August 26th, 2026
(Executive Summary)
In early June, one year passed since President Lee Jae-myung took office in the Republic of Korea — a period long enough to assess the main directions of the new administration’s foreign policy with reasonable confidence. During this time, Seoul has managed to define its approaches toward virtually all of its key foreign policy partners. Russia, however, has emerged as a notable exception.
Compared with the presidency of Yoon Suk Yeol, harsh anti-Russian rhetoric has become less frequent, while some expert-level, business and intergovernmental contacts have resumed. At the level of official policy, however, no fundamental changes have taken place so far. The Republic of Korea continues to maintain its sanctions regime, political dialogue remains limited, and the Lee administration has launched no significant initiative aimed at restoring relations with Moscow.
From Seoul’s perspective, this policy can be explained by pragmatism. Russia is currently not among the foreign policy priorities for which the Korean leadership is prepared to expend significant political capital or risk disagreements with the United States and its European partners.
From Moscow, however, this policy looks somewhat different. It is perceived neither as a move toward normalization nor as a continuation of the open confrontation that characterized the Yoon Suk Yeol period. A more accurate description of the current state of relations would be a “managed freeze”: there has been no rupture, essential channels remain open, but neither have there been attempts to bring relations to a new political level.
Russia as the Exception in Lee’s First Year
Lee Jae-myung came to power in June 2025 under unusual circumstances. Following the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol, the new administration had to begin forming a government and addressing accumulated foreign policy and economic challenges practically without a full-fledged transition period.
During his first year, Lee managed to reach agreements with Washington on trade and security issues, restore working-level dialogue with Beijing, establish relatively warm relations with Tokyo, and continue developing cooperation within the United States–Republic of Korea–Japan framework. The new administration also attempted to resume dialogue with North Korea. Although Pyongyang rejected these proposals, Seoul at least managed to avoid another sharp escalation of tensions.
Against this background, the Russian track stands out particularly clearly.
For decades, Russia was regarded in Seoul as one of the four powers of particular importance to the Korean Peninsula, alongside the United States, China and Japan. Yet during the first year of the Lee administration, the Russia policy produced neither a new political initiative, nor substantive high-level dialogue, nor a clear program for restoring relations.
This is especially notable because Lee Jae-myung himself spoke during his election campaign about the need for a more realistic foreign policy based on the Republic of Korea’s national interests. At a campaign rally in Daegu on May 13, 2025, he stressed that the alliance with the United States remained the foundation of Korea’s national security, but that Seoul also needed to maintain cooperation, trade and normal relations with China and Russia.
In Russia, these statements were interpreted as a signal that, following Yoon Suk Yeol’s departure, Seoul would at least attempt to adjust its policy toward Russia. So far, this has not happened.
Cooperation with Russia — Where It Is Necessary
Certain changes have nevertheless taken place. Harsh political statements have become less frequent, contacts between expert communities have intensified, and some business visits and intergovernmental consultations have resumed.
However, these processes have barely affected the highest political level.
South Korean Russia specialists and business representatives are increasingly speaking about the need to preserve existing ties and prepare for the eventual restoration of cooperation. Such statements, however, still come primarily from the expert community and companies with a direct interest in the Russian market rather than from the country’s political leadership.
Large Korean corporations are also acting with extreme caution. One telling example was Hyundai Motor’s decision not to exercise its option to buy back its former Russian plant near St. Petersburg, despite the fact that the company had previously invested approximately one billion dollars in manufacturing operations in Russia.
At the same time, there are a number of areas where Russian-Korean cooperation continues.
The Republic of Korea remains interested in Russian raw materials, fishing operations, energy supplies and other areas where replacing Russia quickly would be difficult or economically disadvantageous. Supplies of Russian fuel for South Korea’s nuclear power industry continue, as do energy and fisheries ties.
This produces a fairly distinctive model: where cooperation is objectively necessary for the Korean economy itself, legal and logistical solutions can be found even under sanctions. Where Seoul’s immediate interest is weaker, sanctions restrictions become sufficient grounds for maintaining the status quo.
From the Republic of Korea’s perspective, this may look like entirely natural foreign policy pragmatism: a state protects its own interests first.
From Moscow, however, the same model is perceived somewhat differently — as asymmetric. It creates the impression that sanctions-related restrictions prove surmountable primarily when doing so is necessary for the Korean side.
The issue of direct air links is illustrative. The Russian side has proposed various options for restoring them, but Seoul continues to cite difficulties involving payments, insurance and aircraft maintenance.
At the same time, where sanctions do not formally impede operations, Korean businesses continue to perform successfully in Russia. Orion and Paldo retain strong positions in the Russian market. Orion’s sales in Russia have grown at double-digit rates in recent years, while Paldo products — above all its Doshirak instant noodles — remain among the most recognizable Korean consumer brands in the country.
Nevertheless, the overall economic picture remains negative. In 2025, bilateral trade amounted to approximately $10.9 billion — almost three times less than in 2021, when it approached $30 billion. There have also been virtually no new major investment projects.
The Northern Sea Route: Can the Route Be Separated from Russia?
The contradictions inherent in the current policy are particularly visible in the case of the Northern Sea Route.
The Lee Jae-myung administration has made development of the Arctic route one of its strategic priorities. For the Republic of Korea, the reasoning is entirely understandable. The country has one of the world’s largest shipbuilding industries, major ports and an export-oriented economy. The potential shortening of the shipping route between Asia and Europe serves its long-term interests.
Russia’s interest is equally obvious.
Yet a curious situation has emerged: in official Korean rhetoric, the Northern Sea Route is often discussed almost separately from Russia.
South Korean officials speak about experimental voyages, shipbuilding, ports and the advent of an “era of the Northern Sea Route,” while the need for full-scale cooperation with Moscow tends to be mentioned only in response to direct questions from journalists and is usually accompanied by assurances that Western sanctions will be observed.
The first experimental voyage by a South Korean container ship from Busan to Rotterdam via the Northern Sea Route is planned for late August or early autumn 2026. Yet even this voyage is being presented primarily as an attempt to accumulate Korea’s own experience in using the route rather than as the beginning of a new Russian-Korean project.
This raises a fundamental question — one addressed not to Moscow, but to Seoul itself: Can the Republic of Korea make the Northern Sea Route one of its strategic projects while simultaneously maintaining only minimal political dialogue with Russia?
A significant portion of the route passes through Russian waters and Russia’s economic zone, while its full-scale use requires interaction with Russian infrastructure, the icebreaker fleet, ports and regulatory authorities.
The Northern Sea Route may therefore become a kind of test of the limits of the current model of relations: is it possible to develop practical cooperation while consistently trying to avoid giving that cooperation political substance?
Russia, North Korea and NATO: A Mirror Image of Mutual Distrust
The most sensitive issue in Russian-Korean relations today remains military and political cooperation between Russia and North Korea.
For Moscow, relations with Pyongyang constitute an independent area of foreign policy, connected in part with the broader confrontation between Russia and the West. The Russian side has repeatedly emphasized that its cooperation with North Korea is not directed against the Republic of Korea.
In Seoul, such assurances are met with little confidence.
For the Republic of Korea, Russian-North Korean cooperation is not an abstract element of global geopolitical confrontation but an immediate national security issue. This is precisely why the Lee administration continues to sharply criticize military and political ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.
At the same time, Moscow is paying increasingly close attention to the rapid expansion of the Republic of Korea’s contacts with NATO.
During Lee Jae-myung’s European tour and his participation in the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7–8, 2026, Seoul proposed significantly expanding defense-industrial and technological cooperation with the alliance. Europe is simultaneously becoming one of the most important markets for the Korean defense industry.
From the Korean perspective, this too follows an understandable logic of national interest. The Republic of Korea gains access to a huge arms market, new technological ties and additional opportunities for its own defense industry.
From Moscow, however, the process looks different.
Russian officials increasingly view the integration of Korean companies into NATO production and technology chains not as a purely commercial process but as an indirect strengthening of the military capabilities of an alliance that Russia regards as a direct adversary.
An almost mirror-image situation is emerging. Moscow tells Seoul: our cooperation with North Korea is not directed against the Republic of Korea. Seoul, in effect, tells Moscow: our cooperation with NATO is not directed against Russia. And neither side finds the other’s arguments convincing.
This may be where one of the most dangerous trends in the current relationship lies. Russia and the Republic of Korea may gradually move toward a deeper confrontation not because either has consciously decided to enter into conflict with the other, but because each side regards its own interaction with third countries as a normal expression of national interest while simultaneously perceiving similar actions by the other side as a potential threat.
A Deliberate Choice by Seoul
The Lee administration’s current policy can hardly be explained by a lack of information about Russia.
Among the president’s closest advisers are people with a strong understanding of Russian foreign policy and Russian realities. The most prominent example is Wi Sung-lac, one of the president’s key advisers on foreign policy and national security, who previously served as the Republic of Korea’s ambassador to Russia.
Lee’s political and expert circles include other specialists who have also worked extensively on Russia.
The current caution displayed by Seoul in its relations with Moscow is therefore unlikely to be the result of misunderstanding Russia or a coincidental combination of circumstances.
Rather, it appears to be a deliberate political choice.
Judging by its actions, the Lee administration has concluded that, under current international conditions, Russia is not among the foreign policy priorities for which significant political risks need to be taken. Relations can be kept frozen while maintaining the minimum necessary channels and waiting for the external environment to change. This is a rational strategy. But it comes at a price.
The Danger of a Prolonged Freeze
Seoul presumably expects that once the current international crisis is over, a significant part of the previous Russian-Korean relationship can be restored.
That is possible. But there is another scenario — and signs that it may already be emerging are visible in Russia. Disappointment with the Republic of Korea has been growing, including at the government level. There are increasingly influential voices arguing that Moscow should stop investing political effort in relations with Seoul if South Korea itself sees little reason to restore them, and instead concentrate on relations with China, North Korea and other Asian partners that are willing to expand cooperation with Russia.
This view has not always been dominant in Moscow. For a long time, a widespread assumption was that relations with South Korea should be preserved through the current crisis in the expectation that, once geopolitical conditions changed, the two countries could return relatively quickly to their previous level of economic cooperation. Today, however, the opposite argument is gaining ground: Russia should adapt to a long-term estrangement from South Korea rather than wait for Seoul to return.
This change in attitudes could have very practical consequences for South Korea. Korean companies may assume that, once geopolitical conditions improve, they will be able to return to the Russian market and largely restore the positions they previously held. That should not be taken for granted. Russian companies, as well as businesses from China and other countries, are already occupying market niches left by Korean firms. If the current freeze continues for several more years, there is a real possibility that Korean companies will discover that nobody in Russia is particularly waiting for their return — politically or commercially.
This illustrates a broader problem: frozen relations do not always remain simply frozen. If a freeze lasts for many years, the very structure of the relationship begins to change.
Russia is restructuring its foreign trade, logistics and investment ties. Cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang is becoming increasingly institutionalized. At the same time, the Republic of Korea is becoming more deeply integrated into European defense-industrial and technological networks.
Companies leave markets and find new partners. Officials stop communicating with each other on a regular basis. Expert communities lose their previous connections. A new generation of diplomats, journalists and analysts emerges for whom Russia and the Republic of Korea are no longer former economic partners experiencing a temporary crisis, but countries situated on opposite sides of a geopolitical confrontation.
At some point, temporary estrangement may become the new normal.
The main question today, therefore, is not whether a rapid normalization of Russian-Korean relations possible. Under current international conditions, it is unlikely.
The more important question is whether Moscow and Seoul can preserve enough channels of communication and mutual interests to prevent the current political crisis from turning into an irreversible structural rupture.
To achieve this, Russia needs to avoid reducing its entire Korea policy exclusively to its relations with North Korea. The Republic of Korea, for its part, should take into account that a prolonged absence of political dialogue with Moscow gradually reduces its own ability to influence Russian policy on the Korean Peninsula.
Practical areas of cooperation — fisheries, energy, nuclear energy, expert contacts and Arctic logistics — are therefore important not only for their immediate economic value. They constitute an infrastructure of relations that may prove essential when the political environment once again makes a broader normalization possible.
At the same time, Moscow and Seoul should distinguish between political rhetoric and genuine red lines. Joint statements with third countries, mutual criticism or diplomatic disagreements should not in themselves automatically lead to further escalation. Concrete actions that directly affect the other side’s security are far more dangerous.
Russia and the Republic of Korea today find themselves at a considerably worse point in their relationship than they did several years ago. Yet there are still no territorial disputes, historical enmity or fundamental conflicts of national interest between the two countries.
Most of the current contradictions have arisen as a consequence of a broader geopolitical confrontation. For precisely this reason, today’s “managed freeze” may be a rational short-term tactic — for both Seoul and Moscow.
But it becomes dangerous if it turns into a long-term strategy.
If Russia and the Republic of Korea allow the current estrangement to become institutionally entrenched, in several years both sides may discover that a temporary crisis has evolved into a lasting system of mutual distrust. And restoring relations then will be considerably more difficult than simply preserving them today.
Oleg Kiryanov
※ The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Asia Risk Research Center.
Editor's note: This is an abridged English summary of an article originally published in Russian. The full Russian version is available on the Asia Risk Research Center website.
