International commodity prices, including oil prices that experienced a dramatic fall during global recession, are on the rise again. Oil prices have reached their highest for this year while copper and nickel have also rallied strongly compared to the beginning of this year. The rise of commodity prices comes amid speculation that excessive liquidity and increasing demand from China and other countries are driving the commodity market. Although it is difficult to predict the price changes in the commodity market given the complex nature of the factors causing price fluctuations; the dominant view of most analysts, from their comprehensive price forecasts, seems to be that the market is headed upward. Expectations of early recovery from global recession have already prevailed, and it is regarded as a fact that higher oil price will consequently follow.
As a country poor in natural resources, South Korea has repeatedly faced difficulties when commodity prices became unstable. Sole reliance on importing for acquisition of strategic resources provides Korea with no guarantees whatsoever for securing those resources. Therefore, it would be more practical for us to heighten our own level of development via direct investment measures.
This research intends to provide solutions for stable resource acquisition and thus our strategic approaches toward this end have been elicited by studying 4 regions: Russia, Central Asia, Latin America and Africa. There have already been many studies concerning overseas resource development since it has emerged as a major and current issue. But, as previously mentioned, this paper takes on a local perspective, to find strategies tailored to each region, something that was not emphasized in past studies. The region-specific strategy here can also be regarded as 'customized' plans that take account of our capabilities and needs of partner countries for cooperation. I hope this paper can provide useful guidance to those in government, corporate sectors and others who have interest in the field. The local customization strategy drawn from this paper can be summarized as below.
The following 4 methods of the local customization are suggested for Russian region. First, implement cross investment strategy for utilizing both upper/down streams. This can be carried out in the context of Korean companies purchasing a Russian energy company (or parent company) while the Korean government can allow Russia to acquire stocks from domestic gas energy firms. Also, for the sake of strengthening cooperative ties involving South Korea-North Korea-Russia, South Korea can participate together with Russia in North Korea's energy infrastructure industry, thereby establishing shared rights either for construction and management in the LNG areas of the Far East or for gas fields in the East Siberia. The second is active participation in the energy industry through M&A. There has been a boom recently for domestic and overseas M&A activities as the country is implementing restructuring plans for its energy industry. It is also recommended that Koreans invest in Russian energy companies through equity purchase or strategic alliance because stocks of many Russian energy firms are underpriced due to falling international commodities prices. Third, it is important to examine the political power dynamics in Russia and direction for possible impact on restructuring policies for their energy industry. The key players in Korean-Russian collaboration are the federal government, state-owned companies, and local government and so forth. Therefore, the first step would be to accurately understand what goes on in the energy industry and its power structure by carefully observing policies laid out by the central government and state-owned firms following, and the local governments that have jurisdiction over legal, institutional permits in the development regions; then seeking ways to take cooperation among those parties to a higher level. Furthermore, detailed analysis on the prospect of the Russian energy industry is necessary. The fourth method is to involve another country's participation in line with our cooperative activities with Russia. As Russia is expanding its resource development efforts in the CIS region as well as in Africa, there is a need to find ways to make joint investments concerning the development plan. For example, a consortium can be set up with Gazprom for developing coal mines in the Central Asia or Korea can secure a shared role in Algeria's LNG technology development project.
With respect to resource development in Central Asia, we have suggested the following four region-tailored strategy plans. First is resource development strategy in accordance with the country's power structure and its petrochemical industry. As Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan have given much focus to industry diversification by fostering non-petroleum industries, we need to ponder upon potential for cooperation in the region to constantly pursue co-investment strategy, together with plans for resource development and entry into energy industries in the region. The range of opportunities include power plant construction, oil field investment, nuclear power plant and uranium coal mine construction, coal processing plants, and petrochemical plants as well as simultaneous entry into resource development projects. Second, building cooperative resource infrastructure by way of financial collaboration can be actively contemplated. Central Asian countries in the midst of global recession are keenly aware of South Korean capacities in recovering from the foreign exchange crisis and they are actively asking South Korea's advice on improving their own financial systems. From the Korean perspective, there are no major technical difficulties to be negotiated, and this can be an effective way of doing business with regard to transferring our experience and contributing to the development of Central Asian financial industries. In the long run, we can assume that the growing needs for financial cooperation among Central Asian nations can help us lead such financial collaboration and convert it naturally into energy-related collaboration. Third suggestion is a go-around-entry strategy via Turkey. Based on the country's historical relation with other countries in Central Asia, Turkey has been expanding their political/economic influence over the region, and we can form a strategic alliance with Turkish firms to facilitate our entry. Lastly, Koreans can contemplate diplomatic policies with Central Asian countries concerning natural resources. Unlike Latin American nations or African states, the political structure of Central Asian nations is not given to frequent regime change, meaning cooperative relations with them could be sustained for an extensive time period. There is a need to heighten the status of diplomatic meetings, from deputy secretary-level to prime minister-level, which was the case during the 'Korea-Central Asia Cooperative Forum'. Furthermore, there is a need to improve the degree of exchange/communication with the new leaders in the states, where political prospects of ruling parties have not yet to be confirmed.
In case of Latin America, we have suggested a plan comprising of five region-tailored strategies. First is an entry strategy through specialization in specific role in public and private sectors depending on the investment environment in Latin America. The region contains some countries engaged in 'resource nationalism' in which political/economic risks can be very high. In this respect, for entry into less risky countries, private companies should take a role in establishing specialization structures while public companies (or government) that have a comparatively higher capabilities for dealing with the political/economic risk should take the lead in the high- risk countries. Second is by forming a strategic alliance for cooperation with the Ibero-American region. The need to build a strategically cooperative relation with National Oil Company (NOC) that attained an exclusive position among resource-rich countries in the region precedes any other process. Also, we need to actively devise a way to establish tri-party cooperative systems (South Korea-Iberoamerica-Latin America) by teaming up with firms such as RespolYPF, Galp and other Ibero-American firms beforehand, as they have linguistic/cultural/historical ties with Latin America along with much experience in entering into domestic market. By doing so, Korea can aggressively pursue the regional resource development market and then can think of entering other actively-invested areas like Africa or other alternative regions. Third is through international organizations (IO) in Latin America. Korea should first consider going into Latin American resource development market via the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in which South Korea has been a member since 2005. More specific measures include △Using credit for financing resource development projects, △promoting coal mining technology collaboration through the IDB trust fund, △partnership with IBD in corporate social responsibility activities. Furthermore, it is necessary to join OLADE, the only organization for energy cooperation in Latin America, which can provide a channel in which to create opportunities for entry and conditions for investment. The fourth can be executed as a combination of industry coordination promotion strategies. Brazil has emerged as one of the world's top 10 petroleum-exporting counties and it has nurtured top-notch technology in ocean-oil field extraction. On the other hand, South Korea is arguably the world's best in both ship-building and marine engineering industries, which can serve Brazil's needs. A win-win cooperative model should be established between the two countries through high-tech coordination between the oil and shipbuilding industries. A fifth suggestion involves developing a resource-development FTA model. When promoting FTA among MERCOSUR, Peru, Columbia and other resource-rich countries in Latin America, a new FTA cooperative model must be developed. We especially need to benchmark the case of China, who included clearly-outlined details for resource development in the FTA agreements.
For Africa, we have also present a plan consisting of five suggestions. First of all, since Africa is divided into 53 nations with different investment potentials and conditions, we need to consider each country's unique characteristics in formulating entry strategy. This research provides suggestions for entry based on African resource-development market characteristics, divided into 3 categories. A second suggestion involves promotion of joint-entry (resource-industry linked). Joint-entry strategy can be deemed a conceptually wise model in terms of increasing resource development investment opportunities by combining together Korea's competitive industries and SOC, and also ease the complicated overseas expansion process for related industries. However, the validity of such a model is questionable since it poses some problems upon close examination. Effective operation of a joint-entry strategies depend on the level of detailed preparation and internal mediation among participant firms, and also on the government's active role as a coordinator. However, limitations found in joint-entry strategies are mostly of a pragmatic nature involved in its implementation, rather than conceptual ones concerning entry strategy itself. Our third suggestion is that there is a need to strengthen diplomatic ties with resource-rich countries. If we take into account of the fact that most African countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes, a more effective method of acquiring resources would rely on diplomatic bargaining power of the Korean government. This research has designated 󰡔4 plus 3󰡕 nations as a target for top-priority resource diplomacy. The fourth suggestion is an infrastructure-building scheme through resource coordination for development collaboration, such as new village construction. Since general entry methods merely aimed at acquiring resources is both short-lived and is subject to unexpected errors that may result, we need to include official development assistance (ODA) in the resource cooperative efforts between South Korea and Africa. The growth of development collaboration can lead to economic cooperation and partnership and will eventually benefit Korea by stabilizing the acquisition process for energy resources. Fifth, we also need to establish a base for entry by providing assistance for development studies. Also, to overcome entrance difficulties due to variable costs and risks, entering companies will require government subsidies. One of the examples is development studies business. In regard to development studies, government can provide meaningful financial support to private firms launching businesses in the newly developing nations, to supplement the firms' initial costs and risks. In addition, our companies are faced with several problems when trying to launch businesses in the African resource development market, and so, assistance for development studies could perform a kind of leverage to facilitate their business activities. Trust funds from African Development Bank (AfDB) are mainly used for examining business potential (F/S) of its big-scale development plan and technology collaboration projects, and thus, it is urgent that we find ways to utilize trust funds from AfDB to discover new businesses and to link EDCF business plans with the implementation of such activities.
The research above has presented several strategies tailored to each region - from the perspective of a regional studies expert, but there may be other plans that are region-specific and thus customized. And suggestions from this paper are inevitably subject to necessary modifications with respect to changes in environments of the related countries. For instance, joint-entry plan mentioned here has the potential risk of contract breach if there is a regime change like in Nigeria. In this aspect, this research focuses more on regional characteristics to devise customized strategies rather than that of general or comprehensive plans for resource development overseas, and therefore the paper necessarily contains some logical weaknesses in refuting basic assumptions. For example, in the case of region-tailored plans for Russia and Central Asia, it is difficult to evoke a general consensus among experts because both business potentials and problems are inherent within the regions, and furthermore, it is not easy to establish a consistent policy due to an array of preferences and opposing opinions that become mingled into a complex mix. Nevertheless, in order to establish a realistic and pragmatic policy measure, we need to differentiate each plan according to characteristics of the respective regions and environmental factors, since such an approach seems more meaningful. For this reason, we should leave opposing arguments about relevant strategies and problems as major issues to be solved in the future.

서 언

국문요약

제1장 서 론
1. 연구의 배경 및 목적
2. 연구의 방법 및 구성
3. 선행연구와의 차별성

제2장 세계 자원개발 시장 동향 및 전망
1. 자원별 수급 현황 및 전망
가. 에너지자원: 석유와 천연가스
나. 6대 전략광물: 유연탄, 우라늄, 철광석, 동, 아연, 니켈
2. 국제자원 시장 동향 및 전망
가. 국제자원가격 불안 지속
나. 지역별 불안 지속
다. 신(新)자원민족주의 대두
라. 새로운 자원 메이저기업의 등장
마. 자원확보 경쟁 가속
3. 주요국의 신흥지역에 대한 자원개발 전략
가. 미 국
나. 중 국
다. 일 본
라. 호 주

제3장 신흥지역의 자원 현황 및 개발환경
1. 신흥 자원개발지역 시장 특성
2. 신흥지역의 개발환경
가. 정책 및 제도적 요인
나. 인프라 환경
다. 정치적 안정성
3. 지역별 부존자원 현황 및 개발 잠재력
가. 러시아
나. 중앙아시아
다. 중남미
라. 아프리카
4. 지역별 자원개발 정책
가. 러시아
나. 중앙아시아
다. 중남미
라. 아프리카

제4장 한국의 해외자원개발 평가 및 추진방향
1. 해외자원개발 실적 및 과제
가. 석유개발 실적
나. 일반광물 개발 실적
다. 해외자원개발 확대를 위한 당면과제
2. 해외자원개발 정책 현황 및 평가
가. 자원개발 정책 추이
나. 해외자원개발 계획 및 정책 현황
다. 자원외교 현황 및 평가
3. 신흥지역 자원개발 확대를 위한 기본방향
가. 거점지역별 접근
나. 동반진출: 자원‧산업 연계
다. 인적기반 강화
라. 자원외교 시스템의 개선
마. ODA와의 연계 강화

제5장 한국의 신흥지역별 자원개발 특화전략
1. 러시아
가. 러시아의 상‧하류 교차투자협력 수요 활용
나. 러시아 에너지기업 M&A 시장 참여: 자원개발사업 다양화
다. 러시아의 3각 의사결정구조 변화추이에 부합한 자원개발협력
라. 러시아와의 협력을 통한 제3국 진출
2. 중앙아시아
가. 자원개발-발전소‧화학플랜트 연계 진출
나. 금융협력을 통한 자원협력기반 구축
다. 터키를 통한 우회진출
라. 자원외교의 지속화: 안정적 집권정부와의 협력기반 구축
3. 중남미
가. 투자진출 환경에 따른 공공부문과 민간부문의 역할 분업화
나. 이베로아메리카 기업과의 전략적 협력체제 구축
다. 중남미 국제기구 활용
라. 융합형 산업협력 추진
마. 자원개발형 FTA 모델 개발
4. 아프리카
가. 국가별 특성을 고려하는 접근전략의 차별화
나. 동반진출(자원‧산업 연계): 기존 전략의 내실화
다. 자원협력외교 강화: '4 plus 3'
라. 개발원조(ODA)의 활용: 새마을빌리지 구축 및 개발조사 지원

제6장 맺음말

참고문헌

Executive Summary