Elite Opinion and the “Belt and Road” Debate in South Korea

This article analyses elite opinion in South Korea about China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) in order to better understand how this Asia-Pacific middle power and US ally is approaching the initiative. Through a close analysis of the writing of foreign-policy elites in South Korea, the study finds that OBOR was generally depicted as significant to China’s re-emergence in regional and global affairs, but not as wholly detrimental to South Korean interests. Elites did not speak with one voice, but presented the government with a comparatively sanguine view of OBOR. The debate, we illustrate, created unlikely alliances between left- and right-leaning elites about some aspects of the initiative, but it also revealed tensions among conservative and centrist elites. In seeking to demonstrate their relevance to policymakers, however, elites inadvertently underlined their growing distance from the general public.