The Global South as Mirror and Stage: Knowledge Production and Subjectivities in South Korea’s Foreign Policy *

This article examines how South Korea produces knowledge of the Global South and how this process simultaneously constitutes South Korea's foreign policy subjectivities.Drawing on critical discourse analysis informed by post-structuralist theory, we conceptualise the Global South as a discursive construct whose meanings are contingent, strategic and politically productive.The analysis identifies three dominant constructions of the Global South: an emerging power, a site of developmental need and a partner.These subject positions are not mutually exclusive but coexist through the flexibility of the Global South as a nodal point.We also argue that the Global South operates as both a mirror and a stage in Korea's foreign policy imagination.As a mirror, it reflects Korea's self-understanding as an in-between actor, enabling claims of moral credibility grounded in shared developmental experience and postcolonial empathy.As a stage, it provides a discursive arena through which Korea performs its global ambitions and middle-power identity.While this discursive configuration allows Korea to navigate shifting global conditions and expand its international engagement, it also (unwittingly) reproduces global hierarchies.