Introduction: The Rationale for Collective Pursuits and Closer Relations among Smaller Powers

The Republic of Korea (Korea henceforth) is in Northeast Asia, physically thousands of miles apart from Southeast Asia. Historically, Korea and Southeast Asia — one a country, the other a region — have had contact and interaction, but their relations had never been closer than contemporary economic relations. On the basis of such good economic relations, I ponder the question: What more can they do together in cooperation, for each other?

In the context of the “regional dynamics”, as one scholar noted, Korea-Southeast Asia relations have long been in the shadows of the greater attention that each had always given to the major powers (Ho 2007, p. 1); “greater” as compared to the attention they had given to each other. They have been minors in a region packed with the presence and interests of major powers of the world. As the cliché goes, three of the five Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council are in East Asia. This region brews not just territorial disputes that could escalate into war, but it also features the last frontier of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula. In this strategic picture, pondering the space for closer relations begs the question: What is the practical value for closer relations? If the major powers dominate, would it not make much more sense for small countries to ensure their role via deep relationships with the major powers? From the perspective of a person familiar with international relations and politics, the fundamental reason for greater Korea-Southeast Asia relations arises from small players looking for a role in the geopolitics of the region.

The geostrategic feature of the region of East Asia (including Southeast Asia, in the American post-war definition) has been the dominance of big countries native to the region and their relations with major, global powers from outside the region. When these powers calculate and act on their interests, they often posit their relations with each other as the primary set of relations in the region. The interests of smaller countries are often secondary unless these secondary interests are keys to the satisfaction of the larger set of interests arising from big power relations.