Issue Structural asymmetry: Korea's forecasts itemise demand growth but not market-driven efficiency

Summary

Korea's Basic Plan builds demand in three layers: an econometric model outlook, additional demand for new technologies and deductions for demand management. Upside factors such as advanced industry, data centres and electrification are counted explicitly as increments above trend. On the downside, policy-type and facility-type efficiency enter through demand management and data centre efficiency assumptions. Market-driven micro efficiency in chips, server utilisation and software, however, has no independent item or model variable in the published tenth and eleventh plans or in the KEEI medium-term outlooks. The author concludes that the core task is not whether growth is counted but how concretely and transparently efficiency effects can be explained and checked.