My name is Jaechun Kim and I am a Professor of International Relations at Sogang University. I study US foreign policy towards the Korean Peninsula.


Q1. Public diplomacy is a global buzzword. What is public diplomacy? What is the role and importance of public diplomacy in South Korea-China relations?

Traditionally, diplomacy was conducted between government-to-government channels and was basically an affair between diplomats. In the contemporary era, public diplomacy has become much more important. Why? Because people are having a great influence on a country’s foreign policy making. In a nutshell, public diplomacy targets people in your diplomatic counterparts’ nations. You are not just targeting government officials in your diplomatic counterparts. Rather, you target people in your diplomatic counterparts. Why is that? Because, as I said before, people are very important they are having a real influence on each country’s foreign policy making.

Why is that? I can think of two reasons. One is the spread of high-tech information technology and the other is the spread of democracy. With the advance of information technology, people get to know what is really going on in diplomatic affairs and gain access to sensitive diplomatic information right away. With social networking services (SNS), people can have a real impact on foreign policy. And democracy means people gain the institutional mechanisms with which they can control their country’s foreign policy making.
So, for a number of reasons, the “people factor” has become very important in making foreign policy. That is why it is very important for one country to target the public with diplomatic efforts because public opinion has become increasingly important in making foreign policy. It is very important to communicate with the public in your foreign counterparts rather just talking through government-to-government channels. That is why public diplomacy has become very important.
You asked, what is the role of public diplomacy in South Korea-China relations? Our relationship has been improving since we normalized our diplomatic relations in 1992. But the relationship between the two countries and the perception that we have toward each other is not the best right now. I think public diplomacy can play a certain role in improving the relationship between the two countries.


Q2. What is your assessment of South Korea’s efforts to strengthen public diplomacy with China? What are its objectives? If you were to choose a few key words to describe the situation, what would they be?

We have done a pretty decent job in trying to talk to people in China, in trying to win the hearts and minds of China’s public. But that was before our decision to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. Since then, the relationship has deteriorated. But initially, I think we did a pretty good job. President Park Geun-hye was quite well-received by the Chinese public. When former President Park Geun-hye went to China to attend the World War II victory ceremony, she was hailed by the Chinese public as “Big Sister Park.” But after THAAD, the relationship between the two countries deteriorated significantly. I think that proves that there is work to be done. That proves our public diplomacy so far had been okay but that it had its limits. The objective was to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people and, to be more specific, to elicit China’s support for our policy toward North Korea, North Korea’s nuclear weapons problems, our unification policy, and so on.


Q3. What are the major challenges facing the new South Korean government? More specifically, what are the hurdles that the new South Korean government is facing in the area of public diplomacy in South Korea-China relations? How can we overcome such challenges?

There are a host of challenges that the new South Korean government is faced with. If you ask me to pick one challenge, I would probably have to say that it is our policy toward North Korea. How to deal with North Korea’s nuclear weapons problem is going be the gravest challenge to this new government in South Korea. It is because of North Korea’s nuclear weapons situation that the relationship between the two countries deteriorated. Our relationship has deteriorated greatly because of our decision to deploy THAAD, the objective of which was to better deal with North Korea’s nuclear weapons situation. The hurdle here is the animosity and ill-feelings that we came to harbor toward each other after our decision to deploy THAAD.
How can we deal with these bad perceptions towards each other? I do not think there is a magic formula here to clear up these ill-feelings, but, as I said, public diplomacy can play a certain role here in terms of ameliorating the relationship between the two countries.


Q4. South Korea remains heavily reliant on China to solve the North Korean nuclear issue. However, South Korea and China are now locked in a contentious relationship due to the deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea. Then how can we manage such a delicate situation?

We will have to make sure that the reason we are deploying THAAD has one hundred percent to do with North Korea’s nuclear weapons situation. We are not trying to neutralize or do damage to China’s strategic interests. That is not what we are trying to do. We are faced with this grave challenge in North Korea and we will have to what we have to do. THAAD is clearly a defensive mechanism and weapon with which we can increase our deterrent and defensive capability against North Korea. We have to do a better job in terms of persuading China of this.
The THAAD issue has really become a hot potato between the two countries. It was a mistake made by the Park Geun-hye government we presented THAAD as if it was a sign of goodwill between our two countries when the Park Geun-hye government should have tried to persuade the Chinese that this is something that we will have to do in the future if North Korea’s threat crosses a certain threshold, that this is really something that we must do to deal with the situation. But we have not done such a thing. What we had done previously was to present this THAAD issue as if it is going to be a symbol of goodwill between the two countries. That was a mistake.


Q5. What are the major issues for the “Public Diplomacy in South Korea-China Relations” session? Can you tell us briefly what you will discuss at the session?

What I am going to discuss during the session is that we really have to diversify our public diplomacy efforts towards China. So far, the two countries’—it is not just South Korea, but also China—public diplomacy efforts have been limited to the top decision-making level. President Xi Jinping was at the forefront of China’s public diplomacy efforts towards South Korea. Likewise, President Park Geun-hye was at the forefront of South Korea’s public diplomacy efforts towards China. It was quite successful when President Xi Jinping came to South Korea in 2014 and gave a special lecture. It was really a remarkable success. His visit was well-received by Korea’s mass media and the public. Park Geun-hye’s visit to attend the World War II victory ceremony was, as I said before, remarkably successful in terms of improving South Korea’s standing in China’s public opinion. But it is time for both countries to diversify their channels for public diplomacy efforts to include different channels such as think tanks or between different NGOs in both countries.
That is the contention I will be making during the session. I believe that we will have to diversify our public diplomacy efforts towards each other. Why? Because previously public diplomacy efforts had been limited to top decision-making levels and that has reached its limit of effectiveness.


Q6. Could you share your thoughts and ideas on the role of the Jeju Forum to bolster peaceful and prosperity in South Korea-China relations?

The Jeju Forum can play a positive role in improving the relationship between the two countries. The Jeju Forum provides a number of avenues through which government officials and scholars get together and talk about the ways in which they can improve the relationship as well as how they can instill trust in the relationship between the two countries. In that sense, the Jeju Forum is very important in terms of providing these avenues. And think about the issues that the Jeju Forum is covering. The Jeju Forum is covering some of the hard issues that South Korea is faced with, such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons problems, territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and so on. Some other issues are really softer, non-traditional security issues, such as environmental degradation, how we can deal with new types of epidemics, disaster relief, and so on. It is very important for the Jeju Forum to continuously cover and deal with these softer issues. I believe it is through these venues that we can easily cooperate because these are easier issues. These are not really intractable hard security issues such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons situation or territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
This is something that we can work on, and by working on these easier issues together we can cultivate a habit of cooperation. We can accumulate a stock of trust toward each other. The Jeju Forum is important in terms of providing these avenues for the representatives of these countries to get together and talk about how we can cooperate on these easier issues. Through this cooperation we can move forward to a discussion of how we can deal with harder issues. I think that is the right way to go.


Q7. Any last words to our JejuTube viewers?

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