South Korea's Foreign Policy has been transformed since the peaceful power change between the ruling party and the opposition party in 1998 for the first time in South Korean History. Change is remarkable in policies toward North Korea, ROK-U.S. alliance, and multilateral regional cooperation.
　　The North was regarded an illegitimate heretical group, never "a state", by the South for nearly half a century, and vice-versa. The South had long been claiming that it must be the "sole legitimate state" over the entire Korean Peninsula. The Kim Dae-Jung Government and after, however, placed the North at not "a heretical, illegitimate group" but "the counterpart" for coexistence, cooperation, and future reunification.
　　The South was heavily dependent on the U.S. for its security and political economic support against a threat from the North. Hence, the South suffered from "abandonment" of alliance dilemma. However, the Roe Moo-Hyun Government is anxious about "entrapment" of alliance dilemma.
　　Both the Kim and the Roe Government are common in the preference of co-alition, co-existence, and cooperation with the North. The former, on the one hand, coped with East Asian regional economic cooperation, in which the North can be integrated. The latter, on the other hand, prefers Northeast Asian security cooperation, in which the U.S.power can be embedded and, moreover, the South will be a kind of balancer as a non-hegemonic state.