With a growing geopolitical and geo-economic significance of the Indo-Pacific, the European Union (EU) has been shifting its attention to this region. Several EU member states – including Germany and France – have recently published their Indo-Pacific strategies, whereas the EU issued its own policy documents throughout 2021 and the European Parliament has just adopted the Report on the EU and the Security Challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Although South Korea does not have an overarching strategy for this geographical area, it is in fact one of the key Indo-Pacific players and the EU’s most important like-minded partners in the region.

To what extent do various strategies complement – or contradict – one another and in what sectors best to implement them? How can Europe collaborate with Seoul in order to maintain the Indo-Pacific which is free, open and rules-based while confronting mutual challenges such as China’s increasing assertiveness? What impact does Russia’s war in Ukraine have on the EU’s relations with the Indo-Pacific countries and what other partners and actors can the EU and South Korea team up with, especially since President Yoon has been recalibrating Seoul’s approach to its Indo-Pacific neighbors?

David McAllister, MEP and Chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, will give a opening speech and will answer questions to open a hybrid event on the EU and South Korean strategies for the Indo-Pacific. The roundtable discussion will be joined by Dr Antoine Bondaz, Director of the Korea and the Taiwan Programs at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) in Paris, Dr Eunjung Lim, Associate Professor at Kongju National University and Dr Tereza Novotná, Korea-Europe Center Fellow at Free University Berlin, Korea Associate at 9DashLine and EUROPEUM Prague.

The roundtable discussion will be chaired by Dr Florian Pölking, Lecturer at the Institute for Korean Studies at Free University Berlin.