Share of Korean Economy Research Drops to 8%... Urgent Reform Needed in Evaluation System

Analysis of Over 6,000 Papers by Top Korean Economists

Only 8.4% Focused on the Korean Economy Last Year

SSCI-Centric Faculty Evaluations Drive Avoidance of Domestic Research

As South Korea faces mounting national challenges such as ultra-low birth rates, an aging population, and the potential extinction of local regions, the proportion of research by leading domestic economists focusing on the Korean economy has plummeted to single-digit percentages. There are growing calls to swiftly reform university evaluation and compensation structures for researchers to increase the number of empirical studies that deeply address domestic issues.

On August 4, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Economic Research Institute published a report titled “Balancing Global Research and National Challenges: Restructuring the Incentive System for Innovation in the Research Ecosystem,” which investigated 6,149 papers authored by 112 economists affiliated with South Korea who fall within the top 25% of the global economist ranking, using the world’s largest economics literature database, RePEc (Research Papers in Economics).

According to the report, only 13.1% of the papers published between 1987 and 2025 directly analyzed the Korean economy. This proportion falls far short of the figures for neutral research (66.5%) or studies analyzing foreign economies (20.4%). Notably, the share of research on the Korean economy maintained an average of 15.7% throughout the 2010s but plunged after 2020, reaching just 8.1% in 2024 and 8.4% in 2025—its lowest point since 1999 (6.9%). By age group, only 5.1% of early-career researchers born in the 1980s focused on the Korean economy, highlighting a worsening trend of avoidance among younger scholars.

The KCCI identified the main cause of this research gap as the university evaluation system, which is focused on achievements in publishing in international journals. Because faculty appointments and tenure decisions are absolutely dependent on publication in elite overseas journals such as those listed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), researchers are essentially compelled to concentrate on international topics or neutral theoretical studies that are more likely to be accepted by top American or European journals. Additional factors cited include the expansion of collaborative research primarily among scholars trained abroad, as well as limitations stemming from the short, often interrupted time series and inconsistent availability of domestic data.

In response, KCCI proposed three key initiatives to vitalize research on the Korean economy: diversifying and establishing independent evaluation axes for faculty assessments, creating a one-stop research platform for integrated analysis of public and private data across government agencies, and launching bridge funding to connect research to legislation and policymaking.

Kim Cheon-gu, a research fellow at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, stated, “Given that publication in SSCI-grade international journals is a prerequisite for tenure among new professors, it is a rational choice for economists to conduct less research on the Korean economy early in their careers.”

He added, “The more that our institutional design and improvement processes are underpinned by empirical analyses based on domestic corporate and industry data, the greater the predictability of policies becomes, and the less uncertainty businesses will face in response to regulations or labor-management conflicts.”

Park Yang-soo, director of research at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, “This study does not propose lowering the academic standards of researchers or pushing for isolation, but rather aims to restore a balance between research at the global standard and addressing South Korea’s national challenges. As an economic organization that faces structural issues most directly at the industrial and corporate level, we examined where the nation’s research capabilities are being directed to support potential solutions.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.