Backchannel Diplomacy and the Cultural Approach: Assessing the Success of Soft Power in South Korea’s Peaceful Coexistence Doctrine

Abstract

This study examines how the Republic of Korea combines cultural soft power instruments principally the Korean Wave (Hallyu) with informal backchannel diplomatic channels to advance its evolving “peaceful coexistence” doctrine toward North Korea, a policy formally articulated by the Lee Jae-myung administration through the Ministry of Unification's 2026 white paper. Drawing on Joseph Nye's soft power as reconstructed by recent constructivist scholarship, the research investigates the extent to which cultural attraction functions as a complementary instrument to unofficial, non-state diplomatic channels in de-escalating inter-Korean hostility following the collapse of mutual trust during the preceding Yoon Suk-yeol period. Using a qualitative case-study applied to policy documents, official statements, and secondary literature published between 2021 and 2026, this paper argues that South Korea's soft power success is conditional rather than automatic: cultural attraction generates international legitimacy and audience receptivity, but its translation into concrete inter-Korean behavioral change depends heavily on parallel backchannel mechanisms that manage security dilemmas invisible to public diplomacy. The study concludes that the peaceful coexistence doctrine represents a hybrid diplomatic architecture in which soft power supplies normative cover while backchannel diplomacy supplies operational traction, although structural obstacles most notably Pyongyang's constitutional redefinition of the South as a hostile state.

Keywords: soft power, backchannel diplomacy, peaceful coexistence, inter-Korean relations