In the literature on coastal land reclamation and ecological restoration policies, the role of policy translation has received limited attention vis-à-vis domestic political factors. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by clarifying the role of Dutch actors in developing South Korea's coastal management policies. To do so, we first develop an analytical framework that operationalizes the ‘policy translation’ concept into distinguishable components. This framework is used in the analysis of Korean land reclamation and wetland restoration policies. Our analysis reveals that in both cases no full-fledged policy transfer has occurred but that powerful domestic actors used other countries' policy elements to shape national discourses. Based on our analysis, we discuss the role of policy translation in understanding domestic policy change. We conclude that developing large water management projects is inherently political and the input of external ideas are no exclusion to this. Therefore, our paper makes a case for a more combined and integrated assessment of the role of both foreign and domestic factors in future studies on the development of coastal management policies.