Thus far, the highlight of Korea’s New Southern Policy has been the ASEAN-Korea Commemorative Summit, held in Busan last November to celebrate a 30-year partnership. There, a number of concrete actions were agreed upon.

The size of the ASEAN-Korea cooperation fund was doubled to US$14 million a year. From 2020 to 2022, a Korea-led project called “Higher Education for ASEAN Talent”, worth $8.3 million, will provide 90 ASEAN postgraduate students with full PhD scholarships. A separate program for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), worth $6.9 million, will help to lay the foundation for the enhancement of human resources in ASEAN member states. Korea will also work with the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Center in a $3.5 million project to improve ASEAN’s disaster management capacity.

In a nutshell, President Moon and ten ASEAN leaders pledged to build a people-centered community of peace and prosperity between Korea and ASEAN. In addition, President Moon has shown a strong commitment to the Korea-ASEAN partnership by becoming the first Korean president to visit all 10 ASEAN member states in less than two years, as he promised.

In 2019, the two-way trade volume between Korea and ASEAN was $151 billion. Korea is ASEAN’s fifth-largest trading partner, while ASEAN is Korea’s second-largest. Last year, ASEAN was also the most popular region for Korean travellers, with more than 10 million Koreans visiting Southeast Asian destinations, including Bali. In 2019 alone, Korea’s investment in ASEAN was $8.3 billion, while about 10,000 Korean companies employ millions of ASEAN workers. All in all, through the New Southern Policy, Korea has been laying, gradually but consistently, the meaningful grounds to upgrade the Korea-ASEAN strategic partnership.

COVID-19 appeared unexpectedly early this year, creating an environment unfavourable to the full-fledged strengthening of cooperative ties between Korea and ASEAN. As a result of domestic lockdowns and flight bans, people-to-people exchanges have been suspended and the flow of goods has been severely affected.

COVID-19, however, has also provided Korea and ASEAN with an opportunity to further expand cooperation in human security and beyond. After all, people have always been at the center of the three pillars of Korea’s New Southern Policy. It was against this background that President Moon emphasized the importance of timely support for the region’s quarantine and medical needs at the Special ASEAN Plus Three Summit on COVID-19, held on April 14 by video conference.

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