Page 64 - AEI Insights 2020 - Vol. 6, Issue 1

AEI Insights, Vol 6, Issue 1, 2020

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power’ instil by the ROK that developed through relation with allies, economic assistance
and cultural exchanges. ‘Soft power’ is a new trend in today’s diplomacy in order to pursue
national interests by influencing the public opinion of the other states. This phenomenon is
progressing well for ROK as to strengthen its public diplomacy and making the country’s
culture and development to be accepted in the whole world.
As mentioned above, these three areas (tourism, education and human development) shown an
astounding progress. Thus, there is a need to build up greater understanding of the Southeast
Asia region for the Koreans. Likewise, ASEAN people too need to be able beyond South Korea
represents. In order to have a greater interaction between both sides, the researcher would like
to propose additional suggestion of looking beyond Hallyu culture.

The rise of K-pop on the global stage began in late 1990s in a small part of East Asia and spread
to Southeast Asia, Europe and the America. Since then, ROK has emerged as a new centre for
the production of transnational pop culture, exporting a range of cultural products to
neighbouring Asian countries. Thus, it seems that the culture of Koreans have moved towards
modernization and its historical values has slowly been forgotten. It would be beneficial to
learn more about Korea’s rich history and have a better understanding of Korea’s proud
traditional heritage. During the researcher’s visit to Seoul (May-July 2017), several informal
interviews were conducted with various levels of Korean people in order to get their insight of
the knowledge of their own culture and ASEAN. From the research point of view, Koreans has
gradually paved their traditional culture, history, and values and are only remembered through
ancient building and monuments which are preserved by the government. Likewise, other
countries in Southeast Asia have gone through modernization and globalization which has been
a great influence to all, whereby people no longer see the historical part of our glorious states
but rather predict the development of the future. This is crucial for many historians and
academician to continuously promote history to younger generation and preserved the
traditional culture that reminds us of where we belong.
In addition, beyond Hallyu culture, ROK did a remarkable job in promoting ASEAN member
countries through AKC, where the centre actively engages with government, business
communities, academia, and other relevant stakeholder. In year 2016, AKC have carried out
twenty work programmes and 63 sub-programmes including in the area of trade and
investment, culture and tourism, and public relations and information services(ASEAN-Korea,
2016). Previously, the promotion of ASEAN-ROK focused on selective group that includes
think tanks, academics, civil servants, and tertiary students. Currently, these activities
conducted by AKC has promoted Southeast Asian countries to all Koreans ranging from school
children to youth and adults. Some of the successful programmes in 2016 are ASEAN Culinary
Festival on November in Seoul that was represented by participants from all ASEAN countries.
Besides, the ASEAN-ROK Youth Network Workshop in August participated by ASEAN,
Korean, Chinese and Japanese students as well as the ASEAN school tour programme that has
been going since 2009 for Korean middle school students are examples of the successful
programmes. These socio-culture and education awareness goes beyond people-to-people
exchange. The rapport built by these countries shows the relationship between ASEAN-ROK
which are beyond economic and political cooperation as it nurtures relations from young age.
Thus, through the researcher’s informal interview with some Korean students, they have better
understanding on ASEAN and its progress rather than the people of ASEAN itself. ASEAN
people are well-versed in current culture of ROK which is K-pop but lack of knowledge in
South Korea’s history and traditional values. The stage of promoting culture should be

38 Soft power defined as the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It
arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies.

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