Scaling Up Renewables While Building Korean Industry: Recent Policy Shifts and Challenges from a Resource Security Perspective

Renewable energy resource security turns less on fuel supply than on having an industrial base that can reliably manufacture and procure solar and wind power equipment and the materials and parts that go into it. Rather than electricity security, this paper focuses on the risk that heavy dependence on foreign suppliers and concentrated supply chains will constrain South Korea’s domestic production and technology base and narrow its economic security options. In 2026 the government put forward long-term contracts, support for domestic production, and next-generation technology development, among other measures, but expanding deployment does not automatically translate into manufacturing investment in Korea. Nor is there yet an adequate framework for aligning item-by-item priorities and support instruments between deployment policy and industrial and resource security policy. Predictable demand therefore needs to be created through annual bidding and ordering plans, and support needs to be diff erentiated: for solar, around the cell production base and competition in modules; for wind, around demonstration, certifi cation, and building an operating track record. The core resources already designated should be linked to concrete instruments such as early warning, fi nance, and technology development, and costs should be managed together with the results in production and investment. The goal of policy is not a localization rate for its own sake but the retention, at a tolerable cost, of the production and technological capabilities needed to respond to supply chain shocks.