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논문 기본 정보

자료유형
연구보고서
저자정보
Yoon Jung Eun
저널정보
대외경제정책연구원 [KIEP] KIEP Opinions KIEP Opinions 제311권
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2025.3
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What we cannot see has become more valuable than what we can. While economists once counted a nation's wealth by its physical assets—factories, buildings, and machines—today's most valuable resources often exist only in human minds and digital code. This shift from tangible to intangible capital is not merely academic—it is reshaping global economic hierarchies and challenging nations like Korea to reimagine their paths to prosperity. The Invisible Backbone of Modern Economies Intangible capital—that constellation of non-physical assets including human expertise, management processes, R&D capabilities, patents, trademarks, software, and data—has quietly become the primary engine of economic growth. Unlike their concrete counterparts of factories, office buildings, and machinery, these assets cannot be touched or photographed for annual reports. Yet since 2008, global investment in these invisibles has consistently outpaced spending on physical assets, with the United States leading the charge by investing more than twice what all EU countries combined allocate annually. Korea's Remarkable Journey: Not Just Steel and Concrete Korea's economic transformation ranks among the most impressive in modern history—a nation that rose from post-war poverty to become a global economic powerhouse. This ascent was not achieved merely by pouring concrete and erecting factories. While Korea certainly built impressive physical infrastructure, its true competitive edge emerged from parallel investments in the intangible: human capital development, technological know-how, and organizational excellence. Large Korean corporations have consistently invested substantial portions of their revenues in both tangible and intangible assets, understanding that physical capacity without intellectual capital is like building highways without vehicles to travel them. The continuous enhancement of human capital—perhaps Korea's most precious resource in a country not blessed with abundant natural ones—has been particularly crucial to this growth story. The Knowledge Economy Pivot Since the 1990s, Korea's investment in intangible assets has steadily climbed, with particular emphasis on manufacturing sector-related R&D. Education—another critical intangible asset—has long been Korea's national obsession, with families willing to make extraordinary sacrifices to provide their children with educational advantages. These accumulated investments in various intangibles have begun to bear fruit, evident not only in Korea's striking growth rates over previous decades but also in the sudden emergence of K-culture advocates around the world, a phenomenon that began merely a decade ago. Slowing Down at the Wrong Moment Just as intangible capital has become more crucial than ever in the age of artificial intelligence and what many call the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Korea's investment in these assets appears to have decelerated. This timing could not be worse. While Korea's current investment in intangible assets represents a meaningful portion of GDP (around 8%), it lags significantly behind advanced economies like the United States. More specifically, Korea's investment in intangible capital as a percentage of GDP is only 70% of that of the United States and ranks a concerning 13th out of 17 OECD countries. More troubling still, this represents not just a gap with the world's largest economy but a relative decline compared to regional competitors like China and Japan. Japan has recently announced ambitious government-led AI development investments amounting to 10 trillion yen, while China has been locked in an escalating technological arms race with the United States across multiple sectors, as exemplified by the recent excitement surrounding the startup Deepseek. Korea risks finding itself caught in the middle—no longer able to compete on labor costs with emerging economies, yet falling behind in the race to develop cutting-edge intellectual capital. The Productivity Imperative At its most basic, productivity is what remains when you subtract the contribution of tangible inputs from total output. It is the economic equivalent of magic—the ability to produce more with the same resources. And the magician behind this trick is invariably intangible capital. It is now a well-established fact that growth-oriented firms invest proportionally more in intangible capital than their slower-growing counterparts. The evidence is striking: companies in the top 25% for growth typically invest 2.6 times more in intangible assets than firms in the bottom 50%. This correlation between intangible investment and business success is more than coincidental—it's causal. Recent analysis confirms that increasing the proportion of intangible capital within a company's total capital base positively impacts productivity, revenue, and export performance, both in the short and long term. The same workforce guided by different management strategies produces dramatically different results. Identical computer hardware running different software creates vastly different value. In today's AI-enabled workplaces, tasks that once consumed days can be completed in hours—a perfect example of how intangible investments can multiply productivity without adding a single physical asset or employee. Korea's Demographic Dilemma and the Intangible Solution For a nation facing one of the world's lowest birth rates and a rapidly aging population, the productivity boost from intangible investments is not just desirable—it's existential. With constraints on both labor supply and physical capital expansion, the only realistic path to sustained growth lies through enhanced productivity driven by intangible capital. Yet Korea's pace of investment in intangible assets lags behind global leaders, creating a troubling productivity gap that threatens to widen. Apparently two major barriers stand in the way of accelerating these crucial investments: First, excessive regulatory complexity creates friction that discourages innovation and investment. Second, the investment environment lacks sufficient long-term incentives for businesses to commit to intangible assets, whose returns often materialize over years rather than quarters. Since intangible investments rarely yield immediate dividends, they require both patient capital and stable market conditions—elements that appear to be in short supply given Korea's stagnating investment figures. Choosing Korea's Economic Future Korea's remarkable rise from poverty to prosperity was not an accident. It resulted from deliberate choices to invest in both physical infrastructure and human potential. The gleaming factories of Samsung, LG, and Hyundai stand as monuments to tangible investment, but the global brand value of these companies—their true worth—represents Korea's accumulated investment in the intangible. The next decade will determine whether Korea reinforces its position among the world's leading economies or gradually fades into reminiscence about past achievements. The choice fundamentally comes down to how aggressively Korea pivots toward intangible asset investment in an era where ideas increasingly outvalue infrastructure. The path that carried Korea to economic prominence in the 20th century—primarily through exceptional manufacturing prowess—will not sustain its position in the 21st century's knowledge economy. For a nation that has repeatedly defied economic gravity through strategic adaptation, the message is clear: the future belongs not to those who build the most factories, but to those who cultivate the most valuable ideas.

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