South Korea’s Evolving Balanced Diplomacy and China: A Discourse and Big Data Analysis of President Moon Jae-in’s Perception

Abstract

What is the strategy that made the Moon Jae-in administration maintain a 'balanced diplomacy', thus far? Regarding this, the views of Seoul's allies were negative and sometimes harsh. This paper tries to reveal the substance of Seoul's strategic position and its China policy by analyzing Moon's perception of national security. Here, the term of national security is assumed to have four aspects: existential threat, structural threat, economic secutiry, and political security. As a research methodology, we mainly used discourse and big data analysis. The results revealed that Moon's perception of China stood out for his pragmatism in flexibly responding to the external changes. In terms of national interests, he wanted to secure China's cooperation on the Korean Peninsula issue, ensure diplomatic and security autonomy against the US-China competition, hedge against various economic threats, and overcome domestic confrontation between progressives and conservatives. If we look at Moon's perception considering the meanings of balance, he shows a strong reluctance to outright power politics by great powers, an unexpectedly indifferent attitude toward the negative impact of the US-China competition on the stability and peace of Northeast Asian and the peninsula, and a strong desire to improve the poor distribution of power through national capacity building.