Korea’s Path to Digital Leadership: How Seoul Can Lead on Standards and Standardization

February 28, 2024

Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Written by: Evan A. Feigenbaum

By WWSG thought leader Evan A. Feigenbaum & Michael R. Nelson.

This volume digs into South Korea’s experiences with digital standards and standardization and draws attention to Korea’s distinctive digital policy. It then compares Korea’s experiences to those of the United States and other Asian players, notably Malaysia and Japan—grading all four countries in key areas.

Strategic competition among big powers, especially between the United States and China, is leading to the securitization of economies and technologies. Increasingly, Washington and, to a lesser extent, Brussels view Chinese dominance of commercial technologies as a national security threat. They therefore aim to exclude Chinese systems from their economies and leverage intergovernmental and private sector bodies to preclude Beijing and Chinese companies from setting global standards for technologies and business processes. That has led many policymakers to refract global standard setting through the prism of competition between China and its strategic rivals, with commercial and technological competition framed in predominantly geopolitical terms.

But the United States, China, and Europe are not the only players in standards and standardization. A host of other players have joined them, not least in setting standards for the emerging digital economy. And these other players do not necessarily share their securitized approach to technology governance.

In many cases, national regulators and local firms in these other countries are setting homegrown standards for their markets while resisting pressure to adopt or assimilate either Western or Chinese standards. In some cases, these countries are themselves becoming pacesetters, with the potential to export and scale homegrown standards as their companies’ share of global business expands and their role as technological innovators grows.

Instead of viewing standards and standardization merely as arenas for Western strategic competition with Beijing, it is essential to look at how these additional and increasingly significant players are evolving into de facto standard setters.

This volume digs into South Korea’s experiences with standards and standardization in the digital arena and draws attention to Korea’s distinctive digital policy. It then compares Korea’s experiences to those of the United States and other Asian players, notably Malaysia and Japan. It is the third in a series of volumes by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Korea as a technological and digital pacesetter.

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