Abstract:

While countries have experimented on various green policies to respond to the climate emergency, South Korea’s development strategy is known within the field for its immense capacity to combine export promotion, industrial competitiveness, and adaptation to external environment including the worldwide shift away from fossil fuels. This presentation explores the use of industrial policy both as a means to maintain Korean industrial competitiveness and to respond to the clean energy revolution. Within the green capitalism debate, the need for ‘critical minerals’ to successfully provide the resources for the adoption of renewable energy has often been neglected. Thus, we aim to provide some initial answers to the question about the challenges ahead to forge Korea’s energy transition strategy. The lecture will present a global picture on how the recent changes from 2010 onwards have impacted on domestic policies on resource security as well as in guiding the development of a rare metals supply chain in Korea - its growing dependence on China for supplies of critical minerals. Then it will explore and discuss the distinctive policy instruments used to reposition South Korea into an ever-complex regional economic order.

Presenter: 

Dr. Jojo Nem Singh (Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

Jewellord (Jojo) Nem Singh is the Principal Investigator of a five-year research programme Green Industrial Policy in the Age of Rare Metals: A Trans-regional Comparison of Growth Strategies in Rare Earths Mining (GRIP-ARM) funded by the European Research Council Starting Grant No. 950056 (2021-2026). He is an Assistant Professor (tenured) at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague and a Research Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS), The Netherlands. Nem Singh is the author of Business of the State: Why State Ownership Matters for Resource Governance (Forthcoming). He has published around 40 scientific papers, book chapters, edited collections, and special issues within the field of political economy and development studies. 

To register for the event, please use the following link:

https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?RGID=r46a328c69c85da006c373206c0bcca62