The relationship between South Korea and Europe continued to strengthen throughout the year 2025. This way, relations between South Korea on the one hand and the EU, NATO and European countries on the other continued the trend from 2024 and previous years. Indeed, the weakening of the liberal international order as a result of different factors has been a key reason behind closer South Korea-Europe relations, which helps to explain why the ties between the two sides continue to improve. The political and diplomatic relationship between South Korea and Europe, however, suffered slightly in the aftermath of Yoon Suk-yeol's martial law declaration-with the result that the number of top-level meetings between Lee Jae-myung and his European counterparts was not as high as was the case in previous years. Yet, long-standing plus new working-level ties helped to move forward the relationship. Economic relations, meanwhile, continued to thrive, with strong trade and investment flows and new agreements bringing closer ties. As for security and defence relations, the two sides continued to develop strong links thanks to dialogues, arms sales and South Korea's ongoing strong support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia.
This study examines the transformation and structural characteristics of Korea-China relations in 2025 amid escalating US-China strategic competition and domestic political change in South Korea (hereafter "Korea"). Following prolonged tensions after the THAAD deployment in 2016, bilateral relations entered a new phase under the Lee Jae-myung administration, which emphasized pragmatic and balanced diplomacy. The 2025 Korea-China summit, held on the margins of the APEC meeting in Gyeongju, symbolized efforts to restore political dialogue and economic cooperation. However, persisting security distrust, intensifying technological rivalry, and growing anti-China sentiment in Korean society continued to constrain stable development. As a result, bilateral relations in 2025 exhibited a complex pattern in which diplomatic normalization and structural limitations coexisted. By examining political, economic, security, and societal dimensions, this study argues that Korea-China relations in 2025 represented both a recovery phase and a transitional period toward a new form of unstable equilibrium. This analysis provides insights into the strategic choices and constraints facing Korea as a middle power in an era of great-power competition.
In the wake of the stunning martial law crisis, what is the status and future of South Korea's polarized democracy? Much debate has focused on whether the intensity of polarization has abated under the Lee Jae-myung administration. I shift focus to the axis of polarization and its prospects for change. Protestors in the aftermath of the crisis were noticeably younger, more female, and diverse. Cautious optimism surrounded the "born democratic" generation as the potential movers of the Cold War nationalist axis that has long polarized the left-right over unification with North Korea. I test this optimism against data from the Korean General Social Survey. I find that support for unification remains the most consistent and significant predictor of leftist identification in the population, even for the young generation. A new axis around gender equality is emerging, but its partisan pull is limited to women. Whether the martial law crisis serves as a force of realignment or retrenchment for South Korea's polarized democracy appears to depend less on street-level politics and more on party elites and leadership.
This article reviews the evolution of bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan in 2025, and detects a trajectory towards a closer partnership in security and economic matters despite the persistence of the history issue. New political leaders emerged in both countries, but there was a consistent commitment to building a stronger and more well-rounded relationship. The main impetus appeared to be a shared sense of vulnerability: in addition to the emergent authoritarian triangle of China, Russia, and North Korea, South Korea and Japan faced demands from their longstanding ally, the United States, to rearrange their economic and security arrangements to better accommodate American imperatives. Amid this heightened state of uncertainty and instability, the history issue faded somewhat in significance - or more to the point, it had to be considered alongside present and future security (and to a lesser degree, economic) imperatives. Rather than being faced with a choice between prioritising security over history or vice versa, Korean policymakers were instead being asked to consider these two vital matters concurrently.
This article examines inter-Korean relations in 2025 through an analysis of domestic political rupture, the leadership transition to the liberal Lee Jae-myung administration, and the role of external dynamics. It situates developments on the Korean Peninsula within the peace-regime debates and an increasingly constrained external environment. During the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, inter-Korean relations were marked by diplomatic stalemate and confrontation. The article explores how the leadership change led to rhetorical and institutional recalibrations in inter-Korean diplomacy. The article demonstrates that while Lee pledged to pursue a pragmatic and de-escalatory approach toward North Korea, his administration remained structurally constrained by alliance modernization, North Korea's hardened doctrine, and heightened great-power competition. The review surveys domestic political developments, the changing dynamics of the US-ROK alliance, trilateral security coordination, and relations with Russia and China in the context of inter-Korean relations. By situating domestic political change within alliance and great-power dynamics, the article demonstrates that Lee's engagement efforts and pragmatic policies in 2025 functioned primarily as a risk management strategy aimed at stabilizing a deteriorating external environment surrounding the peninsula, rather than as a pathway toward denuclearization or a mechanism for facilitating substantive change in inter-Korean relations.
