PRESENTATION

Norberto Consani, Bárbara Bavoleo and Ezequiel Ramoneda

To think the Republic of Korea as a bridge between East Asia and the Latin American and
Caribbean region exposes us to the need to research the history and the objectives of
their relations, and to review the cooperation taking into consideration the international
scenario as framework and South Korea's quest for middle power status. Since the 2000s,
it is possible to iden-tify in South Korean politics the design of a middle-power diplomatic
and leadership strategy, committed to conflict conciliation, international activism and
multilateralism. Based on this scheme, the Latin American and Caribbean region gains
importance. South Korea has found in the relations with this re-gion a niche where it can
transform its activism into leadership, enhancing its international status. Its strategy
towards this niche can be observed in two approaches. On the one hand, a bilateral one,
which seeks to deepen direct relations between South Korea and several key countries of
regional influ-ence, as well as with multilateral organizations, such as the Economic Com-
mission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Inter-American Development
Bank (IADB) and the Community of Latin American and Carib-bean States (CELAC). And, on
the other hand, a networking approach, whose objective is to promote dialogue and
cooperation between countries of East Asia and Latin America within multilateral regional
organizations, promoting regional institutional integration, such as in the case of the
Forum for East Asia and Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC).
With this general framework, this book is the result of the research project “South Korea,
a bridge between East Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean”, funded by the Korea
Foundation and executed at the Insti-tute of International Relations of the National
University de La Plata, whose main objective was to analyze the foreign policy of the
Republic of Ko-rea towards Latin America, in multilateral and bilateral terms. The literary
material compiled here is a selection of the research carried out by the re-search team,
based on the criteria of: general context, areas of opportunity, and public diplomacy,
which organize the three sections. The publication is divided into two parts, the first one
which includes the English version of the essays, while the second one included the
Spanish version.
In the first section, Ezequiel Ramoneda and Norberto Consani, under the title "South
Korea and the Intergovernmental Multilateral Organiza-tions and Forums of Latin
America and the Caribbean (1993 - 2017)", establish the role of Korea as a middle-power
based on the analysis of its dip-lomatic initiatives and its design of foreign policy towards
Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors go back to the 1990s, when the foundations
for its subsequent influence are laid, and detail the achievements and strategies employed
to the present. Historical review and detailed analysis allow them to contemplate the
context and conditions under which South Korea was building its position. In turn, they
highlight the bilateral and multilateral ini-tiatives, not only in organizations and forums,
but also in transnational pub-lic-private networks, supporting the role of bridge between
East Asia and Latin America. The authors conclude that in this way South Korea became a
key player in the inter-regional relationship.
That first one-essay section, which serves as a framework for the re-search, is
complemented by two essays of the second section, that study areas of opportunity
between South Korea and Latin America. "South Korea in its Labyrinth. The Quest for
Free Trade Agreements with the Pacific Alli-ance and Mercosur”, by Manuel Máximo
Cruz, who addresses the Free Trade Agreements between the Republic of Korea and the
Latin American region, with a special attention in Mercosur. The author, after conducting
a detailed and novel analysis of Korea's trade partners in the region, exchange rates, and
foreign direct investment, analyzes the costs and potential effects of signing a Free Trade
Agreement with Mercosur. The central finding on this subject lies in the comparison of the
indirect costs of trade in the two trade blocs studied and in the evaluation of the impact
they generate for a dynamic foreign trade. His conclusion supports the position of a
greater need for Ko-rea to open a broad consumer market with a net import profile of
medium and high technology manufactures, such as the Latin American.
The second essay of this section, “ICT Industries and Smart Cities: South Korea as a
Technological Link with Latin America”, by Bárbara 228 – Norberto Consani, Bárbara
Bavoleo and Ezequiel Ramoneda. Bavoleo and Verónica del Valle, analyzes the exchange in
the field of elec-tronic government and smart city technologies. The authors argue that
South Korea has become a world leader in technological development and has de-ployed
a strong policy of assistance and consultation aimed at developing countries especially. E-
Government and ICT have a particular potential to promote the economy and
development, taking a form of investment that in-cludes the transfer of high-value and
scarce technology in less developed countries where the opening of markets is an area to
highlight for exchange and economic cooperation. The governmental role has manifested
itself in the identification of opportunities, the generation of spaces, and the promo-tion
and facilitation of exchanges.
The third, and last section, deals with public diplomacy from the civil organizations of the
Korean diaspora and from Korean studies in Latin Amer-ica. It consists of two essays, the
first by Desirée Chaure, “Civil Organiza-tions of the Korean Diaspora and their
Implications for South Korea's Public Diplomacy. Comparative Study of Argentina and
Mexico”, where the author highlights the influence of these entities in three temporal
spaces: in the short-term, with the organization of specific events, in the medium-term,
with the dissemination of varied information about the Republic of Ko-rea through of their
representatives, and, in the long-term, with the collabo-ration of the construction of a
national image and defining themselves as rep-resentatives of the Korean Nation within
the host society. The analysis con-cludes by holding that the Korean government has an
interest in cooperating with its diaspora and incorporating it into its foreign policy agenda,
since re-ciprocal commitment, participation and mutual control collaborate with the
improvement of the Korean image abroad. The diasporas in Mexico and Ar-gentina,
argues the author, are the largest in Latin America and have civil or-ganizations with the
potential to carry out public diplomacy policies.
The second essay in this section is in charge of Ezequiel Ramoneda and Sebastián Do
Rosario, who, under the title of "An Institutional Approach to the Development of
Korean Studies in Latin America: the cases of Mex-ico, Chile and Argentina" analyze the
development of Korean studies in the Latin American region between the 1960s and
2010s, taking as representa-tive countries Mexico in North America, and Chile and
Argentina in South America. After conducting exhaustive research on the initiatives,
programs, events and exchanges between the selected countries and South Korea, they
argue that there is a great difference in university internationalization poli-cies, and the
participation of the universities in paradiplomatic mechanisms to promote the relations of
the aforementioned Latin American countries with South Korea. In the case of Mexico,
they find this policy balanced be-tween inter-regionalism and trans-regionalism, where
academic initiatives with a commercial aspect and competitive dynamics coexist with
others characterized by a sense of solidarity and cooperation, and participation in mobility
networks is diversified. In the case of Chile, the internationalization of Higher Education is
oriented by the market and participation in mobility networks is highly individualized,
within a trans-regional context, in a con-text of trans-regionalism, while in the case of
Argentina it is thought to meet social needs, in a context of inter-regionalism. Also the
governments of Mex-ico and Chile have maintained a regular consideration of
participation of the academic sector in paradiplomatic mechanisms in their relations with
South Korea, not being the case in Argentina. The authors conclude by holding that the
deeping and diversification of academic cooperation is key to bring closer the countries.
All the essays compiled here dedicate lines to transmit recommenda-tions based on
analysis in order not only to contribute to the transfer of knowledge, but also to focus it
on improving relations between the countries and regions studied. This was possible
because our research yielded valuable information that accounts for the characteristics of
the foreign policy of the Republic of Korea towards Latin America in the areas of
cooperation with multilateral organizations, economic, technological, educational, cultural
and social cooperation, and, likewise, it considered the impact of local circum-stances and
idiosyncrasies, thus allowing the definition of problems and ob-stacles to overcome in
order to achieve deeper cooperation.
Finally, we express our appreciation to the Korea Foundation that pro-vided the funding to
conduct the mentioned researches and to publish this book. We highlight its work as a
promoter of the construction of knowledge about Korea in our country and in the world,
and we particularly value its contribution to this project, without which it could not have
materialized. We also thank the National University of La Plata, an institution that houses
the Institute of International Relations and its Center for Korean Studies, from where we
work every day to deepen and strengthen Korean Studies in Argentina.