South Korea's Role as an Emerging Middle Power among Security Concerns

This chapter analyses the emerging international role of South Korea as a middle power. In recent years, South Korean foreign policy discourse and practices have focused on the goal of achieving a new international role and status, in line with the country’s economic growth. In particular, after the launch of the ‘Global Korea’ strategy in 2008, South Korea started to implement a set of specific policies aimed at translating its aspirations as a middle power into a new role in the global arena. The South Korean case allows us to understand whether and how the political use of the concept and the related international practice have differed from traditional declinations, in particular in the context of non-western rising powers; thus improving the theorisation of middle power and re-establishing its value as an analytical tool.