Romanian Foreign Policy in the Great Transition and its Implication for the Korean Peninsula

Over the past 30 years, Romania’s foreign policy and international policy have developed in three stages. The first stage, from 1990 to 1993, was the period of Romania’s international isolation, which was resolved in 1993 by its accession to the European Community (EC) and the Council of Europe (CoE). The second stage was the period around NATO accession (1994-2004), and the third stage was the period from EU accession to the present. The common feature of these two transition periods is that the development of national policy is determined above all by changes in relations between the great powers and the dynamics of the surrounding region. After becoming a member of NATO in 2004, the last stage of the transition is still ongoing with the accession to the EU in 2007. During this period, Romania's foreign policy focused on the main human and material resources for EU accession at the regional, European and global levels. The goal of Romania's strategic initiatives for the three decades since the transition has been to centralize Romania's position in the European security architecture in terms of space, especially in terms of geopolitics. The geopolitical case of Romania, which is divided between Western Europe and Russia and where ‘physical influence’ dominates the regional structure today, has its own implications for international relations on the Korean Peninsula. Just as Poland and Romania are forming the southern and northern lines of NATO’s eastern front, Korea, along with Japan, is building the western front of the US-led Pacific Rim peace zone, and thus needs to continuously consider institutional mechanisms for national security.