Research Trends of ‘One Belt One Road’ in Korean Academic Circles

Abstract

This proposed work aims to understand the Korean Academic Circle (KAC)’s research trend on the “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) by employing a quantitative analysis of the recent research articles published by the KAC. To do so, this proposed research has used the well-known network analysis software, Ucinet 6, by which the papers on related topics are collected and filtered from Korea Citation Index. To perform the analytical selection, the proposed work has chosen ‘keywords’ as the core research object and performed analysis from transverse to longitudinal aspects, and from holistic to individual aspects, respectively; and from this, the KAC’s research trend on OBOR is derived. The present work has established that the KAC’s attention is continuously increasing on OBOR and has sustainability. Centered on the OBOR, Korean researchers have spread their studies in various dimensions ranging from the issues like China’s political economy to Sino-Korea economic and trade exchanges, and so on. The KAC has even combined OBOR with Korea’s international development initiatives, which can help Korea benefit from active and sustainable cooperation with China. Moreover, the proposed work has found that Korean researchers have also actively expressed their growing attention, highlighted Korea’s interest, and showed concern about China hegemony and Sinocentrism in their recent documented research works.