► Through its engagement with the Pacific Islands, Seoul can strengthen the US-ROK alliance by supporting Washington’s regional objectives in a way that is not clearly anti-China.

► As a country with high levels of technological, managerial, and educational expertise, the ROK is well placed to support the efforts of the USA, Australia, and New Zealand to help the Pacific Island states develop prosperous economies and political systems that feature democracy, transparency, non-corruption, and effective delivery of services.

► Providing meaningful assistance to the Pacific Islands is an efficient and politically low-cost way for the ROK to support the US-backed liberal regional order and to demonstrate Seoul’s willingness and ability to play a larger global role.

The Korea-Pacific Islands Summit highlights aid to the mostly small and poor states of the Pacific as a means whereby the Republic of Korea (ROK) can make good on its pledge to help strengthen the current US-led regional order, under which South Korea enjoys prosperity and security, without directly antagonizing China. Assisting the Pacific Island states also earns the ROK recognition as a benefactor of the developing world.

The Pacific Island states have considerable military value.  Although mostly small, they have sovereign rights over a strategically-located, continent-sized swath of the Pacific Ocean. The waters near Pacific Islands friendly to the USA form a buffer between China and key US defense hubs in Guam and Hawaii. The USA is building an over-the-horizon radar facility on Palau. Kwajalein Atoll hosts an important US ballistic missile testing range, valuable as a launch site because of its isolation from large land masses and proximity to the equator. Currently, the Pacific Islands are a barrier to China’s aspirations to be a Pacific naval power. If, however, China gained access to bases in the region, the advantages of power projection and surveillance would shift from Washington to Beijing. China could isolate US ally Australia and threaten the US’s strategic position in East Asia from the south as well as the west.

The ROK’s interest in the Pacific Islands is consistent with the direction of South Korean foreign policy under President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon is noticeably more desirous than his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, to align South Korea with the US agenda. Under pressure from an aggressive and well-resourced China, the USA increasingly needs help from allies to sustain US leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. Yoon’s government has professed a strong commitment to what is commonly called the “rules-based international order,” but is more accurately described as the particular set of rules and norms promoted and sometimes enforced by the United States as part of Washington’s exorbitant hegemonic privilege.

The US government released an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” statement in February 2022. Like other US partners, the Yoon administration quickly followed suit by publishing its own “Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region.” The ROK version mostly overlaps with the US version, although the former adds an emphasis on “inclusion” in deference to China. There is still plenty of verbiage that the PRC reads as a willingness by South Korea to join the USA in a campaign to “contain” China. The document says, for example, that the ROK is “committed to partnering with like-minded countries that share the values of freedom, rule of law, and human rights as well as international norms.”

Regarding the Pacific Islands, the Yoon government’s Indo-Pacific strategy document states, “We will work more extensively with the region to address their needs in the areas of climate change, as well as health, oceans and fisheries, and renewable energy.”  The document also affirms South Korea’s support for the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, an initiative of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF); and for Partners in the Blue Pacific, an arrangement founded in June 2022 by the USA, Japan, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and which Seoul says it is considering joining.

The ROK has fallen behind the recent trend of overlapping minilateralism, exemplified by AUKUS and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad).  The Yoon government has sought to compensate for this lag by accelerating South Korea’s integration into new partnership groupings within the region.

Another major theme of Yoon’s foreign policy is making South Korea a “global pivotal state.” Seoul has the potential to demonstrate greater world leadership, given the status it is entitled to because of its economic weight, its stable democracy, and its considerable soft power. To gain recognition as a more important international player, rather than a country focused on the immediate security challenge posed by its hostile neighbor the DPRK, Seoul needs to demonstrate that it can contribute global public goods. This incentivizes the ROK government to find niche areas where donating its resources and effort will pay off with proportionate or, ideally, disproportionate increases in Korea’s international prestige.

Through its engagement with the Pacific Islands, Seoul can strengthen the US-ROK alliance by supporting Washington’s regional objectives in a way that is not clearly anti-China. This buys US goodwill that can help offset American disappointment on those occasions when Seoul accommodates China. Washington’s explicit approval was evident in the joint statement of Presidents Yoon and Biden during Yoon’s visit to Washington in April 2023, which noted that “The two Presidents committed to increased cooperation with Southeast Asia and the Pacific Island Countries to promote resilient health systems, sustainable development, climate resilience and adaptation, energy security, and digital connectivity.”

Despite Yoon expressing interest in joining the Quad, Washington has not extended an invitation. A likely reason is the US fear of further worsening US-China relations. Beijing says the Quad is part of a US effort to suppress the rise of China. Quad members might also be wary of ROK-Japan disagreements possibly becoming a distraction to the work of the group. Nevertheless, through its work in the Pacific Islands, the ROK can cooperate with Quad members like Australia and the United States without formally joining the Quad. Assistance programs in the Pacific Islands involve four of the eight Quad working group issues: climate change, maritime security, health, and education.

Seoul can benefit politically from strengthening its ties to the Pacific Islands. While these are generally small states, they control votes in the United Nations General Assembly and increasingly draw international attention and sympathy as developing countries facing existential danger from climate change. Seoul is seeking support from the Pacific Island governments for South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in Busan. Seoul plans to make climate change a major theme of the Expo. Seoul can also team up with the Pacific Islands when they have a common interest in opposing the policy of another state, even one within the US Bloc. PIF Secretary General Henry Puna said Japan’s plan to release radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant will be on the Summit’s agenda for discussion. Koreans are unhappy about Japan’s plan, and nuclear contamination is a highly salient issue in the Pacific Islands because of the harmful legacy of nuclear weapons testing by the USA and France.

As a country with high levels of technological, managerial, and educational expertise, the ROK is well placed to support the efforts of the USA, Australia, and New Zealand to help the Pacific Island states develop prosperous economies and political systems that feature democracy, transparency, non-corruption, and effective delivery of services.

Seoul can also help to inculcate a consensus among the Pacific Island states in favor of the values outlined in both the ROK and US government statements on their respective but similar Indo-Pacific “strategies.” In addition to helping the people of the Pacific Islands live better lives, South Korea has an interest in the larger project of limiting negative PRC influence and thwarting attempts by Beijing to establish strategic and political outposts in the Pacific.

South Korea understands from its own experience some of the dangers that PRC penetration might bring to the Pacific Islands. One of these is economic coercion.  In 2018, the PRC government shut down Chinese tourism to Palau to punish the island for its diplomatic ties with Taiwan. A few months earlier, the South Korean economy was suffering from Chinese economic retaliation over Seoul’s decision to deploy the THAAD anti-missile defense system over China’s objections. South Korea is also, like the Pacific Island states, frequently victimized by Chinese illegal fishing. In 2021, the ROK government reported seizing 108 Chinese fishing boats caught violating fishing regulations.

As a provider of aid to the Pacific, South Korea is a newcomer compared to the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. The ROK gives 1.5 million USD annually to the ROK-PIF Cooperation Fund, founded in 2008. The Korean government says it has given a total of US$29 million to fund 10 projects in Fiji alone since 2008. Seoul has hosted group meetings with the foreign ministers of the Pacific Island states since 2011. During a meeting with the Pacific foreign ministers in 2022, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said the ROK will increase official development assistance to help Pacific Island states mitigate the effects of climate change. The ROK has pledged that it will provide equipment to help the Marshall Islands build an ocean thermal energy conversion system, which produces energy by harnessing the temperature differences between the ocean’s surface water and deeper water.

South Korea, unlike China, is welcomed as a partner rather than a competitor by the longstanding Western aid donors. They do not doubt South Korea’s commitment to the basic principles that are fundamental to their own activities and objectives in the Pacific. Seoul brings additional resources to contribute to the common cause of maintaining and extending the liberal order. An advantage of newness is that South Korea lacks negative historical baggage, such as the colonialist legacy and allegations of neo-colonialism that remain attached to the Western countries offering aid to the Pacific Islands.

Providing meaningful assistance to the Pacific Islands is an efficient and politically low-cost way for the ROK to support the US-backed liberal regional order and to demonstrate Seoul’s willingness and ability to play a larger global role. The limiting issues will be the amount of resources that Seoul wants to devote to the Pacific versus other demands, and whether this interest in the Pacific will persist beyond Yoon’s tenure. But to the extent it wants to pursue this opportunity, the Korean government can benefit Pacific Islanders, increase its capital with Washington, and gain international prestige while giving Beijing little cause to complain.