Development of International Cooperation Maps for R&D Policy: Exploring National Factors in South Korea

Many countries have suffered from a lack of long-term strategy for international joint R&D, which triggered foreign resources that have not been strategically utilised, through supporting short-term projects with a small sum, bottom-up approach. Thus, this article aims to develop international cooperation maps, considering relations with South Korea, through analysing factors for international cooperation and creating a strategy for international cooperation for a group of nations. In order to develop the cooperation maps, the current status of individual countries will be investigated on the basis of their science and technology policy, technical capability, scale of market and state of cooperation with South Korea. After defining cooperation-related factors in conjunction with a test of validity regarding each factor, the international cooperation map is developed by combining diverse factors for cooperation. Then, all countries are clustered with cooperative factors and international cooperation maps, and an international cooperation strategy will be created for each country by considering critical elements including technology fields and methods for cooperation. The results will be helpful for understanding new directions to go towards for international cooperation at the government and private level and for suggesting diverse strategies from the perspective of possible cooperative activities.