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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

11. The Korean Economy: Creating Space Between China and Japan

Author : Chung Mo Koo

Published in: Towards A Common Future

Publisher: Springer Singapore

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Abstract

Asia’s fourth-largest economy, South Korea, has been facing a unique situation: to create an economic space between Japan and China. The situation has become harder due to China’s enhanced technological progress and rapid catch-up growth, which poses a competitive challenge to major Korean exporting industries. Japan, on the other hand, also has price competitiveness stemming from the lower yen and its technological superiority. The study finds that the recent ‘nut in a new nutcracker’ situation has posed totally different predicaments to the Korean economy from the previous one in the late 1990s. In the past, Korea has carried out structural reform and technological innovation to overcome its current predicaments and to avoid secular stagnation. As Korea’s manufacturing industry has been developed sufficiently, it should find opportunities in service sectors and higher value-added industries. It should also reform to enhance supply-side efficiency since structural problems—chaebol, the educational system and dependence on old industries—hamper gains and growth.

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Footnotes
1
Economies of comparable size have ratios between 55 percent and 65 percent. Japan has a ratio of 33.6 percent. (Source: World Trade Organization (WTO).
 
2
Data sourced from Korea International Trade Association (KITA).
 
3
Information Sourced from Korea International Trade Association (KITA).
 
4
Korea Economic Research Institute, KERI Economic Bulletin, No. 82, December 2015.
 
5
For example, China created the National Integrated Circuit Industry Equity Investment Fund in 2014, endowing it with $18.4 billion. Moreover, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology intends to spend $153 billion over the next decade to support the semiconductor sector, the bulk of which will be spent on buying expertise from foreign competitors. (Source: Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, http://​english.​gov.​cn/​).
 
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Metadata
Title
The Korean Economy: Creating Space Between China and Japan
Author
Chung Mo Koo
Copyright Year
2017
Publisher
Springer Singapore
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5592-8_11

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