good working relationship were reinforced by distance and location.
Things began to change in the 2000s, when Seoul participated in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan through the contribution of troops and a civilian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team. The first ever high-level contact between senior officials of the two sides occurred in December 2005, when Ban Ki-moon, the ROK’s foreign minister (and later U.N. secretary-general) paid a visit to NATO headquarters. This was followed by intermittent visits from ROK foreign ministers, including in 2009, 2010 and 2016.
The first official visit by a NATO representative to South Korea was in April 2013, when Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen came to Seoul and exchanged views over the Korean Peninsula and ways to work together. In November 2017, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha during his first visit to Seoul. Although such high-level contacts were important, they remained intermittent rather than regularized and issues discussed largely focused on North Korea and its nuclear program.
Seoul and Brussels technically formalized their relationship with the signing of a partnership agreement in 2012, the Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program (ITPP), which outlined areas for dialogue and cooperation between the two parties. It was really not until 2022, however, that South Korea and NATO came to establish a more serious formal partnership, with the designation of the South Korean embassy in Belgium as Seoul’s mission to NATO following Yoon’s participation in the NATO Summit in Madrid.
Three main trends underlie this shift in ROK-NATO relations: Russia’s war against Ukraine, Yoon’s focus on positioning South Korea as a “global pivotal state,” and China’s emergence on NATO’s strategic radar. Putin’s aggression catapulted South Korea into a role as an important partner for Europe’s defense. Seoul is an industrial power that can help maintain NATO’s arsenals. South Korean defense companies made several contracts to export tanks, self-propelled howitzers and light attack fighters to Poland. In August 2022, Seoul announced that three major defense companies in Korea had exported $23 billion dollars’ worth of arms to Poland.
Putin’s aggression catapulted South Korea into a role as an important partner for Europe’s defense.
Washington welcomed South Korea’s arms export to Poland as a contribution to NATO. Likewise, NATO considers South Korean defense industry as a useful resource to provide weapons, particularly as it can provide weapons quickly. On December 6, 2022, within four months of signing a weapons deal, the first shipment of 10 tanks and 24 howitzers was unloaded in Poland. Polish President Andrzej Duda said that “the quick pace of this delivery is of crucial importance in the face of Russian aggression and the war in Ukraine.”
Furthermore, South Korea has played an indirect, but significant role in providing ammunition to Ukraine. The Washington Post reported at the beginning of 2023 that South Korea was “larger supplier of artillery ammunition for Ukraine than all European nations combined.” Yoon visited Ukraine after attending the 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, underscoring Seoul’s resolve to support NATO’s assistance to Ukraine and highlighting strengthening South Korea-NATO ties. Following Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Ukraine in March 2023, Yoon’s visit to Ukraine was a signal of solidarity among the IP4.
At the same time, Yoon, in his second year in power, pursued his global pivotal state policy, aiming for Seoul to take more responsibility in world affairs beyond North Korea’s nuclear threat. The Yoon administration envisions South Korea’s “leadership role extend[ing] far beyond the Korean Peninsula in advancing international cooperation and upholding the liberal international order.” South Korea’s first ever Indo-Pacific Strategy, released in late 2022, shows how Seoul is pursuing this policy.
The ROK’s broader role was also a key element of Yoon’s statement at the 2023 NATO Summit, where he said, “In this hyperconnected era, the security of Europe and Asia cannot be separated.” He added, “In its 2022 strategy document, NATO affirmed the close links between the security of the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions and emphasized the need for mutual partnership for a rules-based international order.”
In this respect, NATO is a valuable partner and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a serious challenge to the liberal rules-based international order that South Korea aims to uphold. In July 2023, South Korea demonstrated its political commitment and upgraded its relationship with NATO, signing a new ITPP that covered 11 sectors of cooperation on issues such as counterterrorism, disarmament and nonproliferation, emerging technologies, cybersecurity and public diplomacy.
China’s emergence as a new security challenge — for both NATO and South Korea — has further increased NATO’s interest in cooperating with South Korea.
China’s emergence as a new security challenge — for both NATO and South Korea — has further increased NATO’s interest in cooperating with South Korea and the other IP4 partners. But Beijing is not yet positioned as a source of clear and present danger for Seoul. The Chinese market is simply too valuable to disregard. China is South Korea’s number one trading partner. These days, NATO’s concern over China has increased, with Beijing labeled as “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine” at the 2024 NATO Summit in Washington. South Korea’s perception of China has been getting more hostile, but it will take time to reach a security consensus over China and to coordinate a common approach to address the threats posed by Beijing.
Meanwhile, with Seoul strengthening ties with NATO and supplying ammunitions to Ukraine, Moscow turned to Pyongyang for weapons support and the two sides have revitalized and strengthened their bilateral relationship. North Korea provides artillery shells in exchange for food, oil and weapons technologies. This June, Putin made his first visit to Pyongyang since 2000, where he and Kim Jong Un signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty that included a mutual defense pledge.
This is not an isolated episode, but an expected outcome about which many had warned in advance. The Chosun Daily — a conservative newspaper that is sympathetic to the Yoon administration — blamed the government for the Moscow-Pyongyang alliance, saying the “government’s assessment was flawed” and quoted a former high-ranking South Korean government official, who remarked, “It’s as if our government has been blindsided by Russia.”
However, this backlash is likely to reinforce the ROK-NATO relationship further. South Korea’s national security adviser warned that the ROK’s policy would be contingent on the scope of Russia-North Korea cooperation. In this view, Seoul would not hesitate to strengthen its security cooperation with NATO, even at the expense of its relations with Moscow.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that Russia-North Korea alliance will stay as strong in the years to come. Only time will tell whether Russia’s recent pivot toward North Korea and its new friendship with Pyongyang will survive. At this point, it is evident that Putin needs the 152mm artillery shells that Kim can supply and is willing to swap food and oil for ammunition, but Seoul might be a better market for Moscow and provider of technologies in the longer-term. Ultimately, Russia-North Korea collaboration presents opportunity and challenges for ROK-NATO relations in years to come.
Several experts predict that the current Russia-North Korea relationship, driven by the Ukraine war, is likely to be a short-term cooperation. If this is the case, the shared threat perception between South Korea and NATO on Russia and North Korea may not be sustainable in the long term. Consequently, the duration and trajectory of the war in Ukraine could influence the South Korea-NATO relationship. If the war in Ukraine continues for an extended period, the Russia-North Korea collaboration is likely to become similarly prolonged, thereby solidifying the South Korea-NATO relationship.
Yoon’s attendance at the NATO Summit for the third consecutive year holds significant meaning in light of the summit’s strong denunciation of the Russia-North Korea relationship. He held a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings and issued a joint statement with the IP4 countries noting that the “illicit military cooperation” between Russia and North Korea “undermines peace and stability” in both the Indo-Pacific and European region” and that the recent treaty between Moscow and Pyongyang “is contrary to multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
Also, South Korea and the other IP4 partners approved “flagship projects” with NATO with specific focus on support to Ukraine, cyber defense, exchanging information on the challenges posed by disinformation, and artificial intelligence. These IP4 projects will be a useful platform for building up their multilateral cooperation with one another and with NATO, with prospects for further boosting the South Korea-NATO relationship.
The reinvigorated Moscow-Pyongyang alliance is an outcome of Russia’s strategic disaster in Ukraine, but its impact is likely to transform a young friendship between Brussel and Seoul into a solid partnership of democracies. It is premature to say anything conclusive at this point, but South Korea and NATO seem to have begun a new journey. That journey might not be smooth, but it is necessary.
Geunwook Lee is a professor of Political Science at Sogang University.
Kwang-Jin Kim is a retired brigadier general of the Republic of Korea Air Force and a chair professor at Sookmyung Women’s University.