Studies of International Political Economy in Korea

During the past 30 years, IPE studies in Korea have achieved outstanding developments in terms of the amount of research, academic issues, applied methodologies, and targeted regions. Even though we have been through introductory and expansion periods of Korean IPE studies, we have been trying to move into an indigenous period. This study compares the first 50 years’ IPE studies with recent 10 years’ IPE studies in Korea. There have been many changes in IPE studies in Korea. First, the number of articles related to International Trade has dropped dramatically during the last 10 years, while the number of articles in the categories of Money-Finance and Development Assistance has increased rapidly. Second, there have been decreasing academic interests in Korea and the United States, while there have been growing interests in other countries in Asia, especially China. Third, there have been methodological changes in IPE studies in Korea. We have seen more studies that have utilized comparative and statistical methods, while the number of review articles dropped rapidly. Finally, the number of articles featuring theory introduction and comparison has decreased, while the number of articles featuring theory verification has increased in the last decade. In the academic field of IPE in Korea, scholars need to prepare for new developments in the global economy such as exponentially growing cross-border economic transactions, growing importance of non-state actors, rapid technological developments and the new industrial revolution. In the process of preparation, we need to search for indigenous IPE studies in Korea as well as to develop generalized IPE theories. We always need to consider striking a balance between academic universality and academic distinctiveness.