South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has made strengthening the alliance relationship with the United States a key part of his foreign policy positions. At the same time, South Korea continues to maintain a decent relationship with China, pursuing a precarious position to decide its role in the context of the growing US–China rivalry. The US has made the trilateral cooperation and close coordination among the US, South Korea, and Japan the centerpiece of its Indo-Pacific strategy, while South Korea and Japan have maintained their contentious relationship. The articles in this special issue address the challenges that South Korea faces today, focusing on two major themes in the contemporary era: first, how the US–China rivalry and power competition affect South Korea’s security and economic foreign policies, and second, how the bilateral tensions between South Korea and Japan affect regional security and alliance capabilities.

The US has declared its intent to strategically compete with the rising power of China on all fronts. However, Washington’s overt extension of US–China rivalry into the ideological realm presents unique challenges to its Indo-Pacific order-building process. The balance of threat theory provides a useful conceptual toolkit to unravel the case of the geostrategic positioning of South Korea, which is a close US ally and already engaged in a delicate balancing act between the US and China, to set the stage for a deeper examination of how the strategic community within South Korea views America’s augmented policy of resisting “authoritarianism” and national debates on the prospect of an ideational “threat” from China. It then contemplates how policymakers in South Korea could respond to the new challenges this raises, concluding that the advent of an intensified values competition requires further finessing of their already delicate balancing act.

In this study, we examine South Korea's foreign policy strategy in the context of the increasing strategic rivalry between the United States and China. We ask why South Korea is relatively hesitant to actively balance against China, especially compared to other US allies like Japan. We present a theory that examines how the lack of territorial and maritime disputes between a US ally and China affects an ally's foreign policy strategy in the US–China rivalry, to explain the case of South Korea. In general, when a US ally is engaged in an ongoing, active territorial and/or maritime dispute with China, we expect the US ally to more actively help the US balance against China. Because bilateral relations between the US ally and China are already tense, the US ally can afford to side with the US without being as vulnerable to Chinese retaliation. On the other hand, when a US ally has no ongoing, active territorial and/or maritime dispute with China, the US ally is expected to be more cautious in siding with the US against China because doing so can provoke China to retaliate in ways more costly than if they already had ongoing disputes. We find that without ongoing, active disputes with China, South Korea is more vulnerable to retaliation by China through critical issues like North Korea and trade. As a result, it is difficult for South Korea to side with the US in actively balancing against China.

Mounting geoeconomic competition between the United States (US) and China alongside the global shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war have drawn significant attention to the instability and vulnerability issues in the global supply chain (GSC), which is critical for international trade, production, and economic security. Can the US, South Korea, and Japan successfully coordinate their efforts to establish a secure and resilient GSC in key industries? Can these efforts promote economic security? By defining the efforts to reshape the GSC as part of the US–China power competition, this study evaluates the impact of its restructuring around the US on various aspects of the economic and national security of South Korea and Japan. Overall, the findings highlight that restructuring the GSC poses complex challenges for South Korea and its foreign policy in the contemporary globalization era.

With a security alliance with the United States and deep economic relations with China, South Korea faces complex foreign policy choices amid US–China competition. A critical decision is whether to join the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), a US-led grouping widely viewed as aiming to counter China in the Indo-Pacific. The choice depends on its domestic politics as much as its relationships with both superpowers. Using a public opinion survey with a priming experiment, we investigate South Korean citizens’ preferences regarding the Quad. We find that, without additional information, nearly half of the respondents supported joining the Quad. Yet neither mentioning the security benefits of joining the Quad nor mentioning the potential economic costs associated with Chinese retaliation for joining the Quad changed their level of support. Nor did we detect any treatment heterogeneity. Beyond the experiment, we find that threat perceptions and party affiliation are strongly correlated with respondents’ preferences.

This article analyzes how Shinzo Abe employed various strategies to challenge Korean sovereignty over Dokdo on the international stage and to promote Japan’s territorial claims on the islets domestically. Through a series of speeches discussed at Japan’s National Diet among Abe’s cabinet ministers and members of the Diet, this article investigates how and by what policy instruments the Abe cabinet infiltrated and revitalized Japan’s territorial claims over Dokdo across the nation. Several members of the Diets and ministers discussed the Dokdo issue amid worsening Korea–Japan relations stemming from Abe’s revisionism. Content analysis revealed that Japanese lawmakers and cabinet members were very frustrated about Korea’s effective control of Dokdo as well as the Korean government’s stance on comfort women and forced labor. Quantitative analyses found increases in the average intensity of Dokdo remarks following the Abe cabinet’s hardline stance toward President Moon’s government. Regression analysis confirms that the average intensity of Dokdo remarks was intensified by cabinet approval ratings, conservative rightwing politicians, and Japan’s domestic economic conditions.

South Korea and Japan have maintained tense bilateral relations over their unresolved historical and territorial disputes for decades. The US has repeatedly called for improved relations between South Korea and Japan and underlined the importance of US–South Korea–Japan trilateral relations to address North Korean threats and regional security challenges. Would we, then, expect the US to play a role in helping to mediate South Korea–Japan problems? If so, under what conditions and to what extent would the US get involved in South Korea–Japan disputes? If not, what makes the US hesitate to do so? We argue that US involvement in South Korea–Japan bilateral relations depends on the degree to which the US perceives the tensions as costly and risky for US national security interests. With an issues-based analysis, a granular examination of South Korea–Japan trade disputes and the spat over the GSOMIA in 2019, and qualitative interviews with former US government and military officials, we find that the US is more likely to involve itself in South Korea–Japan relations and more likely to use its leverage as a major power with its allies when it perceives significant risks to its capabilities to address security challenges, primarily those posed by North Korea.