Environmental cooperation in East Asia: South Korea’s “green diplomacy”

Compared to traditional "hard" issues, such as security or trade, international cooperation to resolve environmental issues can be perceived as a very "soft" and unstable reason for countries to achieve closer long-term interaction. As a result, there might be expectation that environmental cooperation is to come only after traditional issues are resolved, and countries start trusting each other as non-threatening and economically beneficial partners. But how much is that the case in the real world? To evaluate this, this paper presents South Korea's case in East Asian regionai cooperation field as a case study to determine what reasons convince South Korea to invest in environmental cooperation and what goals such "green diplomacy" is attempting to achieve. Understanding about that can help us to vievv environmental cooperation in a different light: not necessarily as a tool to deal with environmental degradation but also as a pretext for countries to maintain communication channels during difficult timesViešojo administravimo katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta