Boosting EU-Korea Security Relations in an Age of Turbulence

This project – carried out thanks to a grant from the Korea Foundation - examines EU-ROK security relations and promotes security cooperation between Brussels and Seoul. Four security policy areas have been selected for their relevance, timeliness and potential to move forward the EU-ROK relationship. They are:

(i) Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament;
(ii) Cybersecurity and data-protection;
(iii) Space policy and technology;
(iv) Preventive diplomacy and crisis management.

These four security policy areas represent interesting cases to examine the extent to which the EU and ROK are able to cooperate. The research identifies and explores the reasons why the EU and ROK have been able to collaborate in some sectors (i.e. non-proliferation and disarmament) but have struggled in others (i.e. space policy and technology)..

The choice of the four security policy areas is also consistent with more recent documents signed by the two sides (the 2010 EU-ROK Framework Agreement and the Framework Participation Agreement (FPA)).

The project focus is on EU-ROK security relations, rather than on the security relations of individual EU member states with Korea. The project concentrates predominantly on the EU as the main level of analysis while incorporating, where appropriate, the role of member states.

Our method is innovative: the project pairs a European with a Korean expert for the assessment of the individual security dimensions and production of joint papers. The European and Korean experts involved in the project will merge their research findings into four joint papers which will include Korean and European perspectives for each of the security sectors. By doing so, we open up new and promising avenues for collaborative scholarly research on EU-Korea relations.