It's the economy, stupid! South Korea in an age of hyper-uncertainty

The world we currently inhabit has already completed its transition from the age of globalization to the age of economic security, reflecting a systemic shift from absolute to relative gains. Alongside hard and soft power, there is now a third form of power that demands our attention: supply chain power. The hegemonic rivalry between the United States and China manifests as a supply chain war.

A tit-for-tat economic battlefield has become the norm: its weapons sanctions and export controls, its commanders and economists and executives serving national directives, and its measure of strength primacy in finance and technology. South Korea, structurally sensitive to shifts in the global trading environment, now finds itself living inside a weaponized global economy as economic instruments such as trade and finance have grown openly coercive, becoming forms of leverage. If oil was the axis of great-power diplomacy and military strategy in the 20th century, that axis has now shifted to critical minerals.

Just as oil underpinned transport, power generation and the chemical industry — and w