South Korean and Japanese Soft Power: A Comparative Analysis

This thesis attempts to demonstrate and analyse the importance of Soft Power in our contemporary world, with the focus being placed on South Korea and Japan. The first section will discuss each respective country’s contemporary diplomatic, political, and economic history to determine the foundations to some of their soft power approaches and to give a better idea about where each country stands currently. Their soft power approaches and instruments will be analysed, against various soft power determinants and theory laid out by Joseph Nye and other prominent academics, and compared to determine just how much they differ despite being close in proximity to each other have having similar cultural ethics and norms. The determined conclusion has been that both have both similar and differing approaches to some soft power instruments, however despite being near each other and having similar cultural ethics and norms, do have some particularly diverging methods to soft power. Their current approaches to soft power, may also be further divergent in the future- depending on the shift of actors in the region.