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South Korea to double down on ASEAN with summit
Gesture of love: Posing for a photograph are (from left) Chung Ang University professor Kim Tae-hyun, South Korean Ambassador to Indonesia Kim Chang-beom, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Bahk Sahng-hoon, Indonesia’s Information and Public Diplomacy Director General Cecep Herawan and outgoing director for East Asian and Pacific affairs Edi Yusup during a policy dialogue in Jakarta on Monday
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esture of love: Posing for a photograph are (from left) Chung Ang University professor Kim Tae-hyun, South Korean Ambassador to Indonesia Kim Chang-beom, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Bahk Sahng-hoon, Indonesia’s Information and Public Diplomacy Director General Cecep Herawan and outgoing director for East Asian and Pacific affairs Edi Yusup during a policy dialogue in Jakarta on Monday.(JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
South Korea has ambitious plans for greater cooperation with Southeast Asia, a senior diplomat visiting Indonesia has indicated, as Seoul seeks to put its New Southern Policy into practice.
Initiated by President Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s policy aims to boost trade with ASEAN to US$200 billion and attract 15 million tourists from the region by 2022, Deputy Foreign Minister Bahk Sahng-hoon told The Jakarta Post.
To drive its cooperation initiatives forward, South Korea has invited ASEAN leaders to attend a South Korea-ASEAN special summit next year in Seoul.
The event next year will have an added significance, as it coincides with the 30th anniversary of the South Korean-ASEAN dialogue partnership.
“Since President Moon is pushing forward the New Southern Policy, he wants to provide a very meaningful and valuable drive to that relationship by hosting this special summit,” Bahk said after a public policy dialogue in Jakarta on Monday.
The dialogue event, initiated by the public diplomacy departments of both the Indonesian and South Korean foreign ministries, featured Bahk as a keynote speaker and was a forum for the two countries to promote ties based on a “people-centered community for peace and prosperity”.
Initiated last year, the New Southern Policy is South Korea’s attempt to diversify its diplomatic and economic partnerships with India and ASEAN member states, particularly in the pillars of people, prosperity and peace.
For the special summit, South Korea expects ASEAN member states to provide political support for the ongoing peace process in the Korean Peninsula, among other issues, the ambassador-at-large for public diplomacy said.
The exact date of the summit and its agenda will be decided when Moon meets with ASEAN leaders next month in Singapore as part of a series of ASEAN Summit meetings with dialogue partners.
The ASEAN bloc, with a population of 630 million people, is currently South Korea’s second-largest trading partner, with two-way trade reaching $149.1 billion in 2017, according to the Seoul-backed Yonhap news agency.
South Korea is the fourth-largest foreign investor in Indonesia. Last year, South Korean pumped $2.02 billion into 3,274 projects in Indonesia, almost doubling the 2016 figure that stood at $1.06 billion.
Trade between Indonesia and South Korea reached $16.3 billion in the same period, an increase from $13.6 billion the previous year.
“It is, however, far from what we can actually achieve. It is far behind South Korea’s trade value with Vietnam at $60 billion last year,” said Edi Yusup, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry’s East Asia and Pacific Affairs director.
Speaking to reporters after Monday’s dialogue, Edi said that South Korea’s larger trade figures with Vietnam were driven by, among other factors, investments by electronics giant Samsung, which chose the mainland ASEAN country as its regional production hub.
He welcomed President Moon’s New Southern Policy but asked that Seoul establish concrete cooperation with Indonesia under the initiative more rapidly.
Experts called South Korea’s target in ASEAN ambitious, with international relations expert Choe Won-gi from the Seoul-based Korea National Diplomatic Academy saying that it had to catch up with the likes of China, Japan and the United States when it came to cementing stronger relations with ASEAN.
“In the past, South Korea only approached the regional group when it needed support at the United Nations, but then it would go away again [when it got what it wanted],” Choe, the head of the academy’s ASEAN-India studies center, told the Post on Monday.
He said South Korea was eager to fix this “mistake” with the New Southern Policy, but suggested that Seoul approach ASEAN member states by sharing expertise and experiences with the people in the region. “We have many competitors that have earlier approached ASEAN with abundant economic resources, like China with its infrastructure megaprojects. We do not have that. But, we have expertise that we can use to approach these countries,” he said.
