Since the turn of this century, public diplomacy has achieved a remarkable leap on the global political scene, evolving as both an independent academic discipline and diplomatic practice.

With its rapidly growing importance, further conceptual and theoretical refinement is now being required in the academic dimension, while the intensifying competition between countries calls for more effective approaches on the practical front.

Public diplomacy is widely known as non-traditional diplomatic activities to inform, influence, and engage foreign publics by utilizing neither coercion nor rewards, but attraction, so that they would eventually contribute to achieving a country’s foreign policy goals. From the standpoint of collective identity, public diplomacy could also be defined as “practices seeking through communication recognition of a country’s state/national identity, or some elements constituting it, particularly from non-state actors.” In this sense, public diplomacy is something far more than one-sided assertion of a country’s self-image. Rather, it seeks intersubjective meanings of a country’s identity through a reciprocal communicative process.

We have been recently witnessing, however, that many countries instrumentalize public diplomacy for their parochial, self-centered national interests that include expanding their geopolitical sphere of influence. Such instrumentalization is not simply confined to competing great powers. Middle powers are also employing it as a public relations instrument for their self-centered national interests.

In a world in which countries are not only closely interwoven with each other, but also commonly exposed to grave threats such as pandemic, climate change, and weapons of mass destruction, it is imperative that public diplomacy morph from a simple instrumental tool for parochial national interests into a global platform, on which states and non-state actors alike collectively and collaboratively create global public goods. To accomplish this mission, the Korean Association for Public Diplomacy(KAPD)’s aim is formulating a human-centric public diplomacy beyond state-centric one. This would be possible only when we could construct an inclusive identity, the boundaries of which are greatly expanded beyond an exclusive collective to recognize and include “Others.” Public diplomacy should be a process of touching and winning people’s hearts and minds, not simply to exert influence on them, but further to create and foster shared values and norms with them to build an integrated community. In this way, public diplomacy would eventually contribute to reshaping the normative pillar of international order.

With this vision in mind, the KAPD will put particular priorities on the five fields of activities.

• First
• the KAPD will strive for the academic and theoretical development of public diplomacy so as to eventually graft it onto mainstream International Relations. Despite its rapid ascent in this century, public diplomacy still stays on the periphery of International Relations. Now that considerable research and case studies have been accumulated in the field, we are convinced that the time is now ripe for more refined conceptualization and theory-building, which would in turn engender forward-looking policy ideas and suggestions for effective diplomatic practices.

• Second
• the KAPD will encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary studies. Public diplomacy is a comprehensive field of study, in which diverse academic disciplines such as media, communications, journalism, public policy, comparative culture, social psychology, and development cooperation, as well as International Relations, are complexly fused. The KAPD will serve as a hub of multi- and inter-disciplinary research, through which scholars, experts, and practitioners from these diverse fields share their insights and knowledge, and cultivate collaborative research.

• Third
• the KAPD will rigorously develop the comprehensive public diplomacy curriculum that enriches the totality of trainees’ experiences and knowledge, and facilitate its implementation at educational institutions. Korean colleges and universities have shown keen interest in professional education of public diplomacy thanks in no small part to the Korea Foundation’s devoted support. The academic curriculum, however, is still at its initial phase. The KAPD seeks to develop educational programs and courses dedicated to nurturing experts with a more profound understanding and sophisticated maneuver of public diplomacy.

• Fourth
• the KAPD will also endeavor to get connected to the world of public diplomacy practice. We will try to apply research outcomes to the formulation of public diplomacy policies and programs through close collaboration with both the government and civil society.

• Fifth
• but not least, the KAPD will be an intellectual hub for like-minded domestic and foreign epistemic communities. The KAPD will function as a platform, on which international scholars, experts and practitioners of diverse backgrounds engage in mutually constructive exchanges across the globe.
  
  It has been a decade since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea designated the year 2010 as the “First Year of Korean Public Diplomacy.” The founding spirit of the KAPD is to respond to this call of our era in which a clarification of the role of public diplomacy is needed in world politics, and a greater role is expected of middle powers like Korea. The KAPD will race towards attaining such vision as an intellectual, propelling force for middle powers by instilling a human-centric perspective beyond state-centric one.