President Yoon Suk-yeol announced the Republic of Korea's Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region (hereafter Indo-Pacific Strategy), and Korea-Asean Solidarity Initiative (KASI) at the Asean-Korea Summit held in November in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. His core message at the summit was simple: Korea aims to upgrade and elevate its partnership with Asean to the next level. In response, Asean leaders welcomed President Yoon's initiative. The significance of Korea's recent diplomatic move should be analysed in diverse aspects.
With the vision of establishing a free, peaceful, and prosperous Indo-Pacific, Korea's Indo-Pacific Strategy is based on the three principles of cooperation, namely inclusiveness, trust, reciprocity; and aims to promote and strengthen strategic partnerships tailored to the sub-regions: the North Pacific; Southeast Asia and Asean; South Asia; Oceania; African states in the Indian Ocean; and Europe. Moreover, Seoul has proposed nine priority areas of implementation: establishment of an Indo-Pacific regional order based on rules and shared norms, promotion of rule of law and human rights, strengthening of non-proliferation and counterterrorism efforts, enhancement of comprehensive security cooperation, expansion of economic security networks, promotion of science and technology cooperation and contribution to bridging the digital divide, leading regional cooperation on climate change and energy security, promotion of tailored development cooperation partnerships and facilitation of mutual understanding and exchange.
KASI is a tailored strategy towards Asean in this larger regional framework of the Indo-Pacific Strategy. It seeks to strengthen political-security cooperation in addition to the economic, social, and cultural cooperation that previous Korean administrations have focused on. In the political-security area, comprehensive security is the key agenda. In the economic field, Korea has proposed to expand cooperation in the field of environment, vaccines and biotechnology and also to include and strengthen digital trade cooperation in the framework of the Asean-Korea FTA to reinvigorate cooperation in future industries such as electric vehicles, batteries and digital technology, in which Asean is highly interested. In this process, Korea has expressed its unwavering support for Asean Centrality and Asean Outlook on the Indo-pacific (AOIP), maintaining consistency in its foreign policy of emphasising the importance of Asean.
