Good morning everyone. My name is Sevil.

Today I want to talk about the use of soft power in the

development of South Korea.

First, I want to identify the two types of power by mentioning Joseph Nye's article named "The
Future of Power" published in 2011. He explains “hard power" as "the ability to get others to act in
ways that contradict their initial preferences and strategies", and on the contrary "soft power" is
"the ability to achieve goals through attraction and persuasion, rather than coercion or fee. And the
main components of "soft power" are culture, political values, and foreign policy.

Approximately 30 years ago, The Republic of South Korea, after recognizing the importance of soft
power in the international economic rivalry, has chosen some cultural symbols; such as their famous
martial art taekwondo, foods from their cuisine kimchi, Korean ramen, ginseng tea and their music
which is known as K-Pop. The strategy of this was not only promoting the image of the country on
the world stage but also the government played a huge role in distributing the products of these
traditional values.

Second is that, as Sook-Jong Lee highlighted in his article 2009 the Korean diplomacy was weak
compared to its hard power. And since Korea was a middle power surrounded by major powers like
China and Japan, it could never compete with them in terms of hard power. Facing this reality, the
government perceived Soft Power as an alternative source. And during that time Korean movies and
TV soap operas have been shown on Chinese television. Korean, especially music, dance, and fashion
has become quite popular among young people. This success caused to give birth to a new type of
Asian culture called Korean Wave or harnyu. The Asian youth does not want to look like Americans
anymore as much as they did in the past by wearing blue jeans, college jackets, and sneakers. In fact,
now the American young people have influenced by these Korean streetwear and beauty products.
As a result, according to Nye in his 2009 article, this phenomenon allowed South Korea to play a
greater role in international institutions and of course, it has contributed to the building diplomatic
relations between the Republic of South Korea and the other states.

Finally, once poor but now a rich developed country South Korea, in its foreign policy followed a
strategy to help developing countries. They send army engineers and non-combatant forces to
Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Cabalza wrote in his article 2011 that the Korean Government also
used this soft power-based foreign policy intelligently, in easing the tension between its powerful
neighbors Japan and China.

To sum up, for Asian countries, culture has a high value due to its uniqueness. Therefore, especially
culture as one of the elements of "soft power" is actively used by the Korean state. Thanks to such a
phenomenon as "Korean wave", the Korean lifestyle, Korean fashion, Korean cuisine, etc. became
popular. The main achievements were the formation of a positive image and the creation of an
attractive brand on the world stage. And they made possible for South Korea to implement its
national interests without conflicts and to pursue their foreign policy and diplomatics without the
threat of using force and confrontation.