"Reassessing Seoul’s “One China” Policy" - By CWP Alum Adam Liff

Amid U.S.-led efforts to “internationalize and multilateralize” support for Taiwan in response to mounting pressure from China, the 2021 U.S.-South Korea presidential statement’s unprecedented reference to “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” made global headlines. This study analyzes contemporary Korea-Taiwan relations in historic and comparative perspective, focusing especially on Seoul’s official 1992 position on “One China” and its implications for Korea’s Taiwan policy. It demonstrates that Seoul has never recognized Beijing’s self-defined “One China principle” concerning its essential claim of PRC sovereignty over Taiwan. Comparative analysis of Korea’s position and subsequent policies with the U.S.’, Japan’s, and others’ further reveals significant (potential) flexibility in Korea’s approach to Taiwan. The relatively distant state of KoreaTaiwan relations today is the collective political choice of Korea’s democratically-elected leaders—not the legacy of some (non-existent) putative commitment made to Beijing 30 years ago.

Reassessing Seoul’s “One China” Policy: South Korea-Taiwan “Unofficial” Relations after 30 Years (1992-2022) Chaewon Lee & Adam P. Liff To cite this article: Chaewon Lee & Adam P. Liff (2022): Reassessing Seoul’s “One China” Policy: South Korea-Taiwan “Unofficial” Relations after 30 Years (1992-2022), Journal of Contemporary China, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2022.2113959 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2022.2113959 

Professor Adam P. Liff is Associate Professor of East Asian International Relations at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global & International Studies (EALC Department), and Director of its 21st Century Japan Politics and Society Initiative ("21JPSI"). Beyond IU, he is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, as well as an Associate-in-Research at Harvard University's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Liff's areas of specialty are international relations, security studies, and East Asian politics—with a particular focus on contemporary security affairs in the Asia-Pacific region. His main research interests include the foreign relations of Japan and China; U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy; the U.S.-Japan alliance, and the rise of China and its impact on its region and the world.

Liff's academic scholarship has been published in Asia Policy, Asian Survey, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, International Security, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Journal of Contemporary China, Japanese Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Security Studies, Texas National Security Review, The China Quarterly, and The Washington Quarterly. His previous research affiliations include the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, the University of Virginia's Miller Center, the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science, Peking University's School of International Studies, the Stanford Center at PKU, the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Law and Politics, the Wilson Center, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Liff holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Politics from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Stanford University.

Photo Credit: By 總統府, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109267751