NEW YORK – South Korea has “miraculously pulled itself up” from postwar poverty to become one of the world’s richest economies, standing as a model for how technological innovation can drive sustained growth, said Joel Mokyr, a recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
“I always contrast inevitable South Korea with North Korea to exemplify the fact that if you have reasonably good institutions, you do a heck of a lot better than if you have lovely institutions, as they do in Pyongyang,” Mokyr said at a press conference Monday at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
“To worry about the South Korean problems, given that it is a wealthy, peaceful country that has miraculously pulled itself up from very low income per capita in the 1950s to one of the wealthier nations in the world today, strikes me as – well if you worry about South Korea, what do you think about North Korea? What do you think about other countries in Myanmar, countries like that? Those are countries I worry about,” he said.
Mokyr shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with economists Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University.
Mokyr was recognized for his work explaining how technological progress leads to sustained economic growth, while Aghion and Howitt were honored for formalizing the theory of “creative destruction” through mathematical modeling.
The Northwestern University professor praised South Korea’s technological prowess and innovation-led industrial policy as pretty advanced and durable.
“If you ever wanted to see a really bad car, you should play a Trabant,” he said, referring to the clunky vehicle once made in East Germany. “South Korea doesn’t make Trabants. They make cars that run and run and run.”
Still, he warned that Asia’s fourth-largest economy faces a mounting demographic challenge that could undermine its long-term prospects.
“They (Koreans) should have more babies,” he said. “That, I think, is the one concern causing some stagnation in South Korea. I think they have the lowest birth rate on the planet.”
Korea’s fertility rate has seen a rapid decline, raising alarm over a shrinking workforce and aging population. Among OECD members, it is the only country with a total fertility rate below 1.0, a level it reached in 2018.
The total fertility rate measures the average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to in her lifetime.
Mokyr urged the country to remain open to trade, ideas and freedom of expression to preserve its democratic success.
“I’m a great fan of the free exchange of knowledge,” he said.
“My big advice to countries like that is to stay open – not only in terms of boundaries, but also in giving people the freedom to say what they want and to have free elections. South Korea has had a reasonably successful democracy.”
An expert in European economic history, Mokyr focuses his research on the roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge.
His work explores how innovation and industrialization have shaped modern prosperity and human welfare.
He is the Robert H. Strotz professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.
By Sin-Young Park
nyusos@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
