Ukraine’s present and Seoul’s future?

In Seoul, there’s certain subjects that nobody wants to talk about. At conferences, they’re put off altogether or laughed away with a witty aside. Yet, hang around a while and a few good hours after the conference dinner at a late night bar, it will start. The subjects are rolled out in slurred and angry outbursts, and what is said won’t be remembered or cited in reproach. One of these subjects is the scarier side of South Korea’s medium-term future as a relatively small-to-mid-sized state amidst China, the U.S., North Korea, Russia and Japan—and it’s not overly positive.

There is an inevitable fate that portends all small-to-mid-sized states adjacent to great powers—particularly those that (a) hold territory considered to be strategically relevant; (b) are heavily influenced by or controlled by a perceived opponent to the adjacent state; and (c) are heavily influenced by or controlled by a state in relative decline. Yes, (a), (b), and (c) apply to South Korea, China, and the United States. What is that inevitable fate?

The trajectories below are from one such late night carousal — a soju Saturnalia between street tents and singing rooms. How’d I remember the trajectories? Here we have ladies and gentlemen, the benefits of clean living. I restructured them into more understandable and cohesive responses and left out the swearword emphasis. Below, from between drinks are some local views on Seoul’s futures.

Parallel dependencies? The most acceptable outcome is the maintenance of parallel dependencies: a condition in which the state simultaneously relies on one power for security and another for economic survival. Defense, intelligence, and alliance commitments remain oriented toward the declining patron, while trade, technology, and investment deepen with the ascendant neighbor. The result is a brittle equilibrium — a foreign policy of balance rather than principles.

South Korea already embodies this pattern: its security guaranteed by Washington, its prosperity increasingly bound to Beijing. Over time, this arrangement becomes difficult to sustain, as each dependency demands exclusivity. Parallel dependencies preserve autonomy in appearance, but in practice strategic coherence erodes like a late night drinker trying to get into a cab on Yonsei-ro after 3am.

Managed neutrality? As pressures mount, the state may pivot toward managed neutrality — an attempt to formalize equidistance. It declares itself non-aligned, limits foreign basing, and cultivates multilateral legitimacy to avoid total capture by either side. While this strategy reduces immediate confrontation, it effectively transforms sovereignty into a managed condition overseen by both powers.

For South Korea, such neutrality could be secured through strength with armed neutrality; or it could be conditional and imposed through great power negotiations. The former reflects Switzerland during the Cold War — a small state whose neutrality was backed by universal conscription, fortified borders, industrial capacity, tacit acceptance by regional states, and economic resilience. The latter reflects Austria in 1955, whose neutrality was negotiated and guaranteed by the very powers that had occupied it, trading autonomy for security under external terms.

Ultimately, the durability of neutrality depends less on the smaller state’s declaration than on the willingness of great powers to tolerate and enforce it. Switzerland’s neutrality endured because it suited both NATO and the Warsaw Pact as a demilitarized buffer within Europe’s Cold War geography. Austria’s neutrality, likewise, was viable only because Washington and Moscow agreed that a neutral Vienna was preferable to another Berlin — a frozen line of confrontation.

For South Korea, no such consensus exists. China views Korean neutrality as an opportunity to dismantle the U.S. alliance network, while the United States regards it as a strategic setback that would expose Japan and the wider Pacific flank. Until Beijing and Washington share an interest in a non-aligned peninsula — whether as buffer, bridge, or demilitarized corridor — Korean neutrality will remain an aspiration without structural consent.

Contested control? If neutrality fails or is rejected, the state becomes a point of contention: the front line of competing security and ideological systems. In this phase, great-power rivalry plays out through the smaller state’s institutions, politics, and society. Domestic polarization intensifies, with rival factions acting as proxies for external interests.

Ukraine illustrates the archetype of a state transformed into a point of contest. Its geopolitical position between a declining but still powerful West and a resurgent Russia ensured that neutrality was never truly an option. Western integration efforts — through EU association and NATO partnerships — collided with Moscow’s view of Ukraine as a historic and strategic buffer essential to its security identity. The result was not merely external confrontation but deep internal fracture: competing visions of nationhood, linguistic divides, and media ecosystems aligned with opposing patrons. In Ukraine’s case, sovereignty became both the battleground and the prize — a state whose internal political balance determined the outer shape of European order.

In the Korean context, a similar dynamic could emerge as U.S.–China rivalry hardens. South Korea’s alliances, elections, and even cultural narratives are already sites of proxy competition. Washington seeks a technologically and militarily integrated ally within its Indo-Pacific architecture; Beijing aims to erode that cohesion through economic dependency, historical framing, and political influence operations. Should neutrality fail or be rejected, Seoul could find itself in Ukraine’s position — its internal debates reframed as global contests between democracy and hierarchy, or the West and Asia. In such a scenario, South Korea ceases to be a stable platform for projecting order and instead becomes the contested terrain upon which order itself is negotiated.

Structural realignment? If contests persist and the declining patron’s influence wanes, the population of the smaller state may choose to realign voluntarily with the ascendant power. This process is less coercive than annexation and less abrupt than regime change; it is instead a gradual psychological and institutional migration of allegiance. Trade, media, and cultural exchange normalize the new power’s presence, while the older alliance begins to feel anachronistic — a relic of a past order. Over time, public sentiment shifts from dependency on the old protector to acceptance of the new one, rationalized as realism, regionalism, or even destiny. The ascendant power does not need to invade; it simply inherits.

A historical parallel can be found in Finland’s realignment toward the Soviet Union after World War II. Though not conquered, Finland accepted the constraints of the 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, aligning its foreign policy with Moscow’s interests to preserve domestic autonomy. The Western powers, exhausted and focused on reconstruction, tacitly accepted this shift as the price of stability in Northern Europe. Similarly, a structural realignment of South Korea would entail a social and generational recalibration — where economic pragmatism, security fatigue, and cultural interdependence with China gradually outweigh Cold War loyalties. The United States, preoccupied with its own strategic retrenchment, might allow or even encourage such an outcome under the guise of regional accommodation.

Collapse,division, or failed-state and fragmentation? Once great-power competition destabilizes the state’s institutions and social contract, collapse becomes possible. This can take the form of economic crisis, regime implosion, or territorial division — a failed state by external design and internal exhaustion.

This is of course the current status of the ethnic Korean state. Historical divisions between north and south, coupled with Cold War contest led to all but permanent division between a Russian and Chinese backed north, and a U.S.-led Western coalition backed south. A division that continues more than 75 years later.

This is the fate of Strategic pivots. Strategic territory that was once an asset becomes a liability: a vacuum inviting intervention, partition, or trusteeship. In this scenario, South Korea’s economic interdependence and security dependence become vulnerabilities, and its geography — lodged between nuclear North Korea, maritime Japan, and continental China — ensures that no single actor can or will stabilize it alone.

Coerced realignment? The ultimate fear of many in South Korea. The terminal outcome is coerced realignment: formal absorption into the ascendant power’s orbit. This may occur peacefully through economic leverage and political inducement, or violently through threat and subversion or conquest. The realignment is presented as pragmatic sovereignty — a “return to Asia,” “regional integration,” or “new security architecture.” But in reality, it marks the end of strategic choice.

Once realigned, the state’s institutions are gradually harmonized with those of the hegemon: trade law, communications standards, defense coordination, and cultural diplomacy all reoriented toward the new center of gravity.

The above will scare many living on the Peninsula. To think that such a stable, secure (I mean people still leave wallets and phones on tables when they go out to smoke), could transform into a war zone is hard to believe. Yet, the possibility is more than evident on the other side of the Eurasian continent. To imagine South Korea as Ukraine is shocking to say the least, but the potential is there and hard to deny.

And so, it circles back to those late-night bars in Seoul — the things people only say when the lights are low and the last bottle’s half empty.

It’s not that no one knows what’s coming; it’s that no one wants to say it out loud. South Korea’s calm — the clean streets, the phones left on café tables, the endless routines — all of it runs on a kind of uneasy balance that everyone senses could shift. In the daylight, it feels easier to joke about it, to call it someone else’s problem. After a few drinks, when the laughter fades, there’s a quiet understanding that the peace here isn’t permanent. It’s borrowed time, and everyone in the know, is well aware of that fact.