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This paper analyzes the dynamics of supply chain diversification in a contested East Asia and their implications for India–South Korea cooperation in the post-COVID-19 era. Major powers have sought to restructure supply chain by designing a strategy to reduce their reliance on China-controlled supply chain. The United States–China trade and technological war, Asian regional powers’ escalating conflicts with a rising China, and pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions have played key roles in driving the restructuring process. India and South Korea, Asia’s two major economies, have also re-evaluated their supply chain strategies. As this paper explains, on the one hand, India has been striving to emerge as a supply chain hub for key industries by ending China’s control. On the other hand, South Korea has also been aiming to diversify its supply chain beyond China under the New Southern Policy. Against that backdrop, critical developments concerning supply chain cooperation have occurred between the two countries amid the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has not only facilitated the opening of high-level political exchanges on supply chain but also brought tangible outcomes, as Korean companies have become active participants in India’s quest to build an India-centric supply chain. I conclude this study by contending that the two countries are “natural partners” in reshaping the supply chain dynamics in East Asia in the post-COVID-19 era.

Floods are major social and environmental concerns in many urban areas. We investigated how changes in land cover, sociodemographic conditions, and meteorological factors affect flood damage in districts of South Korea. Using historical maps and spatial analysis, we showed that flood damages increased in the areas where rapid urbanization happened without coordinated urban planning. High flood damage areas are not spatially randomly distributed, and the hotspots of high damage areas are concentrated in population centers that underwent rapid development after 1975. Additionally, human modifications of natural channels further exacerbated flood risks during the development stage and subsequent periods. Total annual precipitation is positively related to the flood damage at a higher spatial unit. This study underscores the importance of understanding the historical–geographical conditions, and how humans either increased or reduced the flood damage through social and infrastructure interventions. Findings of this study have implications for resilient flood management for regions that are currently facing the dual challenges of land densification and climate change-induced heavy precipitation.

The US-China chip war is becoming more intense as both countries understand the significance of semiconductors for their economic security and national defense. As a result of nationalist and unilateral actions taken by the US and China under the chip war, other Asian economic powerhouses are reassessing their semiconductor strategies, leading to new opportunities for semiconductor partnerships in Asia among middle powers. South Korea, a leading semiconductor power in Asia, is facing critical challenges amid the chip war, that, in turn, resulted in reshaping its trade and overseas production strategies that are heavily reliant on China. To maintain its semiconductor dominance and ensure economic security, Korea is adopting new approaches such as export and production diversification. In the meantime, India, amid the ongoing US-China tech war, is also seeking to construct a resilient supply chain and decrease its reliance on China for imports. In the process, New Delhi is looking to develop its semiconductor industry and build chip ties with like-minded countries in production and workforce development. This opens up significant prospects for Korea-India semiconductor partnerships. This paper proposes three areas where Korea and India could collaborate: semiconductor trade partnerships, semiconductor production partnerships, and semiconductor workforce collaboration. By doing so, it highlights how the US-China chip war is creating new opportunities for other Asian economic powerhouses to collaborate in the semiconductor industry. This paper also provides insights for policymakers to set a new agenda for India-Korea partnerships as both countries celebrate the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic ties in 2023.

“Middle powers,” variously defined, have served relevant and significant roles in the post-WWII regional and global orders, facilitated by structural conditions of “long peace” among great powers and proactive leadership by and among creative middle powers. Within the complex Asia-Pacific security order, “middle powers” such as Australia, Canada, and South Korea have had the “space” to engage the non-like minded and advance multilateralism with security guarantees from the US. However, Beijing and Washington today are eliminating this space and its associated choices for middle-power diplomacy by increasingly characterizing their rivalry as a confrontation of “existential threats” between incompatible “civilizations” and securitizing trade and technology. China and the US are each selectively ignoring or purposely eroding key aspects of a rules-based international order. This paper highlights the dilemmas of South Korea, Australia, and Canada, middle powers who have found themselves individually and collectively “stuck” facing contradictory global and regional policy choices.

South Korea launched electricity reform in the 1990s but had continued to struggle with instituting an effective free market. In order to bolster economic growth, the development of the electricity industry has long been a fundamental issue for the state. The case in Korea is distinctive because it is part of a large-scale privatization project as the political regime had just shifted to democracy. The state spun off and corporatized the state-owned power enterprise with very limited privatization. The Korean government has chosen to control the power companies as the largest shareholder. Nonetheless, the reform process was suspended in 2004 without encountering major problems. This has created a major puzzle for analysts: why did the reform result in this outcome? I argue that as a politically driven reform project, power reform in Korea was destined to fail. The economic and social responses elicited by reform implementation all contributed to the failure of the power reform. This paper describes the dynamics of Korea’s electricity reform and details the industrial restructuring during the reform. It examines the political logic of the reform and how it shaped the power industry and in turn led to a stalled agenda. The paper concludes with a discussion of the broader implications for the roles of the state, industrial policy, and state-business relations.

India and the Republic of Korea (RoK) are, respectively, the second and sixth largest economies of Asia with significant trade ties since the historic past. India is currently negotiating to upgrade the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the RoK, which was operationalized on January 1, 2010. A key area of concern for India has been its increasing trade deficit with the RoK which has more than doubled since 2009–10. This paper aims to analyze the flow of goods, services and investment between the two sides in major sectors of interest in the last decade. Further, it aims to identify barriers to trade and investment for the Indian exporters and areas of improvement in the CEPA and beyond to enhance economic gains for both sides.

In the past few decades, post-democratization politics in South Korea have witnessed an upsurge in authoritarian nostalgia, called the “Park Jung-hee syndrome.” This paper examines the origins of public nostalgia for the authoritarian dictator by putting two theoretical arguments, i.e., the socialization thesis and the system output thesis, to an empirical test. This paper utilizes the 2010 Korea Democracy Barometer from the Korea Barometer and the 2010 and the 2015 Korean National Identity Survey from the East Asia Institute. The empirical analysis of the South Korean case strongly supports the political socialization argument, suggesting that citizens’ yearning for Park Jung-hee is not merely an outcome of the negative evaluations of the democratic governments’ performances. Rather, their authoritarian nostalgia is in large part an outcome of their political socialization during the Park dictatorship. The analysis implies that, although a resurgence of the Park Jung-hee syndrome in post-democratization South Korea is not expected to derail the country’s route to democratic deepening, it may continue to be a main source of political division in partisan and electoral politics in the future.

The idea that a change of government can alter the foreign policy orientation of a state is nothing new in international relations. This paper presents a preliminary investigation into the causal linkages between domestic political regime changes and foreign policy restructuring in Malaysia and South Korea. It assumes that regime changes allow for a greater propensity for the recalibration of foreign policy interests. Since the effectiveness of any bilateral cooperation depends on successful formulation and implementation, this paper dissects the transition, convergence and challenges in bilateral cooperation between the two countries. Both Mahathir Mohamad and Moon Jae-in saw a necessity to diversify economic partners that had resulted from the policies of previous administrations. While the basic elements of their foreign policy remained the same, both Malaysia and South Korea reevaluated their policies with regard to the international issues affecting their domestic interests. While relations had once been transactional at best, the convergence of the Look East Policy (LEP) 2.0 and the New Southern Policy (NSP) advanced bilateral relations for 22 months until the collapse of Mahathir’s government in 2020.

Despite the large and growing role of exports in Korea’s carbon emissions, they have been largely overlooked in Korea’s carbon neutrality strategy. With this in mind, we analyze Korea’s aggregate emission intensity of exports (AEI_E), an indicator of the environmental efficiency of exports, which decreased from 1.37Kt/$M to 0.74Kt/$M during 2000–2014. Using the multi-regional input-output model and two-stage multiplicative structural decomposition analysis (MSDA), we uncover drivers of changes in the AEI_E. Analysis of bilateral AEI_E shows that exports to developed countries had a large impact on the decline while exports to developing countries have risen in importance. MSDA shows that the carbon intensity effect contributed most to the decline but that trade in intermediate goods and trade in final goods were also important. At the sectoral level, manufacturers of basic metals, electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply and transportation sectors were shown to be important drivers of the decline in the AEI_E. As the first study to analyze the drivers of Korea’s AEI_E, this paper suggests various abatement policies to help achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea) and India in 1973, their bilateral relationship has made significant progress. This year marks the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic partnership, which calls for a scholarly examination of the developments in Korea-India relations over the last five decades, and their future prospects. This special issue’s introductory paper provides a concise overview of the evolution of Korea–India relationships and introduces the other papers in the issue, emphasizing their significance in understanding the trajectory of the relationships. The primary goal of this introductory paper is to make two contributions: First, it aims to enrich the existing literature on India–Korea relations; and second, it provides key insights for policymakers to strengthen India–Korea ties in a new global order.

Great attention has been paid to the bilateral economic relations between India, Vietnam, and South Korea; however, only scant research has focused on the prospects of triangular economic cooperation among the three countries. Given the advantage and demand for the cooperation of each party, there is significant potential for trilateral economic cooperation among South Korea, Vietnam, and India. In this paper, we discover the prospects for their triangular economic cooperation in three aspects. First, this study examines the potential for cooperation in production networks and supply chains between the three countries in the context of reconfiguring the global value chains (GVCs), with a focus on the leading role of South Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs). Second, the study explores trilateral cooperation in the digital economy and connectivity, focusing on how South Korea and India can collaborate on investment projects in Vietnam. Third, this study discusses the rationale and possibility of forming a regional trade agreement (RTA) between the three countries. South Korea, Vietnam, and India have extant bilateral trade agreements between two of the three countries; however, there is no regional integration among the three countries discussed in specific. Considering the bilateral relations and domestic and external factors, the paper reckons that an RTA for starters between the three countries would be mutually beneficial to each of the corresponding economies.

The economic security of middle powers across the world is being challenged by great power rivalry and, more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. One of the largest trade and investment countries globally, South Korea is amongst the middle powers most affected by these developments. In this context, South Korea needs to finetune its economic security strategy. One way of doing so is by diversifying its economic relations. In this respect, India, a fellow middle power and also one of the biggest economies in the world, is a key partner. Supply chains, trade, investment and human capital have all been benefiting from strengthening links between South Korea and India, and will be key moving forward as the former seeks to further boost its economic security. Indeed, South Korea and India have been strengthening their links in the intertwined areas of maritime security, cyber security, and economic security in recent years. This suggests that economic security is part of broader security cooperation between the two partners.

For the past two decades, India and South Korea have sought to create a strategic convergence in their long-term cooperation. Defense cooperation, which has been discussed bilaterally, is a key area of their partnership, should it later be transformed to companionship. As some of their efforts have materialized, South Korea has become the fifth largest exporter of conventional arms to India. Markedly, Seoul and New Delhi are on the way to restyle their regional strategies towards each other to fit into their Indo-Pacific strategies. In the course, two sides have found valid points to explore stronger partnership than in the past. The stronger driver they have now is likely to sustain in the future as they already made some meaningful progress in the last decade. In this latest move, the two sides appear to be on the right trajectory; however, the future awaits a more productive joint effort.