6 Islamic articles on: South Korea

Table of contents for the topic South Korea
  1. How backward is Russia compared to Europe and the United States and when will it catch up?
  2. Malaysia has overtaken Japan in scientific research output per capita
  3. Japan, South Korea and China’s scientific research output compared
  4. South Korea and Malaysia’s scientific output growth compared
  5. Comparing Iran’s scientific growth to South Korea’s
  6. Comparing China’s scientific output to South Korea’s

How backward is Russia compared to Europe and the United States and when will it catch up?

Below is a chart of the scientific output productivity of a number of important countries. Scientific output productivity refers to the number of scientific research papers published by a certain country divided by its population. A higher number indicates that the country is more “scientifically productive”, meaning that it is prosperous and advanced enough to have a large number of citizens busy doing scientific and scholarly research. In 2017, Russia’s scientific output per capita was 561. It published 80796 scientific papers and had a population of 143.9 million. Dividing the two numbers, we get 561, the number of scientific papers published by the country per million citizens. In 2008, Russia published 36419 papers. Ten years later its output had more than doubled, reflecting the fact it is investing heavily in science and has many more professors and researchers busy doing research at universities and research institutions. Still, its output per citizen is still below Iran, and it is almost half of Malaysia. Russia’s scientific output is almost exactly one third of the US, which stands at 1684 papers per million citizens.

The scientific output of the US peaked in 2014 and has only declined since. This is likely a trend that will continue. Russia, in the meantime, will likely continue growing barring a nuclear war, so that by 2028 it will likely reach South Korea’s output level, and soon after that of France (whose output is also declining). The forecast above assumes a 9.35% annual growth in scientific output for Russia, which is what its annual growth was between 2008 and 2017, so I am assuming a continuation of the same trend now since the Russian rulers appear to have finally realized the crucial importance of scientific research for national power and prestige and will likely continue investing  heavily in it.

We can expect the scientific output of the United States and Europe to stagnate and decline due to their aging native populations. Immigrants can help stave off some of the fall in output, but due to their generally lower educational attainment, it is unlikely that they will be able to undo the trend unless the countries only allow in highly educated immigrants.

Russia’s 2017 output was where Spain was in 1996 and where South Korea was 2003. We can expect Russia to reach European levels of scientific output by 2028.

Spain: It is interesting to note that Spain is today publishing more science per capita than either the United States or France, despite its population having a median age five years higher than that of the US and two years higher than that of France.

The United Kingdom: The UK’s scientific output is amazing. It publishes almost 1000 more papers per million citizens than many other European countries, reflecting an extremely well-funded and well-organized post-graduate system.

Below is a similar forecast done for Iran. If Iran continues at the rate of scientific output growth it had from 2008 to 2017, it will reach European output levels by 2028. I expect it to slow down its growth and to closely track that of Russia, perhaps being somewhere slightly below it by 2028.

Data from the United Nations and Scimago.

Malaysia has overtaken Japan in scientific research output per capita

Below is the graph from my previous post where I discovered that Malaysia has been producing more scientific research per citizen than Japan since 2016. This is very interesting because Malaysia is a Muslim-majority country. Japan has stagnated since 2006 due to its aging population and stagnant economy while Malaysia, thanks to having a sustainable population (thanks to sustainable fertility rates, thanks in large part to religious faith) continues to grow steadily. We can expect South Korea to slowly fall as it goes the way of Japan, so that Malaysia may actually become the top science-producing country (per capita) of Asia in the next two decades.

In 2017, Japan published 892 scientific papers per million citizens, while Malaysia produced 936.

 

Data from the United Nations and Scimago.

Japan, South Korea and China’s scientific research output compared

As part of my series of posts comparing the scientific output per capita of different countries, in this post I will compare Japan, South Korea and China’s scientific output per capita, meaning the number of scientific research papers published per million citizens by each country. In the late 1990’s South Korea was going through industrialization but was greatly behind Japan. South Korea’s papers published per million citizens (PPMC) was 222.8 in 1996, compared to Japan’s 681, meaning that Japan was producing almost three times as much scientific research as South Korea. As South Korea industrialized, the gap between the two countries narrowed, so that South Korea actually overtook Japan in 2007. The sad story of Japan is that it has never been able to go significantly above its 2006 scientific output levels of 942 PPMC, perhaps due to its aging population (its median age is higher by 6 years today compared to South Korea’s), and perhaps due to its stagnant economy caused by the long-term effects of interest.

South Korea too appears to have entered the twilight zone in 2015 at a PPMC of 1523, we can probably safely assume that it will go through decades of slow decline from here on (unless immigration saves the day). China is slowly ramping up its scientific output, although it has yet to overtake South Korea’s scientific output per capita levels for the year 1999.

Adding Malaysia to the chart lead to something I hadn’t noticed before, Malaysia overtook Japan in scientific output per capita in 2016 (the green line):

Data from the United Nations and Scimago.

South Korea and Malaysia’s scientific output growth compared

As part of my series of posts comparing the scientific output per capita of different countries, in this post I will compare South Korea and Malaysia. This is an interesting comparison because South Korea is one of the most recently industrialized parts of Asia, while Malaysia is the most industrialized Muslim-majority country in the world. In 1996, Malayisa was 11 years behind South Korea in scientific output per capita (how many scientific papers it published per million citizens). This scientific productivity gap narrowed to seven years between 2003 and 2005, then it started widening again, so that in 2017 it was more than 10 years. Now that South Korea’s output is declining, Malaysia might be expected to slowly catch up with it in the next decade.

Data from the United Nations and Scimago.

Comparing Iran’s scientific growth to South Korea’s

In the previous post I compared China’s scientific growth to South Korea’s. In this post I do the same for Iran. Iran’s gap with South Korea is narrower than China’s gap. In 2017 it was only 13 years behind South Korea when it came to scientific research output per capita. This gap might continue growing due to Iran being larger and more difficult to industrialize. But now that South Korea’s per-citizen scientific output is in decline, Iran (and China) have a good chance of catching up with it within the next decade.

Data from the United Nations and Scimago.

Comparing China’s scientific output to South Korea’s

It has been said that China is twenty years behind South Korea in development, and that South Korea is or was twenty years behind Japan. A measure of development that I like to use for comparing the development level of different countries is PPMC, which stands for Papers Published Per Million Citizens, referring to the number of scientific and scholarly papers a country publishes per a million citizens in a year. In 2017, that number was 1491 for South Korea while it was 349 for China, meaning that South Korea produced more than four times more scientific research per capita than China, which means that South Korea’s infrastructure, institutions and educational attainment on average are four times more advanced than China’s. The reason for this is that besides the fact that China started industrializing later than South Korea, China is a much larger country and requires far more investment and work to where South Korea is. China’s coastal cities likely already far outpace South Korea technologically, but China’s interior is going to be dragging down the country’s averages for decades to come.

Below we have South Korea’s scientific output per capita compared to China’s. It took China until 2009 to reach the same scientific output per capita as South Korea had in 1996, meaning that on this measure China was 13 years behind South Korea. This lag only increased with time, so that by 2014 the gap was 15 years. By 2018, the gap was 18 years because China’s output per capita hadn’t risen significantly.

It is natural for this gap to grow with time because due to China’s much larger size, it is going to take it far more time to raise the country’s scientific production compared to the much smaller South Korea. The good news for China is that this gap is probably not going to be getting much larger because South Korea’s output has started falling (likely due to an aging population, i.e. fewer young people available to become scientists and scholars) while China’s continues to rise.

Data from the United Nations and Scimago.