Eurasia poses opportunities, challenges for Korea

For South Korea, Eurasia is a continental landmass of opportunities for energy supply, economic growth, cultural exchanges and other untapped possibilities. But it also entails daunting geopolitical challenges the divided country has long confronted.

Despite a series of constant obstacles to its diplomacy including a nuclearizing North Korea, the South has consistently pushed to expand its foreign policy coverage toward the continent that has emerged as the fulcrum of global power and wealth.

In recent years, the Park Geun-hye government has been revving up its “Eurasia Initiative” to link transport and energy infrastructure across the Eurasian plate, though geopolitics still gets in the way of its implementation.

Analysts say Seoul should continue to explore diplomatic and economic possibilities based on its middle-power clout, and take advantage of enhanced ties with Eurasian states to find solutions to North Korea issues.

“Perched on the easternmost tip of Eurasia, South Korea largely has two options for its diplomacy: One is moving toward the western Pacific and the other toward the constellation of continental players in Eurasia -- Russia, Central Asia and Europe,” said Kim Tae-hyung, international relations professor at Soongsil University.

“Eurasia has historically offered both opportunities and challenges. Despite geopolitical hindrances, there has been no other choice for Seoul but to constantly explore possibilities there to advance its economic interests and help address peninsular issues such as reunification.”

Uncontrollable outside influences have long constrained Korea’s independent diplomacy toward the continent, making it difficult for the peninsular state to develop its full geopolitical potential as a bridge between maritime and continental civilizations, historians say.

Korea’s strategic thinking toward Eurasia was impeded often by the regional power dynamics, notably when China held a suzerain-tributary relationship with Korea under a Sino-centric order that existed until the mid-19th century, and Japan occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45.

The Cold War -- when Korea stood as a stalwart ally of the U.S. in an intense political, military and ideological conflict against the then communist bloc led by the Soviet Union -- also crippled Korea’s Eurasia-bound diplomacy.

“Given its location on the map, Korea possesses the geopolitical advantages as a ‘peninsular, bridge and border state.’ But those advantages have turned into geopolitical ordeals throughout the country’s checkered history,” said Park Myung-lim, a peace scholar at Yonsei University.

“In order to overcome these challenges, South Korea needs a comprehensive strategy toward Eurasia that also includes addressing North Korea’s nuclear issue, as a crucial task to spur the South’s Eurasia drive.”

In the late 1980s toward the end of the Cold War, new opportunities emerged for Korea to step up its diplomacy for Eurasian states.

Riding the international reconciliatory mood and the socialist bloc’s moves toward openness and reform, the Roh Tae-woo government pushed for “Nordpolitik,” or Northern Policy -- a bold initiative regarded as one of South Korea’s most successful foreign policy approaches.

Taking its name from the West Germany policy of Ostpolitik, or Eastern Policy, toward then-East Germany, Seoul’s policy drive sought to establish diplomatic relations with the traditional allies of North Korea -- the former Soviet Union and China -- and other socialist states, with an aim to improve its economy and pressure the North to take steps to reduce cross-border tensions.

Under the initiative, South Korea built ties with Hungary and Poland in 1989. In 1990, it established diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, then Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. Seoul also established ties with Moscow that year and with China two years later.

“When Nordpolitik was adopted, diplomatic situations were very favorable, and the Roh government grabbed the chance to clear the obstacles that had clogged up Korea’s diplomacy toward the wider Eurasian continent,” said Chun In-young, professor emeritus at Seoul National University.

Amid the international criticism of China’s bloody crackdowns on the massive democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, the Chinese government took Seoul’s diplomatic overture as a chance to ease its isolation.

The then-Soviet Union also welcomed Seoul’s northward policy as an opportunity to facilitate its policy of openness and reform.

Based on the diplomatic foundation that Nordpolitik laid, South Korea continued to pursue deeper ties with China, Russia and other former communist states, although its security alliance with the U.S. against North Korean aggression has posed challenges to managing ties with America’s former foes.

As the regional powers have vied to expand their influence over Eurasia that accounts for more than 70 percent of the world’s population and 60 percent of the global GDP, Seoul renewed its policy attention to the continent in recent years.

In October 2013, some eight months into office, President Park Geun-hye unveiled her Eurasia Initiative through which she has strived to bolster economic cooperation with Eurasian states by establishing a pan-Eurasia system of transport and energy networks that link Korea to those states.

Seoul has promoted the initiative to revitalize the regional economy, create jobs, push Pyongyang toward openness and reform, defuse cross-border tensions and lay the groundwork for national reunification.

As part of the initiative, Seoul launched the “Eurasia Express” last month. The project is a 20-day, 14,400-kilometer railway trip reaching Germany’s Berlin via China’s Beijing and Russia’s Vladivostok. Garnering much global attention, the project raised hopes that Pyongyang would participate as an integral part of the initiative to help promote peace and cooperation in the region.

The so-called Rajin-Khasan logistic cooperation project involving North Korea is also part of the initiative. The project seeks to modernize the 54-kilometer-long Rajin-Hasan railway, which is to be used to transport freight from Hasan in Russia to Rajin in the North by railway, and then to a South Korean port by ship.

To test the feasibility of the project, some 45,000 tons of coal from Russia was transported to Pohang, South Korea’s southeastern port city, via Rajin last November, and another 140,000 tons to three South Korean ports in Dangjin, Gwangyang and Boryeong in April this year.

With much publicity, the Eurasia Initiative appears to have fared well. But a series of geopolitical variables darken the prospect of its success: North Korea under the fledgling leadership of Kim Jong-un continues to raise security uncertainties on the peninsula and Russia’s ongoing conflict with the West to aggravate geopolitical tensions.

“The strategic vision embedded in the initiative is forward-looking and necessary for Korea’s future. Yet, current overall geopolitical conditions are not favorable for Seoul to actively push for it,” said Chun of Seoul National University.

“Security conditions are still bad due to North Korea’s adherence to its nuclear ambitions, while Russia’s Putin engages in a conflict with the West and seeks to evolve strategic ties with China, which the U.S. strives to keep in check.”

Above all, the trickiest variable for the successful implementation of the Eurasia drive is North Korea, experts said, stressing the need for the South to devise a more effective, creative way to lift the North out of the political, economic backwater.

“Even though there will be a flurry of economic, cultural and people-to-people exchanges across the continent, the issues of peace and security, which obviously trump other issues, have remained unsettled with the North posing constant security challenges,” said Park of Yonsei University.

“In light of this, South Korea needs to focus more on the North Korea issue as a key point of its Eurasia initiative. It also needs a more comprehensive Eurasian strategy, which includes stably managing relations with both the U.S. and China, to maximize its potential as a peninsular state.”

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)