[EAI Working Paper] 2022 EAI New Government Foreign Policy Recommendations Series ⑨_ Global Pandemic and New Cooperation Diplomacy

[Editor's Note]

In this working paper, Professor Kim Tae-gyun of Seoul National University explains that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spread globally, is expanding beyond a mere health crisis into a broader range of crises including food and climate change, evolving into an emerging security issue. The author emphasizes that global governance is likely to become a product of strategic competition between the US and China, and the subsequent global order and response will be framed as 'democracy versus authoritarianism.' Accordingly, the new government must redefine South Korea's position in cooperative diplomacy and adopt an integrated diplomatic strategy that links various issue areas. Furthermore, the strategic linkage of alliances, regional cooperation, and multilateral cooperation is crucial.

Three Major Policy Tasks for New Cooperative Diplomacy

1. Before being forced to choose in the intensifying US-China strategic competition, South Korea must emphasize its role as a faithful implementer of global norms and a key actor in the international community pursuing moderate values. In choosing between the US and China, it is necessary to establish an active position for South Korea that resolves global issues according to global norms, by emphasizing the normative validity of cooperating with either the US or China as partners to address global issues in the era of the pandemic.

2. In redefining South Korea's position at the global level, the government must prepare for cooperative diplomacy in an internally integrated manner. Efforts are needed to integrate the currently fragmented policy and implementation-level development cooperation systems, and to link and integrate across issue areas. As the health crisis of the pandemic era is linked to various cooperative diplomacy issues such as climate, food, and development, an integrated strategy that links diverse issue areas that can be linked to health within a macro framework is needed, rather than simply planning health cooperation.

3. The government must strengthen the interfaces between alliances, regional cooperation, and multilateral cooperation, rather than responding to them as independent operational mechanisms at individual levels. The proposed cooperation measures for emerging security issues between South Korea and the US should be systematically linked and integrated with regional diplomacy in East Asia and multilateral cooperation at the global level, and operated under a system of integrated management.

I. Introduction: The COVID Pandemic and South Korea's Cooperative Diplomacy Challenges

The COVID pandemic, which began in early 2020, has not only resulted in a global health crisis but has also transitioned into a complex crisis involving food shortages and climate change, expanding into emerging security issues that shift the international order and the balance of power. The next government is likely to face a period of realignment of the international political order where the pandemic remains unresolved, making preparation for cooperative diplomacy in the context of the global emerging security issue of the pandemic a more critical task than ever before. In a situation where the current global governance system is struggling to effectively respond to the global crisis that began with a health crisis, the longer the pandemic persists, the greater the possibility that new forms of global cooperation systems will compete. Amidst the intense strategic competition between the US and China, a confrontation is emerging between China's cooperation system centered on the Belt and Road Initiative and the US-proposed 'Build Back Better World (B3W)' cooperation system centered on the G7. In particular, cooperative diplomacy related to development cooperation issues such as health and infrastructure with developing countries, collectively referred to as the Global South, is being implemented with different fundamental directions and approaches depending on the US or China. Therefore, South Korea's strategic stance within this conflict structure will be a key issue for the next government.

Assuming the pandemic crisis will continue for the time being, we propose three major new strategies for cooperative diplomacy that the next government should pursue on the global stage. These include: redefining South Korea's position in cooperative diplomacy in the era of the global pandemic; shifting from the current fragmented policy implementation structure to integration for issue linkage; and strengthening the interfaces of alliances, regional cooperation, and multilateral cooperation for comprehensive engagement in South Korea's global cooperation. To propose these strategic directions, we will examine the changes in the global environment represented by the COVID pandemic phenomenon and the emergence of emerging security issues, and analyze the current challenges facing South Korea's cooperative diplomacy as prerequisites for the next government's vision and proposals for new cooperative diplomacy.

II. The COVID Pandemic Phenomenon and the Emergence of Emerging Security Issues

1. Pandemic Outbreak and 'Every Nation for Itself' Diplomacy

The outbreak of the COVID pandemic rapidly propelled the world into a new normal in international politics starting in early 2020. The novel infectious disease COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019, spread rapidly across Asia, Europe, and the United States, leading the WHO to officially declare COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Consequently, countries worldwide, from developing nations to developed ones, have been engaged in a difficult struggle against the pandemic. At the national level, the COVID pandemic directly challenges the perception that democratic countries are superior in state management compared to authoritarian states. While most developed democratic nations, including the US, EU, and Japan, have struggled with COVID-19, authoritarian countries like China and Singapore are cited as successful examples of pandemic control. This suggests that effective pandemic response is not solely a matter of political systems, but rather that past experience with infectious diseases is a crucial determinant of success or failure in combating the COVID pandemic.

When this discussion expands to the global level, it connects to the collapse of international cooperation through multilateral efforts in response to the COVID pandemic, leading to a phenomenon where individual countries adopt a 'every nation for itself' strategy to protect their own citizens. The civilizational standards of global governance, embodied by neoliberal globalization and the liberal international order (LIO), are transitioning into an era of nationalism and the revival of nation-states, with the decline of liberal order and market principles due to the pandemic. The 'fortress era' of nationalism is emerging. The 'every nation for itself' strategy adopted by developed countries in the Global North, including the Trump administration's withdrawal from the WHO citing its perceived bias towards China, and the withdrawal from the COP21 climate regime, has had the counterproductive effect of halting global governance, which operates on the basis of multilateral cooperation. The retreat of global governance due to the pandemic has led to a vacuum in the international order, and the Biden administration's efforts to restore the LIO are expected to compete with a China-led post-pandemic world order and its civilizational standards. Moving forward, the trajectory of multilateral diplomacy through multilateral organizations will likely be influenced not only by the strategic competition between the US and China but also by the complex emerging security issues that are simultaneously emerging at the global level due to the pandemic.

The COVID pandemic phenomenon is being newly described as a 'Syndemic,' indicating that the pandemic is spreading beyond a health crisis to encompass complex emerging security issues. Recognizing the close link between human health and the health of animals and ecosystems necessitates a comprehensive approach that requires cooperation across multiple sectors to achieve health security for all at local, national, and global levels. In a similar vein, the concept of the 'Anthropocene' has recently gained attention, implying that the COVID pandemic is not confined to health security alone but is continuously expanding and reproducing within complex social relationships and contexts, including environmental security, food security, and development security. The emergence of complex emerging security issues due to the COVID pandemic has had the effect of expanding the scope of pre-COVID emerging security issues into more complex domains, thus necessitating a complex realignment of cooperative diplomacy and global governance for coexistence.

2. US-China Strategic Competition and the Crisis of Global Governance in the Pandemic Era

The transition of US politics from the Trump administration to the Biden administration in January 2021 has led to expectations of a rebuilding of multilateral cooperation. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the Trump administration criticized the WHO's perceived bias towards China and withdrew its membership, and also withdrew from the COP21 climate regime. In contrast, the Biden administration, immediately upon taking office, signed executive orders to rejoin the COP21 and the WHO. President Biden has emphasized the message 'America is back' to key allies and partners, and the G7 summit held in Cornwall, UK, in June 2021 invited South Korea, India, Australia, and South Africa, signaling a realignment of the international political order and global governance centered on liberal democracy in the post-pandemic era, led by the US. President Biden, breaking away from former President Trump's 'America First' and isolationist policies, is pursuing the restoration of America's international standing and alliances. Furthermore, in terms of vaccine diplomacy, he has expressed his intention to supply US vaccines not only to meet domestic demand but also to allies and developing countries. This active US engagement can be interpreted as an intention to restore the international order to its previous LIO-centric framework and to gain an advantage in strategic competition with China.

1) US New Cooperative Diplomacy

In the case of the United States, the outcomes of the G7 summit provide a clearer understanding of the post-COVID pandemic international relations order and the direction of strategic competition with China. Most notably, attention should be paid to the fact that the US is pursuing a large-scale global infrastructure investment project to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative and has secured agreement from the G7 member states. The US, which has been pushing a hardline policy against China's rise, is attempting to rally Western allies through the G7 to target the Belt and Road Initiative, China's large-scale foreign economic cooperation initiative. The G7 member states, including the US, agreed at the summit on the global infrastructure project known as the B3W plan, named after President Biden's campaign slogan 'Build Back Better.' This is the first time that developed countries in the Global North have discussed an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative. The scale of B3W, which is to be pursued through private sector development finance, is expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars, significantly exceeding the scale of the Marshall Plan implemented by the US for European reconstruction after World War II.

The US strategy of competition with China through B3W is also linked to a new value competition, demonstrating that democratic wealthy nations can present alternatives to China's influence. As President Biden mentioned at the Cornwall meeting, this connects to the broader civilizational standard of democracy versus authoritarianism, expanding the front against China and focusing on the restoration of democracy as a new normative value to address the post-pandemic era and the pandemic phenomenon, while also realigning the US-led order. The US and many partners worldwide have long been skeptical of China's Belt and Road Initiative, criticizing the Chinese government for a lack of transparency, poor environmental and labor standards, and an approach that exacerbates the situation for many countries. This is not a suddenly conceived strategy but rather a continuation of the Quad strategy, which emphasizes Indo-Pacific cooperation and sustainability to counter China, particularly with India, Japan, and Australia. Moreover, the Biden administration has emphasized humanitarian aid and development cooperation within the Quad framework in the post-pandemic era. We can also observe the recent expansion of infrastructure development cooperation support from the EU to India, which has rapidly strengthened ties post-pandemic, and the EU's decision in May 2021 to impose sanctions on eight individuals for human rights abuses, indicating a trend of countering China's rise and aligning with US policy towards China.

2) China's New Cooperative Diplomacy

Meanwhile, China is reviewing and updating its Belt and Road Initiative to align with the COVID pandemic era. China's Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the 'New Silk Road Strategy,' is a global economic cooperation initiative aimed at expanding economic and trade cooperation with neighboring countries by establishing economic belts along inland and maritime routes from western China. Launched at the proposal of President Xi Jinping in 2013, over 100 countries in Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia are currently participating in infrastructure construction projects such as railways, ports, and highways, totaling 2,600 projects. While an estimated $330 billion has been invested to date, the debt burden of developing countries is estimated at approximately $380 billion. The high interest rates on loans provided by China have led to significant debt problems in implementing countries, resulting in a debt trap. This has led to cases where operating rights of ports, among other facilities, have been transferred to China. For instance, Pakistan transferred the Gwadar Port operating rights to China for 43 years, Greece transferred the Piraeus Port for 35 years, and Sri Lanka transferred the Hambantota Port for 99 years. A Chinese overseas military base has also been established in Djibouti.

To address these debt issues and respond to external criticism of its Belt and Road policy, China hosted the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in April 2019. At this forum, China acknowledged the problems associated with the Belt and Road Initiative and proposed 'Belt and Road 2.0,' emphasizing transparency and openness. President Xi Jinping declared that the Belt and Road Initiative would be improved to meet international standards and adopted an inclusive stance, largely accommodating the positions of debtor nations in debt negotiations with participating countries. The COVID pandemic occurred during this process, leading to border closures, disruptions in human and material exchange, and economic downturns in implementing countries, severely impacting the Belt and Road projects. Despite the impact of the pandemic on Belt and Road projects, China is accelerating the development of the Digital Silk Road and the Health Silk Road, and is supplying vaccines to Belt and Road participating countries through aggressive vaccine diplomacy. As developed countries, including the US, focused on resolving their domestic pandemic situations, China is attempting to build an image as a responsible major power leading pandemic control by supplying vaccines, clinical data, and medical supplies accumulated during its own pandemic response to developing countries, capitalizing on the gap in global governance and health cooperation.

3) Crisis of Global Governance

Currently, global governance in the pandemic era is highly likely to become a product of US-China strategic competition. China is working to establish itself as the leader of the Global South through the reform of the Belt and Road Initiative, while the US is striving through the G7 to restore liberal democracy in the Global North and realign the world order around the US-led LIO. The US, in contrast to China's Health Silk Road and Digital Silk Road, is emphasizing B3W as a platform for new cooperative diplomacy in the pandemic era, encompassing environmental protection, anti-corruption, and free information flow and communication. This is interpreted as an intention to present B3W as an alternative to countries that have participated in China's Belt and Road Initiative and subsequently incurred excessive debt or fallen under China's pressure and influence. In particular, the US has presented a blueprint suggesting it could help developing countries bridge the gap by 2035 through transparent infrastructure partnerships, with an estimated $40 trillion needed. However, a concrete roadmap for financing the large-scale funds allocated to the B3W initiative has not been presented, leaving its future implementation uncertain.

This implies that the post-pandemic global order and response will be characterized by a 'democracy versus authoritarianism' dynamic. In other words, the conflict between US-led democracy and China-led authoritarianism is likely to expand into a clash of civilizational standards in the post-pandemic era. This signifies that the international community will not respond to the pandemic with an integrated global governance system but rather with a complex structure characterized by fragmentation, conflict, and cooperation. The competition for vaccine supply chains, exemplified by vaccine diplomacy and vaccine nationalism, is increasingly likely to escalate into a conflict between the US and China, diminishing the possibility for negotiating policies and seeking cooperation among interested countries on multilateral diplomatic stages. Therefore, efforts are needed to restore multilateral issues to the multilateral diplomatic arena in the post-COVID era, and the competition between the US and China is likely to intensify in shaping a new multilateral cooperation order.

Most importantly, the declining trust in the roles of traditional international organizations such as the WHO raises concerns about the effectiveness of club diplomacy, involving a small group of developed countries like the G7 or D-10, in proposing solutions for post-pandemic crises and representing global governance. The limitations of consultative bodies composed of a small number of countries with less legitimacy in representing all nations globally, such as the four-country cooperation platform for Indo-Pacific strategies, the US's Blue Dot Network, and the G7's B3W, can lead to feelings of exclusion among non-member countries. This increases the likelihood that responses to complex global crises in the pandemic era will be driven by a few countries rather than through international organizations. Therefore, reforming traditional multilateral cooperation organizations (UN, World Bank, WTO, etc.) to enhance their legitimacy and representativeness is a critical issue that must be addressed in the context of the crisis of global governance arising in the pandemic era.

3. The Emergence of Emerging Security Issues and the Need for New Cooperative Diplomacy

As emphasized earlier, the issue areas affected by the COVID pandemic are complex. At a micro level, the COVID-19 situation can be approached as an individual health and medical issue requiring appropriate quarantine policies and medical services. At an intermediate level, it expands beyond individual problems to encompass the health issues of local communities and the entire nation, and further escalates into social, unemployment, and economic problems, not just health issues. At a more macro level, when individual and domestic health issues are repeatedly expanded quantitatively, they reach a critical point of qualitative change, transcending national boundaries and spreading as common issues of national security and the international community, thereby escalating their destructive power and risk to a global level. The COVID-19 situation, viewed as an emerging security issue, has already surpassed the threshold of health security and is expanding its scope by linking with other surrounding security issues, thus requiring it to be understood as a complex system crisis. The recent COVID-19 situation is interpreted as having emerged through this mechanism and exhibiting a severity that raises concerns about national survival at a macro level.

In a similar vein, as predicted by UN Secretary-General Guterres, the crisis of health security caused by COVID-19 can expand into a crisis of food security, which in turn can escalate into a crisis of climate security, and further into a comprehensive global crisis of development security worldwide. The COVID-19 situation, which expanded during the pandemic in 2020, has already crossed the threshold where its risks are linked to other issues. Therefore, Secretary-General Guterres now refers to it not as the COVID pandemic but as a 'COVID-19 global food emergency.' Since health security, food security, climate and environmental security, and development security can no longer be treated as separate issue areas, it is advisable to approach them as a complex phenomenon linked by various issues.

These multidimensional security crises are not issues that a single nation can resolve, necessitating new multilateral cooperation in the post-COVID era. This is because the international community will face not just a health security issue but a comprehensive and complex global crisis. Therefore, the response strategy of global governance to the complex crisis caused by the pandemic must also adapt appropriately; instead of a fragmented structure that addresses individual issues, an integrated management approach and issue linkage suitable for complex crises must be employed. Nevertheless, the current pandemic response framework, converging into a confrontation between the US's B3W and China's Belt and Road Initiative, presents challenges to establishing an integrated global governance system. The UN, as the representative body for global governance, faces financial issues and lacks the authority to effectively guide and regulate the US and China. Therefore, a restructuring of global governance is needed to mediate and consolidate US-China strategic competition at the global level, and new cooperative diplomacy is required to support and strengthen this process.

III. South Korea's New Cooperative Diplomacy Challenges

1. Milestone of South Korea's New Cooperative Diplomacy: Analysis of the ROK-US Summit Outcomes

The agreements reached between South Korea and the United States at the 2021 ROK-US Summit can serve as the foundation for South Korea's new cooperative diplomacy not only for the remaining year of the current administration but also for the next five years, given their significant influence. It is necessary to analyze the outcomes of the joint statement from the ROK-US Summit as a milestone for South Korea's new cooperative diplomacy to appropriately respond to emerging security issues in the pandemic era. The joint statement of the ROK-US Summit can be summarized into three major areas of new cooperative diplomacy issues and cooperation content between South Korea and the US regarding emerging security in the post-pandemic era.

First, ROK-US cooperation diplomacy is expanding beyond the Korean Peninsula to the Indo-Pacific region, confirming that it is based on the shared values of the two allies. In particular, by linking South Korea's New Southern Policy with the US's Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision, both countries reaffirmed their support for ASEAN centrality and the ASEAN-centered regional architecture. New cooperation diplomacy in the ASEAN region is strengthening its multifaceted aspects, linking various issue areas such as law enforcement, cybersecurity, public health, promotion of green recovery, digital innovation, sustainable development of the Mekong region, water resource management, energy security, and the prohibition of arms sales to Myanmar, while sharing the importance of open, transparent, and inclusive regional multilateralism, including the Quad.

Second, under the motto of 'Comprehensive Cooperation for a Better Future,' the need to strengthen partnerships for new bonds between the two countries was shared in the era of the COVID pandemic, addressing global challenges such as climate and environment, global health, emerging technologies including 5G and 6G technologies and semiconductors, supply chain resilience, migration and development, and people-to-people exchanges. In particular, global health challenges related to the COVID pandemic were emphasized, and it was agreed to enhance the capacity for joint response to new infectious diseases through strengthened mutual international vaccine cooperation and to establish a comprehensive ROK-US global vaccine partnership. Furthermore, it was agreed to cooperate in significantly expanding COVID vaccine supply to countries worldwide, including supporting the strengthening of the WHO's role and coordinating with COVAX and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Third, the ROK and the US agreed to cooperate on WHO reform by strengthening its capacity to prevent pandemics through early and effective prevention, diagnosis, and response to health crises, promoting transparency, and ensuring independence. They will also strive to improve pandemic preparedness in the Indo-Pacific region and strengthen multilateral cooperation to enable all countries to build their capacity for epidemic prevention, diagnosis, and response. To this end, South Korea will expand its engagement in the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) and its Action Package Working Groups, pledging $200 million in support for GHSA from 2021-2025. The two countries also confirmed their commitment to cooperate with like-minded countries to create a mechanism for mobilizing new health security funding.

Therefore, South Korea can prepare for new cooperation diplomacy directions in the future, roughly categorized into three points. First, the new security in the pandemic era must reflect the characteristic that cooperation is not in individual issue areas but is complexly interconnected. Second, it must actively participate in improving global governance, such as WHO reform. Third, new security and the new cooperation diplomacy for it are not merely international issues but also become important diplomatic assets that can be actively integrated into regional multilateralism such as the Indo-Pacific.

2. The Light and Shadow of Pandemic Response: K-Quarantine as Public Diplomacy

In conclusion, the COVID pandemic is creating an effect where a complex space of new crises and opportunities is opening up for South Korea on the multilateral diplomacy stage. While South Korea's K-Quarantine has been cited as a successful quarantine case internationally, the issue of vaccine supply problems has also led to the fading of K-Quarantine's achievements. Currently, the focus of pandemic response is shifting from the initial quarantine phase to vaccine supply, but South Korea has consistently advocated for the global commonality of vaccines externally, supported multilateral cooperation in vaccine supply since the launch of COVAX in June 2020, and discussed cooperation with middle powers with successful quarantine cases like Australia. It will be an important foreign policy for the next government to strategize how South Korea can enhance its national standing and re-establish existing LIOs and adjust them appropriately for the post-COVID era through active multilateral cooperation diplomacy in addressing the governance issues of the current health security crisis, characterized by vaccine nationalism.

Despite South Korea's COVID quarantine experience being an important asset for future cooperation diplomacy, South Korea has so far tended to strongly emphasize the success of its quarantine system through the modifier 'K-'. We must become accustomed to the fact that Korean experiences cannot be directly applied to other countries, and a method of interpreting and promoting everything as a Korean achievement cannot be a desirable means of public diplomacy. Furthermore, the concept of K-Quarantine cannot create extensibility that can be linked to other issue areas, thus it is not an appropriate approach for cooperation diplomacy that can respond complexly to newly emerging complex and emergent security issues. Efforts are needed to improve conceptualization rooted in Korean thought to promote and strategize South Korea's quarantine achievements and actively link them with other issues in the future.

3. South Korea's New Cooperation Diplomacy as a Middle Power

Since the competition between the US and China could lead to the realignment of other countries into two camps, creating a vacuum in the middle ground, the issue of who will fill this vacuum and how it will be filled may arise. In particular, South Korea will face the challenge of how its choices as a middle power should be strategized within the competitive relationship between the US-led B3W strategy and the China-led Belt and Road Initiative. There will be ongoing considerations about how South Korea's development cooperation policies, such as ODA, can survive and expand within the strategic competition between the US and China, thereby strengthening South Korea's role. South Korea has already signed an MOU for cooperation with China on the Belt and Road Initiative, and at the same time, it attended the G7 meeting, making it impossible to completely escape the influence of the B3W strategy. The US-China strategic competition is no longer confined to the level of traditional foreign policy choices but has expanded to include the necessity of setting a course and focusing on selective areas, including development cooperation and emergent security issues.

Furthermore, the gap and inequality between the US-led global North advanced countries and the China-led global South developing countries are expected to become even more acute issues in the post-pandemic era. Difficulties will arise in positioning South Korea between these two groups due to differences in approaches and values in responding to emergent security issues, requiring strategic consideration. Meanwhile, it is possible to foresee that an alliance of middle powers like South Korea, which have succeeded in quarantine, could create new mini-lateral cooperation frameworks in this middle ground.

4. The Issue of Fragmentation in Cooperation Diplomacy

Historically, South Korea's representative cooperation diplomacy can be summarized as international development cooperation policies and projects. Development cooperation policies in a broad sense encompass various issues, notably climate and environment, health and medical care, peacekeeping operations, and public diplomacy. International development cooperation policies, composed of diverse issue areas, have suffered from persistent fragmentation because they have not been organically integrated among issue areas or commercialized under a single framework. This fragmentation of cooperation diplomacy can be analyzed in two main ways.

First, there is the issue of fragmentation based on the method of development cooperation. According to the Framework Act on International Development Cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the primary agency for grants within bilateral aid and contributions to UN agencies within multilateral aid, with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), an affiliate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serving as the implementing agency. On the other hand, the Ministry of Economy and Finance is the primary agency for concessional loans within bilateral aid and contributions to multilateral development banks within multilateral aid, with the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) of the Export-Import Bank of Korea, under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, serving as the implementing agency. The fragmentation between grant aid and loan aid, and between contributions to UN agencies and contributions to multilateral development banks, has been a chronic issue consistently raised since South Korea joined the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2010. Efforts to minimize fragmentation have been continuously mobilized but remain unaddressed; only the Office for Government Policy Coordination's International Development Cooperation Committee is placed above the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economy and Finance as a de facto superior agency. This fragmentation issue has faced a decisive challenge due to the COVID pandemic, as support for developing countries related to the pandemic is no longer a matter of loan versus grant but has shifted to in-person versus non-contact. Furthermore, in the case of the pandemic, hospital construction support (loan) and medical service support (grant) must be provided simultaneously, and there is an increasing need for integrated implementation with cooperation diplomacy in other issue areas such as food aid. Another issue is that South Korea's ODA scale is smaller than the average of OECD DAC member countries, and the ratio of loan to grant aid is divided 4:6, leaving little room for mutual cooperation and making the visibility of any implemented project significantly lower compared to China, Japan, and the US. How to efficiently utilize a small budget within a fragmented structure is also a task to be addressed going forward.

Second, another fragmentation issue arises in the issue areas of development cooperation. Currently, South Korea adopts a project-based approach, which is short-term and limited to individual issues, rather than a program-based approach, which is long-term and involves complex cooperation. Project-based approaches are typically implemented on an annual basis, leading to problems in project continuity, and it is highly difficult to link projects allocated for health and medical care with climate and environment or food and agricultural development projects. While efforts to transition to a program-based approach have begun, a structural transformation is necessary to comprehensively address complex and emergent security issues.

In addition to these fragmentation issues, South Korea's development cooperation faces the problem of very low visibility of its loan aid. In the post-pandemic era, infrastructure projects through loan aid are facing difficult conditions, and when South Korea's loan aid projects are combined with the Belt and Road Initiative or B3W, there is a high probability that South Korea's role and contributions will be difficult for recipient countries to clearly recognize, being overshadowed by US and Chinese capital. Due to these problems, it would be desirable for South Korea to plan infrastructure support through loan aid on a small scale in the future and actively utilize the know-how of grant aid to attempt integrated management.

IV. Next Government's New Cooperation Diplomacy Strategy

1. Resetting the Position of South Korea's Cooperation Diplomacy in the Era of Global Pandemic

Based on the challenges in global cooperation diplomacy that will unfold in the pandemic era, as analyzed above, we propose a strategy to reset the position of South Korea's cooperation diplomacy as the top priority for the next government's new cooperation diplomacy strategy. In the realm of cooperation diplomacy, as the US-China strategic competition is likely to converge into the Belt and Road Initiative and B3W, a period is approaching where South Korea's strategic choices and focus are more necessary than ever in the international political structure confronting the US and China. Before being forced to choose between the US and China, South Korea must emphasize its role as a faithful implementer of global norms and a key actor in the international community pursuing moderate values. While there is a high possibility that the center of gravity of South Korea's cooperation diplomacy may tilt towards the US-led B3W, even in this choice, rather than a passive strategy of participating because it is an ally of the US, a positioning strategy that actively emphasizes the normative validity of choosing B3W as a platform for resolving global issues in the pandemic era is needed, highlighting that South Korea's strategies are planned according to global norms in addressing global issues.

This is directly related to the extent to which South Korea's new cooperation diplomacy can enhance the visibility of its role. Both B3W and the Belt and Road Initiative are issues related to infrastructure development within development cooperation. Therefore, depending on which side South Korea stands with the US or China in the area of loan aid for infrastructure support, it will lead to issues of visibility, strengthening or weakening South Korea's role and position. In the case of South Korea's loan aid, especially infrastructure support, its proportion and budget scale are not yet large compared to China and Japan. Therefore, regardless of whether it cooperates with the Belt and Road Initiative or B3W, the visibility is likely to be low. Consequently, at this crossroads of choice, South Korea should utilize loan aid as a bargaining chip that can cooperate with both sides, and at the same time, leverage its contributions by actively integrating its most effective development cooperation strategy, such as knowledge sharing within grant aid, with infrastructure support.

Mini-lateral cooperation can be attempted in terms of diversifying diplomacy with other major regions and countries such as Southeast Asia, Russia, Australia, and India, moving away from a binary approach of the US and China. Existing MIKTA (consultation body among Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Australia) and the New Southern Policy can be included in this. The next government can consider ways to utilize mini-lateral cooperation as a medium to effectively respond to emergent security issues and strategically expand alliances. In the case of MIKTA, since there have been no significant achievements so far, a more proactive leading role by South Korea is required. An important consideration is that while the multi-layered expansion of these mini-lateral cooperation bodies is desirable, integrated management is required to ensure inter-connectivity and strengthen interfaces. Although they can operate individually depending on the issue, their effectiveness will be further enhanced when they are organically linked within a macro framework to other platforms, such as alliances, regional cooperation, and global cooperation. It would be desirable to prepare a strategic framework to address health and medical care, vaccines, quarantine, and climate and environment issues as the main topics in the era of the pandemic.

Finally, it is important to actively participate in global governance reform through middle power cooperation and establish South Korea's position in the reordering of the international political order after the pandemic. The multilateral cooperation diplomacy that South Korea seeks in the next government should not be a passive approach of simply promoting South Korea and finding its global role, but should establish an active roadmap to expand its role as a bridge connecting the global North and South. If the US strategically pursues multilateral diplomacy as the spokesperson for the North and China expands multilateral diplomacy as the spokesperson for the South in the post-COVID era, the US-China conflict may devolve into a traditional North-South issue, and the entity responsible for addressing the North-South conflict may become unclear. In fact, the US is distributing vaccines primarily to its allies, while China is aggressively supplying them to developing countries in the South, indicating that vaccine diplomacy between the US and China could escalate into a North-South issue.

As a measure for this, we propose that South Korea and like-minded middle powers lead the reform of UN governance, which has not been functioning properly in the pandemic era, thereby re-establishing South Korea's value as a middle power. South Korea needs to refer to the example of Nordic countries, which can be classified as middle powers, actively enhancing their national standing in the international community through proactive multilateral diplomacy strategies and continuously expanding their influence and position within UN organizations. Although not to the same extent as the Nordic countries in multilateral diplomacy, it is possible to have a positive outlook that as the international community's evaluation of South Korea's image and influence improves, the scope of action for South Korea's bilateral diplomacy will expand.

2. Strengthening Integration Centered on Issue Linkage Beyond Fragmented Structures

The inherent problem of South Korea's existing cooperation diplomacy is that it tends to be planned in a fragmented manner and implemented with insufficient inter-linkage. If the next government does not prepare for cooperation diplomacy in an integrated manner internally while resetting South Korea's global position, the visibility of South Korea's cooperation diplomacy will be halved. In the early period of the next government, efforts to integrate the current fragmented policy-level and implementation-level development cooperation promotion systems will be necessary. The financial scale of development cooperation, with ODA exceeding 4 trillion won budgeted for 2022, is substantial enough to be integrated into a separate department. South Korea's degree of fragmentation is extremely severe, with no other OECD member country having a fragmented cooperation diplomacy promotion system that is fragmented at both the policy level (Ministry of Foreign Affairs vs. Ministry of Economy and Finance) and the implementation level (KOICA vs. EDCF). Therefore, integration efforts are a crucial task in terms of ensuring the effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and accountability of South Korea's cooperation diplomacy.

This integration strategy applies not only to the integration among cooperation diplomacy promotion agencies but also to the linkage and integration among issue areas. As emphasized earlier, the health crisis in the global pandemic era possesses emergent properties that are linked to various cooperation diplomacy issues such as climate, food, and development. Therefore, rather than simply planning and implementing health cooperation, an integrated strategy is needed that links various issue areas that can be linked with health within a macro framework in advance.

In this context, the New Southern Policy, despite having a grand universal vision of realizing a 'people-centered peace community living together,' was in reality a regional cooperation project stemming from a realistic pursuit of national interest to overcome the China-centric trade structure due to THAAD and find new economic partners by exploring ASEAN markets. The New Southern Policy was primarily driven by economic cooperation and development cooperation through ODA, and did not include peace diplomacy to win the hearts of ASEAN countries and realize a peace community, nor climate and environment diplomacy for carbon neutrality following COP21. Low-level communication and cooperation with local residents can be handled by public diplomacy, development cooperation diplomacy can be provided at the intersection of various national development issue areas, trade expansion issues with South Korea can be pursued through economic cooperation, and cooperation with New Southern countries on global issues such as climate and environment can be enhanced through climate-related diplomatic policies. The New Northern Policy also needs to be re-examined in the same context. In terms of new cooperation diplomacy, the next government should organically link and conduct cooperation diplomacy in various issue areas available to South Korea as an integrated package to respond to the changing security landscape after the pandemic, namely, emergent security issues.

Finally, the next administration needs to transform the current government's achievement of K-Quarantine into a grand strategy for the era of non-contact diplomacy, encompassing not only vaccine procurement but also global cooperation in health security and various related issue areas. While currently advocating for the global public good of vaccines through COVAX in cooperation with the international community, including the United States, the core issue is the difficulty of pursuing the cooperative diplomacy that South Korea has traditionally conducted face-to-face before the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this, the next administration will need to prepare alternatives on how to pursue cooperative diplomacy in the context of the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a situation where the new condition of 'untact' must be reflected in new cooperative diplomacy, making it difficult to implement existing ODA policies centered on bilateral aid. In terms of strengthening non-contact-oriented new cooperative diplomacy, one could consider ways to enhance South Korea's contribution diplomacy through digital technology. Instead of directly bringing officials from developing countries to Korea or dispatching Korean officials abroad to share Korea's historical experiences and knowledge in development cooperation, a package approach could be considered where knowledge sharing is digitized and provided to developing countries. Furthermore, in the case of infrastructure support projects, which require direct dispatch of human resources to the field, non-contact methods utilizing digital technology, such as grant aid-centered healthcare support, renewable energy support, and local civil society support, can be institutionalized as important delivery systems. To date, South Korea's contribution to multilateral organizations has been relatively small compared to other developed countries. In the post-pandemic era, a strategic shift in thinking is needed to increase contributions to UN and multilateral development banks and expand South Korea's role and standing through international organizations.

3. Strengthening Interfaces for Comprehensive Engagement: Strategic Linkage of Alliance, Regional Cooperation, and Multilateral Cooperation

In the pandemic era, the landscape of emerging security issues and South Korea's interconnectedness is multi-layered. While it can be approached by distinguishing between the alliance relationship between South Korea and the United States, regional-level multilateral cooperation such as the Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Belt and Road Initiative, and multilateral cooperation through participation in global governance at the international level, all these forms of cooperative diplomacy are interconnected. The landscape of alliances, regional cooperation, and multilateral cooperation is rapidly evolving due to the pandemic, and most are moving towards establishing new values and norms by linking complex issues arising from the pandemic. The ROK-US alliance, through the recent summit, has encompassed complex cooperative issue areas including healthcare, digital, climate and environment, energy, poverty, and infrastructure within the framework of comprehensive cooperation towards a better future. The Indo-Pacific Strategy also includes humanitarian aid and development cooperation with developing countries as important cooperative issues, while the Belt and Road Initiative remains consistent with a focus on infrastructure cooperation. As advocated at the recent G7 meeting, the B3W strategy is emerging as an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative through large-scale infrastructure investment, similar to the Trump administration's Blue Dot Network, and no form of cooperation operates in isolation. Finally, at the highest level, platforms like COVAX for pandemic response, promoted by the UN-centered international community, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030, comprehensively cover global issues, and can be interpreted as encompassing the levels below, from alliances to regional cooperation.

As we enter an era of pandemics where it is difficult to respond to alliances, regional cooperation, and multilateral cooperation as independent operational mechanisms at each separate level, it is not a wise choice for the next government to plan strategies in a fragmented manner. The new security cooperation measures agreed upon between South Korea and the United States must ultimately be operated within a system that systematically connects and integrally manages regional cooperation in East Asia and multilateral cooperation at the global level. Only by strengthening the interfaces between these multi-layered levels of cooperation and clearly establishing the principles and positions of South Korea's new cooperative diplomacy can a consistent and sustainable multilateral cooperation policy be pursued without being swayed by the variable of US-China strategic competition.

This means moving away from the past approach of fragmented cooperative diplomacy. Rather than choosing between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Indo-Pacific Strategy or B3W, it would be desirable for South Korea to leverage its strengths in grant-based technical assistance, knowledge sharing, and value diplomacy by actively combining them when needed for US-China strategies. Meanwhile, infrastructure support, which is primarily grant-based and less visible, can be utilized as an asset to secure space for cooperation as a common denominator between the US and China. Therefore, it is important to strengthen the interfaces at each level of cooperation while strategically planning a combination of grant and loan-based approaches, with a clear determination of the next government's cooperative strategy.

Finally, to strengthen the interfaces between cooperation levels, the next administration must establish clear principled values for strengthening these interfaces. While prioritizing South Korea's national interests is an important principle, universal values and norms recognized by the international community cannot be fundamentally excluded as standards for responding to emerging security issues, which are global problems. Healthcare provision for pandemic response, food aid for poverty alleviation, and support for renewable energy and carbon neutrality to address climate change and ecosystem destruction are not cooperative diplomacy solely for South Korea. Therefore, when strengthening multi-layered interfaces, universal international norms must be integrated alongside the realistic expansion of national interests. This comprehensive engagement is consistent with strategically positioning South Korea's middle-ground values between universal values and realistic national interests, ensuring that neither allies, regional partners, nor the international community can deny the middle-ground value of South Korea's new cooperative diplomacy.

■ Author: Kim Tae-gyun_ Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford (UK) and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS, USA). His main research areas include international development, peace studies, international political sociology, and global governance. His major works include "The Korean State and Social Policy: How South Korea Lifted Itself from Poverty and Dictatorship to Affluence and Democracy" (Oxford University Press, 2011), "Antagonistic Coexistence: Asian Reproduction of Global Accountability" (Seoul National University Press, 2018), and "Critical Korean International Development Studies: Developmental Reflection on International Development" (Parkyoungsa, 2019).

■ Managed and Edited by: Baek Jin-kyung EAI Director of Research

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