Geopolitical challenges: analyzing the repeated setbacks in Belt and Road Initiative cooperation between South Korea and China.

China has insisted that the BRI is a policy of openness, inclusiveness, and win–win rather than a geopolitical exercise or the Chinese version of the Marshall Plan. By exploring the repeated setbacks in the BRI cooperation between South Korea and China over the past 10 years, this study found that the BRI cooperation is a product of geopolitical considerations and that it is vulnerable to geopolitical conditions and factors. It also implies that unless the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China over the Korean Peninsula is alleviated or the reality of the North–South Korea's divide is overcome, neither the alignment of South Korea's initiatives with China's BRI nor the expansion of the BRI to Northeast Asia will be easy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]