South Korea’s Public Diplomacy during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Seeking Status as an Authority in Global Governance

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caught almost all countries unprepared. Some countries, including South Korea (hereafter Korea), managed to deal with the pandemic relatively more successfully than others and had a proactive global posture from early on, including providing aid, and public diplomacy campaigns. In this paper, I explore Korea’s COVID-19-related public diplomacy activities and its aims. I analyze Korea’s COVID-19 humanitarian aid trends, its policy documents, and the tweets related to the pandemic posted by the country’s official public diplomacy account. I find that the pandemic catalyzed what Korea had already been aiming to do, which is improve its global status to be among top authorities across various issue-areas. Due to the nature of the pandemic, Korea’s public diplomacy has been themed around international cooperation and solidarity. I suggest that Korea should hold onto its international cooperation emphasis on public diplomacy, to form the basis for its status-seeking as an authority in global governance in the post-pandemic era.

BibTeX citation

@article{ayhan_south_2022,
    title = {{South Korea}’s Public Diplomacy during the {COVID}-19 Pandemic: Seeking Status as an Authority in Global Governance},
    journaltitle = {{KEI} Academic Paper Series},
    author = {Ayhan, Kadir Jun},
    date = {2022},
    note = {Type: Journal Article},
}