Getting past potential? Outcomes of the 2025 Australia-Republic of Korea Dialogue on Security Cooperation

Executive summary

In November 2025, the United States Studies Centre (USSC) and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in Australia co-hosted the second Australia–ROK Track 1.5 Dialogue on Security Cooperation. The dialogue convened Australian and South Korean experts, policymakers, government officials and industry leaders to examine persistent barriers to advancing the security partnership; assess how the evolving regional strategic environment is shaping the scope for bilateral defence cooperation; and identify priority areas where Canberra and Seoul should consider focusing their efforts to produce practical, mutually beneficial outcomes. The dialogue’s discussions generated the following eight key outcomes:

1. The strategic rationale for deepening the Australia–South Korea defence and security partnership endures as the Indo-Pacific’s security environment deteriorates and allied confidence in Washington’s reliability seemingly becomes less assured.
2. However, differences between Canberra and Seoul’s strategic priorities and underdeveloped enabling bilateral defence frameworks and agreements have constrained delivery on the security ambitions of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
3. To address these lingering issues, Australian and South Korean thinkers would benefit from revisiting the fundamental, ‘first principles’ underpinning the bilateral defence relationship. By clarifying each side’s strategic priorities, constraints and expectations, ongoing and future bilateral defence and security policy efforts can be calibrated to realistic capability and limitation considerations.
4. Strengthening the intellectual architecture of the relationship through more structured and sustained exchanges between Australia and South Korea’s strategic studies communities will be critical to building mutual understanding, policy coherence and a pipeline of future expertise to help move the bilateral defence and security partnership forward.
5. Australian policy thinkers generally view persistent ambiguity regarding Seoul’s willingness to assume a broader regional security role, commensurate with its growing economic and military weight, as an impediment to closer defence cooperation.
6. Seoul’s interest in acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability with the technical support of the United States presents opportunities for two-way learning, including in areas such as workforce development, regulatory frameworks and industrial capacity.
7. Defence industry and technology collaboration continues to remain central to the bilateral partnership, but the two countries will need to strike a better balance between addressing near-term defence capability shortfalls through arms sales versus pursuing more ambitious, long-term co-development initiatives.
8. Expanding bilateral cooperation in the space and cyber domains represents a logical avenue to advance the security partnership, given the countries’ complementary strengths and shared desire to develop their national and joint capabilities in these areas.

The strategic rationale for deepening the Australia–South Korea defence and security partnership endures as the Indo-Pacific’s security environment deteriorates and allied confidence in Washington’s reliability seemingly becomes less assured.

Background

In November 2025, the United States Studies Centre (USSC) and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) in Australia co-hosted the second Australia–ROK Track 1.5 Dialogue on Security Cooperation. The dialogue convened over 50 Australian and South Korean experts, policymakers, government officials and industry leaders in Canberra to re-examine enduring barriers and emerging opportunities to advance the bilateral security partnership at a time of heightened strategic uncertainty and accelerating regional competition.

Since the inaugural Australia-ROK Security Dialogue in November 2024,¹ the bilateral security partnership has weathered a series of consequential political developments and intensifying security challenges. This was especially prevalent in South Korea, where the country’s June 2025 presidential election followed a period of political upheaval precipitated by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived declaration of martial law and subsequent impeachment. This culminated in the electoral victory of a progressive government under President Lee Jae Myung.² Additionally, since US President Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Australia and South Korea have faced a degree of uncertainty over the reliability of the United States’ security commitment to the Indo-Pacific. While Washington continues to embrace its decades-long defence treaty obligations with key allies like Australia and South Korea,³ President Trump’s highly personalised style of ‘America First’ diplomacy and transactional approach toward alliance management has unnerved US partners.⁴

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met on the sidelines of APEC meetings in Gyeongju, South Korea, October 2025.Source: x.com

Nonetheless, Canberra and Seoul have since signalled their commitment to strengthening bilateral security ties. On the heels of his electoral victory, President Lee dispatched a special delegation to Australia in July 2025 to advance bilateral cooperation on technology and defence issues.⁵ This was followed by Australia’s re-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to South Korea in October 2025 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, during which the two leaders met on the sidelines and pledged to upgrade bilateral cooperation across a range of issues, including on shared security challenges.⁶ Australia and South Korea are scheduled to hold their next biennial 2+2 summit between their Foreign and Defence Ministers in 2026.

Notwithstanding these developments, an enduring interest in realising the full potential of the Australia-ROK security partnership across government, academia and industry has yet to be fully translated into sustained, tangible defence cooperation. Indeed, compared with other elements of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the defence and security dimensions have progressed only intermittently and incrementally over the last two decades.⁷ The 2025 Australia–ROK Track 1.5 Security Dialogue, therefore, offered Australian and South Korean stakeholders an opportunity to reassess persistent impediments to the partnership’s advancement; evaluate how the evolving regional strategic environment is reshaping the parameters of bilateral defence cooperation; and identify priority areas where Canberra and Seoul should concentrate their efforts to generate tangible, mutually beneficial defence and security outcomes. The following report distils the dialogue’s discussions, capturing key themes and areas of consensus and divergence between Australian and South Korean participants, with an eye to informing efforts to mature the bilateral defence and security relationship.

Outcomes

1. The strategic rationale for deepening the Australia-ROK defence partnership endures amid a rapidly shifting regional security environment and heightened uncertainty over the United States’ global defence commitments.

A majority of the dialogue’s participants agreed that the strategic case for Australia and South Korea to deepen their security and defence partnership has grown over the last year amid a worsening regional strategic environment. Several dialogue participants identified China’s increasingly assertive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific as a key factor, pointing to Beijing’s construction of artificial outposts in the West Sea (Yellow Sea) that overlap with South Korea’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ); a pronounced expansion in its maritime exercises across the First Island Chain, including around Taiwan; and the circumnavigation of Australia by a group of Chinese warships in early 2025 that included unannounced live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea.⁸ The deepening strategic partnership between North Korea and Russia was also identified as a factor behind the region’s worsening security environment. Pyongyang’s ongoing support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing bilateral defence technology cooperation that reportedly extends to advancing North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear-propelled submarine capability has enabled North Korea to expand the quantity and sophistication of its military assets on and around the Korean Peninsula.⁹ These developments have underlined the growing capacity of both Beijing and Pyongyang to project military power over longer distances in ways that undermine Canberra and Seoul’s security interests. Thus, for resource-constrained middle powers such as Australia and South Korea, there is even greater strategic logic for deeper bilateral cooperation in addressing these intensifying, shared security challenges.

Added to this is uncertainty over US regional and global engagement under the second Trump administration. Where Australia and South Korea would traditionally turn to their common ally to manage pressing security challenges, the Trump administration’s transactional approach towards its alliance network has strained the US-ROK and US-Australia alliances and undermined allied perceptions of Washington’s reliability.¹⁰ The United States has also moved to more closely synchronise its regional alliances with its efforts to deter or, if necessary, respond to a contingency along the First Island Chain, including over Taiwan. This complicates Canberra and Seoul’s strategic planning and their concurrent efforts to stabilise bilateral ties with China.¹¹ While Australian and South Korean dialogue participants generally agreed that sustained security cooperation with the United States remained indispensable for maintaining a favourable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, including on the Korean Peninsula, they also viewed an expansion of their respective global defence partnerships — including with each other — as increasingly important to helping mitigate new uncertainty in US defence policy and security commitment to the region.

2. Differences in Australian and South Korean security priorities continue to put a ceiling on practical bilateral defence cooperation, leaving the security relationship to echo or revolve around existing alliance initiatives.

While both countries regard one another as important strategic partners, dialogue participants generally agreed that practical defence cooperation between Australia and South Korea remains constrained by their divergent security priorities. To be sure, Australia and South Korea have shared interests in upholding key elements of the international rules-based order and maintaining “stability and prosperity” in the Indo-Pacific.¹² They both share concerns over China’s growing military power and coercive behaviour in the maritime domain and North Korea’s destabilising activities.¹³ Yet differing priorities within that broad consensus draw each country’s focus and resources in different directions, with the seeming effect of shrinking the value proposition of a more active bilateral defence relationship. For instance, the growth of South Korea as a defence power is not reflected in a commensurate regional security role beyond the Korean Peninsula, given the constant nature of the North Korean threat.¹⁴ While Australia remains somewhat invested in security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula — as seen in the Australian Defence Force’s sustained participation in Operation Linesmen¹⁵ — its national security documents largely downplay the significance of the Korean Peninsula compared to other subregional priorities, with China figuring as its largest defence challenge.¹⁶

Experts noted a tendency for both nations to revert to discussing the bilateral defence relationship with respect to their existing US alliance relationships in the absence of progress elsewhere.

This mismatch between threat and geographic prioritisation places a ceiling on practical defence and security cooperation. This is not to say that such cooperation does not occur — experts pointed to Australia and South Korea’s participation in Exercise Pitch Black, Talisman Sabre and Balikatan as examples of where Australian and South Korean forces have engaged in recent years.¹⁷ Rather, several participants argued that this cooperation is episodic and largely rooted in multilateral frameworks, since the bilateral partnership lacks a clear operational rationale for bilateral engagement beyond either country’s national territories, while lacking several foundational agreements and structures that could plausibly drive greater Australia-ROK interoperability. Indeed, these experts noted a tendency for both nations to revert to discussing the bilateral defence relationship with respect to their existing US alliance relationships in the absence of progress elsewhere.¹⁸ This observation was supported by conversations throughout the day, during which experts from both countries often reverted to alliance and minilateral security initiatives — such as AUKUS and ‘the Squad’ between Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the United States — as avenues for enhancing bilateral cooperation.

3. Efforts to advance practical Australia-ROK defence and security cooperation would benefit from a return to ‘first principles,’ including situating its appropriate role and value proposition within the broader Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

Experts agreed that while Australia and the ROK maintain a resolve to cooperate on defence and security matters, goodwill alone is insufficient to drive tangible progress. Without resolving the challenges that emerge from diverging strategic priorities, tangible defence cooperation will continue to struggle to keep pace with political rhetoric.¹⁹ Several participants expressed frustration that discussions about the security relationship are frequently framed in terms of broad “potential” rather than the specific requirements and drivers of practical cooperation. Indeed, one participant suggested that the immediate scope for bilateral defence cooperation may be much narrower than analysts commonly suggest, and that it would remain so without more honest conversations about the purpose, value and limits of the different forms of defence and security collaboration between both countries.

Republic of Korea Marine Corps Amphibious Assault Vehicles approach the beach from ROKS Marado during Exercise Talisman Sabre 23.Source: Australian Department of Defence

This is not to say that the broader Australia-ROK Comprehensive Strategic Partnership has not proved beneficial. Experts from both countries cited progress in advancing bilateral cooperation on issues related to critical minerals, liquefied natural gas production and green energy as evidence that strategically beneficial collaboration can and does already occur.²⁰ This prompted several Australian participants to question whether the importance and role of security cooperation within that broader strategic partnership had been accurately assessed, or whether it had been overstated based on outdated assumptions about the foundational logic of the bilateral defence relationship. They argued that, without reappraising where the two countries’ respective defence and regional security interests most acutely intersect and, just as importantly, honestly acknowledging where they do not, tangible outcomes will continue to be elusive.

4. Experts recommended strengthening the intellectual foundations of the Australia-Korea defence and security relationship through more structured exchanges between their strategic studies communities and the development of new talent in this area.

Experts generally agreed that the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, but especially its defence and security components, would benefit from efforts to address “a persistent literacy gap” between the two countries on one another’s strategic culture, foreign and defence priorities and domestic politics.²¹ Indeed, expertise in these areas has not kept pace with the rapid development of ties in other areas of the relationship. In Australia, a growing interest in South Korean business, culture and language has not necessarily been complemented by a parallel increase in interest in South Korean strategic and foreign policy studies, while most analysts in these fields have traditionally focused on North Korea at the expense of South Korea.²² By contrast, while many South Koreans regard Australia as an attractive business opportunity or holiday destination, their views of Australian foreign policy are heavily skewed by Australia’s close alliance relationship with the United States, to the detriment of a more nuanced understanding of Australian strategy.²³

Experts generally agreed that the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, but especially its defence and security components, would benefit from efforts to address “a persistent literacy gap” between the two countries on one another’s strategic culture, foreign and defence priorities and domestic politics.

These issues are not unique to the Australia-ROK relationship.²⁴ Yet advancing the bilateral defence and security partnership will ultimately require longer-term investments in, and exchanges between, each country’s strategic and political communities. To assist in bridging this literacy gap, some participants suggested that establishing a greater number of university partnerships akin to Yonsei University’s Centre for Australian Studies and the Australian National University’s Korea Institute, as well as exploring options for establishing reciprocal exchange programs that connect emerging thinkers on Australian and Korean strategic studies from across both countries’ academic, industry and policy communities.²⁵ Though the fruits of these efforts may take some time to mature, deepening mutual strategic expertise in both countries could go some way to closing the gap between potential and action in the bilateral defence relationship.

5. Uncertainty over South Korea’s willingness to play a wider regional security role remains a major barrier to greater defence cooperation in the eyes of many Australian policy analysts.

South Korean participants appreciated Australia’s ongoing efforts to encourage a more sustained and active ROK security role in the Indo-Pacific, including to help bolster collective deterrence. Australian participants, in turn, recognised that strategic developments on the Korean Peninsula and the enduring challenges posed by North Korea’s growing conventional and nuclear weapons capabilities have constrained South Korea’s bandwidth to consistently engage with regional security issues. Even so, many Australian policy analysts believe that the perceived gap between South Korea’s capacity to contribute to broader regional defence and security and practical demonstrations of its willingness to do so remains a major check on realising the potential of the defence relationship.

The disjuncture between South Korea’s fluctuating rhetorical commitment to supporting regional security efforts and its tangible actions over the past two decades was most recently evident under President Yoon Suk Yeol.²⁶ While his administration’s release of South Korea’s first Indo-Pacific Strategy in December 2022 appeared to foreshadow an appetite for Seoul to play a regional role commensurate with its growing economic, military and diplomatic power, many of these initial commitments have remained largely rhetorical. Analysts have noted South Korea’s reluctance to participate in freedom of navigation operations and lingering questions over its position vis-à-vis a potential Taiwan Strait crisis,²⁷ while even modest commitments to deploy its Cheonghae counter-piracy unit to Southeast Asia went largely unrealised.²⁸ Thus, for many Australian participants, South Korea’s track record on directly addressing shared regional security challenges — including under an administration even as rhetorically engaging as President Yoon’s — has reinforced underlying doubts about the durability and scope of Seoul’s strategic ambitions beyond the Korean Peninsula.

Dialogue discussions on the prospect of Seoul acquiring a nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) capability with US assistance figured as a proxy for this tension. Some South Korean participants argued that an SSN capability would be critical to South Korea’s national security and could enable the ROK Navy to undertake operations beyond Northeast Asia, echoing comments reportedly made by ROK President Lee to US President Trump in late October 2025.²⁹ However, a number of Australian and South Korean participants questioned the strategic and operational rationale for acquiring a long-range platform like an SSN, given Seoul’s cautious track record in embracing a sustained regional security role. They also highlighted the geographic constraints of waters surrounding the peninsula, including the relatively shallow depths of the West Sea (around 44 metres) and the Korean Strait, which would likely limit the operational advantages of nuclear-powered platforms compared to conventional alternatives. Accordingly, many dialogue participants approached South Korea’s interest in acquiring an SSN capability with caution, raising broader questions about whether such a capability would genuinely help underpin or encourage South Korea to assume a broader regional security posture or be employed as an extension of Seoul’s land-centric and peninsula-focused defence strategy.

6. Australia and South Korea stand to learn from one another’s respective experiences of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines with US assistance.

Though sceptical of elements of South Korea’s justification for its potential acquisition of SSNs, Australian experts nevertheless saw valuable lessons in the Lee administration’s public messaging of the strategic motivations driving the deal.³⁰ Seoul’s clear articulation of its strategic motivations was contrasted with Canberra’s approach to messaging around the AUKUS arrangement, wherein the inherently strategic initiative has been pitched to the Australian public primarily as a workforce and industrial development program.³¹ Australian experts suggested that Canberra emulate Seoul by clarifying to the public the security rationale for AUKUS, proposing that this could ease the political challenges associated with justifying the agreement’s A$368 billion price tag.

Republic of Korea Submarine Lee Sun Sin comes alongside Diamantina Pier at Fleet Base West to take part in Exercise Pacific Reach 2019.Source: Australian Department of Defence

In turn, Australian experts suggested that the ROK should heed the lessons of AUKUS when thinking through the requirements of its own SSN initiative with the United States. Indeed, Canberra’s experience suggests that collaboration on such major capability programs requires more — not less — integration, with particular consequences for US allies. For instance, major reforms to US defence trade controls and technology sharing regulations were required to facilitate more widespread and secure technology sharing, and necessitated parallel changes to Australia’s defence trade legislation to align with US standards.³² Australian participants flagged that the ROK could face similar, if not heightened, legislative and regulatory barriers as a non-Five Eyes ally and as an emerging competitor to the United States in the international defence industry marketplace.³³ Australian experts also noted that the SSN deal would likely involve greater integration of the South Korean industrial base with its US counterpart, even if Seoul’s ultimate intention is to enhance its autonomous military capabilities.³⁴ Further, several participants suggested that, as with AUKUS, the provision of nuclear capabilities would almost certainly carry greater US expectations of a more proactive South Korean contribution to regional security beyond the Korean Peninsula.³⁵

7. Defence industry and technology collaboration remains a top priority for both countries, but collaboration’s present focus on land systems will need to be expanded to deliver longer-term relevance and results for the bilateral relationship.

Experts generally agreed that defence industry and technology cooperation appeals as a form of collaboration that can deliver strategic effects (i.e. military capabilities and technologies) even amid questions over the strategic logic driving the wider Australia-South Korea defence relationship. A foundation for more productive cooperation has already been laid, with South Korea’s Hanwha Defence having established itself as a new prime player in Australia’s defence industrial ecosystem, including through recently expanding its stake in the country’s shipbuilding industry.³⁶ Some Australian experts also suggested that the culture of defence procurement in Australia is shifting from a myopic preference for Western (and particularly US) military hardware to a fuller embrace of world-class platforms and systems produced by Northeast Asian partners,³⁷ including South Korea.

Capitalising on these gains, however, will require both breaking new ground and appreciating the limits of such cooperation. For instance, some Australian participants observed that the ongoing rebalance of Australian force structure towards a greater focus on air and maritime operations would require ROK defence firms to mount attractive bids for programs outside of their traditional strengths in delivering major land systems.³⁸ These participants also emphasised that, on balance, Australian defence procurement decisions would continue to be made primarily based on capability requirements rather than in the interests of adding political momentum to the bilateral strategic partnership. Other participants observed that South Korean defence companies have a wealth of world-leading technologies to offer in areas of distinct interest to both countries, including unmanned systems, space assets, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). However, they also lamented the fact that these companies are not always prepared to share these capabilities with foreign counterparts, or that they were simply not aware of the growing opportunities to sell these capabilities to interested partners like Australia. The participation of South Korean firms in Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise and the rapid growth of its unmanned systems industries offer examples of areas where South Korean industrial strengths synergise with present Australian defence capability priorities.

Dialogue conversations also revealed a tension between the short-term benefits of arms sales and longer-term incentives for industrial integration and technology co-development. On the one hand, some participants noted that the urgency of Australia’s capability requirements and the relative infancy of the bilateral defence relationship meant that it was more likely to prioritise off-the-shelf purchases of proven South Korean defence equipment over co-development projects with longer lead times. Conversely, others suggested that expanding the number of bilateral co-development projects between industry and government in both countries would help move the relationship beyond a transactional buyer-seller dynamic towards a genuinely cooperative model that would help generate a stronger sense of shared purpose for and ownership of the strategic partnership. These points hinted at established differences between the two countries regarding the role of defence industrial cooperation within the broader scheme of bilateral security cooperation. Whereas Australia generally sees defence industrial cooperation as the logical extension of deepening strategic and defence partnerships, South Korean practitioners frequently regard such cooperation as a necessary precondition to such relationships.³⁹

8. Enhancing bilateral cooperation in the space and cyber domains was identified as a logical area for advancing the security partnership given their respective complementary technological and geographic advantages.

Enhancing Australia-ROK cooperation on space and cyber security issues was identified by several participants as an area of complementary interest and advantage for both countries. In the case of space — already a key component of Australia and South Korea’s Comprehensive Strategic Partnership — enhanced bilateral cooperation was identified as increasingly critical given North Korea’s missile provocations and China and Russia’s rapid advancements in developing counter-space capabilities, such as electronic warfare, cyberattacks, directed-energy weapons and anti-satellite kinetic platforms that pose a risk to Australia, South Korea and their security partners’ space assets.⁴⁰ Therefore, Canberra and Seoul’s possession and operation of space-relevant assets that can provide secure communications, surveillance and intelligence-gathering were identified as vital to modernising the two countries’ broader defence sectors and enhancing their ability to manage prospective regional and global crises.⁴¹ Specifically, Australia’s geographic advantages, including its proximity to the equator (which offers favourable launch conditions) and its sparsely populated territory, are suited for satellite launches, mitigating South Korea’s densely populated geography and the vulnerabilities posed by its neighbouring geopolitical rivals. South Korea, meanwhile, offers a sophisticated and rapidly expanding technology and innovation ecosystem, along with a growing appetite to increase its presence in space through satellite capabilities, that Australia could harness in the development of its own space enterprise.⁴²

Canberra and Seoul’s possession and operation of space-relevant assets that can provide secure communications, surveillance and intelligence-gathering were identified as vital to modernising the two countries’ broader defence sectors and enhancing their ability to manage prospective regional and global crises.

Lastly, cyber security was also identified as a candidate for strengthening bilateral security cooperation. Indeed, enhancing cooperation in this area of the defence and security partnership appeared especially promising given that both countries have developed cyber security strategies based on the need for international law, regulations and norms in cyberspace, and are committed to advancing global discussions on responsible AI in military applications.⁴³ One participant emphasised the opportunity of leveraging Canberra and Seoul’s relatively aligned cyber security objectives to work with other regional allies and partners to help reinforce maritime surveillance, citing Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) as a potential model for replication in the Indo-Pacific.⁴⁴