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Экономика Республики Корея в условиях новых глобальных вызовов
The article analyzes the economic situation in the Republic of Korea under new global challenges, which the country encountered at the turn of the second decade of XXI century. COVID-19 pandemic has become a severe test for South Korean society. Due to effective anti-epidemic measures and massive budget spending the government succeeded in recovering GDP growth from the second half of 2020. Nevertheless, prolonged antivirus restrictions damaged small businesses aggravating social differentiation. Coronavirus crises coincided with worsening of US-China relations, which put Seoul in a complicated position of choice between the largest trade partner and the key military and political ally. Export restriction on strategic material introduced by Japan in the summer of 2019 as well as US attempts to draw the Republic of Korea into reshaping of international value-added chains of high-tech products bypassing China exposed ‘sandwiched’ type of South Korean economy. At the same time the task to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 set by the government within the “fourth energy transition” based on accelerated economic transfer to renewable energy resources could lead to the rise of prices and expenses in the manufacturing sector undermining its competitiveness on world markets. In response to the new global challenges in the summer of 2020 Korean leadership adopted a national development strategy — “Korean New Deal”, which stressed digitalization, ‘green’ growth and softening of social contradictions. The utmost goal declared in the strategy is the transfer from a catch-up country to a global leader, “premium brand” of the world economy. To achieve that ambitious aim, Korean business and government in the near future will have to decide on multibillion “lookahead” investments into the most prospective directions of the world economy’s transfer to a new technological mode.
