earticle

영어

South Korea has often been described as a ‘shrimp among whales,’ whereby a small weak state finds itself surrounded by regional and global behemoths, dramatically limiting the country’s strategic options. Within these narrow geostrategic constraints, different administrations in Seoul have tried to leverage Seoul’s competitive advantages through policy platforms which also consider the relative weakness of the Republic of Korea (ROK), especially when faced with the additional challenge of the hostile Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) regime to the North. These range from traditional balancing, band-wagoning, and hedging, through conceptualizations of South Korea as a ‘pivot’, ‘hub’, or ‘bridging’ state, to assorted incarnations of ‘middlepowerhood.’ This paper looks, however, on the one hand to expand geostrategic considerations to wider ‘geopolynomic’ ones, embracing the intersection of geostrategy, geopolitics, geoeconomics, geohistory, and geoculture; and on the other to reconceptualize South Korea as a second-tier power with far more resources than would generally be the case for a middle power, let alone a shrimp among whales. Instead of dwelling on the geostrategic challenges and limitations of the ROK, it highlights opportunities for South Korea, either acting unilaterally, or in conjunction with others, to get the most diplomatic bang for its buck.