South Korea’s launch of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) military satellite on April 22 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as part of a network capable of monitoring North Korea every two hours is a model illustration of how space cooperation has become an active dimension of the U.S.-South Korea security alliance.

Although South Korea has been a relative latecomer to the development of space-related interests and industries, South Korean development of space-related capabilities has proceeded rapidly since the late 1990s. Initially, space cooperation was blocked as a potential area of cooperation within the U.S.-South Korea alliance due to U.S. missile proliferation concerns, but those obstacles have gradually been overcome in recent years as the U.S. attitude toward South Korean space development has shifted from one of skepticism based on concerns that South Korea’s indigenous development of space-launch capabilities might fuel a peninsular or regional arms race to a willingness to actively cooperate based on the emergence of mutual interests in space exploration, defense, and commercial development. This shift in U.S. attitude and policy, driven in part by South Korea’s acquisition of enhanced capacity, has enabled closer U.S. and South Korean efforts to jointly pursue technological development and cooperation to both enhance security and promote mutual commercial gain.

My article in Asian Security, which is part of a special issue on South Korea’s role and contributions in space and international security curated by Su-Mi Lee and Saadia M. Pekkanan, reviews the development of space as a frontier of cooperation within the U.S.-South Korea alliance, highlights how the convergence of U.S. and South Korean space development strategies has contributed to the new space race’s democratization, commercialization, and militarization (DCM) trends, and explores the implications of space-related cooperation for the U.S.-South Korea alliance.\

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