By Robert E. Kelly

In 2009, (South) Korea and the European Union signed an Free Trade Agreement (the European Union is Korea’s second biggest export market). Brussels and Seoul have great interest in future co-operation, although deeper engagement is unlikely. Most importantly, neither side is relevant to the basic security issues of the other. Specifically, the European Union cannot assist Korea in its acute security dilemma, and the ‘sovereigntist’ Koreans do not share European preferences for ‘soft power’, regionalisation, and multilateral collective security. However, Korea is likely to pursue the relationship for cost-free prestige-taking. And the European Union will understand this ‘Asian bridge’ as a success for the promotion of liberal-democratic values in a non-European context. Europhile, pro-regionalist elites may pursue ‘inter-regional’ ties to bolster the European Union within Europe, but deep Korean attachment to the Westphalian state model will stymie pan-regionalism.

Neither the European Union nor Korea can meaningfully contribute to the other’s primary security challenges – a central pillar for deeper bilateral relations among states. As James Rogers and Luis Simón have noted frequently, the European Union lacks serious power projection far from the European continent. Its ‘loss of strength gradient’ toward East Asia has been severe, particularly since the British retrenchment from east of Suez. The European Union does not have the means to deter North Korea or China. European land forces do not bolster American forces on the Korean peninsula. Although a participant in the Proliferation Security Initiative and the (now defunct) Agreed Framework, the European Union plays no role in the new Six Party framework. Similarly, Korea is irrelevant to the European Union’s big security issues, such as the course of Russia, terrorism and the Middle East, or Eastern Europe’s stabilisation. Their shared liberal democratic values place them broadly in the liberal security community of the democratic peace, but a more positive military contribution to either’s security is unlikely.

Both sides derive prestige from the relationship. Korea, until recently small and peripheral to the global economy, captures most of these benefits. A bilateral relationship with Europeans flatters the Korean imagination of its stature in world politics. Instead of a half-country whose international image is clouded by a clownish rogue despot in the North, Korea lusts for the European Union’s status and rank. Its famous antiquities, high-profile tourism locations, rich history of art and culture – all nested in a wealthy, healthy, international society broadly at peace with itself – strongly attracts the Korean imagination.

A well-known, highly recognised ‘global actor’, the European Union captures little direct prestige from Korea. However, the Korean partnership does benefit pro-European elites within the European Union, most notably in Brussels. The ‘Euro-bureaucracy’, trapped in a decades-long turf-battle with the bureaucracies in the Member States, is likely to seize on the prestige of a direct European Union-level relationship with a G20 economy. This is ammunition against critics that the European Union is simply a trade deal or that other states do not take it seriously. If the 2010 host of the G20 summit takes the European Union seriously enough to label it a ‘strategic partner’, then Brussels gains in the intra-European conflict to establish the European Union more soundly and eventually build a real Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Finally, the European Union does reap psychological gains of domestic values validation. Korea is a great successes in the transplantation of liberal, democratic, Enlightenment values outside of the West; Korea is routinely touted a central case that these values are not ‘Western’, but in fact universal. This excises the cultural-racial bite of the ‘Asian values’ and ‘human-rights imperialism’ arguments of Asian actors such as the Chinese Communist Party or Matathir Mohamad. Conversely, Korea will find little back-traffic, despite heroic efforts to export the ‘Korean Wave’.

The European Union and Korea have an unremarkable relationship. Given the mutual irrelevance of one’s security to the other, it is easy to predict that no alliance is likely. The Free Trade Agreement is step forward, but ultimately one based solely on material utility. The European Union also trades with Iran, and Korea has a ‘strategic partnership’ with Kazakhstan. This provides perspective on the mutual, post-Free Trade Agreement rhetoric of ‘strategic partners’. A ‘friendly partner’ is a more credible assessment. The European-Korea relationship will not mature into a meaningful bond to rival the more critical relations of either with the United States, China, Japan, or Russia.

The European Union’s preference for Asian regionalism will generate friction, although Korea will tolerate it in order to retain the huge prestige boost the relationship with the European Union will bring. Hence the greatest frustration will fall on the European side. Korea’s prestige gains are already achieved by the completion of the Free Trade Agreement and the ‘strategic partnership’, and the European Union cannot leverage a security contribution to the peninsula to push Korea into the East Asian Community or Asia-Europe Meeting. So long as Korea, and East Asia generally, remains committed to the ‘ASEAN Way’ of talk-shop intergovernmentalism, European elites – pro-European Union, pro-East Asian Community, and pro-Asia-Europe Meeting – are likely to find nationalist Korea, and Asia, a frustrating ‘inter-regional’ partner.

Robert E. Kelly is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at the Pusan National University in Busan, Korea. He runs the website called Asian Security Blog. This article is a summary of Dr. Kelly’s recent project on the future of the European Union’s relations with Korea for the Pusan National University’s European Union Centre.

Additional resources

• Pusan National University Political Science Department
• Asian Security Blog