Forecasting the Environmental Change of Technological Innovation System in South Korea in the COVID-19 Era

Korean economy has experienced a very rapid growth largely due to the change of the innovation system since the last half century. The recent outbreak of COVID-19 impacts the global economy as well as Korea's innovation system. In order to understand the influence of the shock to the Korean technological system, we have forecast the future of the system combining qualitative and quantitative techniques such as expert panel, cross impact analysis, and scenario planning. According to the results, we have identified 39 driving forces influencing the change of Korea's technological innovation system. Four scenarios have been suggested based on the predetermined factors and core uncertainties. In other words, uncertainties of emergence of the regions and global value chains generate four scenarios: regional growth, unstable hope, returning to the past, and regional conflicts. The 'regional growth' scenario is regarded as the most preferable, whereas the 'regional conflicts' scenario is unavoidable. In conclusion, we put forward some policy implications to boost the regional innovation system by exploiting the weakened global value chains in order to move on to the most preferable scenario away from the return to the past regime.