Like 'Society 5.0': Businesses Must Lead Korea's Escape From Peak Decline

One of the most chilling terms pervading Korean society recently is undoubtedly "Peak Korea." As population decline, slowing growth rates, and intensifying industrial competition converge, pessimism is spreading that South Korea has already passed its zenith and entered a downward phase.

Yet a nation's decline has never always begun with a lack of technology. Crisis becomes structural when there is no strategy to convert technology into national strength, when political leadership to mediate clashing interests is absent, and above all, when social consensus on the future collapses. What Korea lacks now is not technology itself but a blueprint to transform technology into a new order for advancement.

Here lies a point worth reexamining. National-scale transformation is not a project that government can accomplish alone. Industrial transitions in advanced economies have rarely been achieved solely through government resolve. Direction was set only when the business community's preemptive proposals and nonmarket strategies worked in tandem. The highest level of nonmarket strategy does not lie in demanding deregulation. It lies in businesses being the first to propose what future a nation should pursue and what institutions and systems are needed to reach it.

The "Society 5.0" initiative by Keidanren, Japan's premier business federation, is a prime example. Recognizing amid rapid ICT advances that the core of national competitiveness lay not in mere scientific and technological development but in a vision charting the direction of society as a whole, Keidanren proposed this project. Society 5.0 was not a simple technology slogan. Keidanren presented it as "a concept for the sustainable future we must build together," later expanding it into an "Imagination Society" framework that evolved into a national blueprint encompassing data and digital transformation, industrial restructuring, workforce reskilling, and public-sector innovation. Crucially, this vision originated not from the government but from the business community, and Keidanren took the lead in driving its realization. It was a moment when business rose from being a patron of the national vision to its architect.

This phenomenon is not unique to Japan. Germany's "Industrie 4.0" followed a similar path. Germany's industrial digital transformation concept started when major industry associations laid the groundwork and seized the narrative on the future of industry at the 2013 Hannover Messe, where the official platform was launched. The government then joined in, adding institutional foundations for standardization, ecosystem development, and manufacturing innovation. Industrie 4.0 thus transcended a mere industry slogan to become the common language of German manufacturing innovation. Rather than the state designing industry and the future first with businesses following, the business community set the direction first and the government institutionalized it.

Korea has not yet crystallized its efforts into a single powerful slogan like Japan or Germany, but the business community has clearly been moving toward becoming a co-architect of national growth strategy. The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry presented policy proposals in 2025 through its "Strategy Recommendations for Building Korea's AI Ecosystem," outlining tasks for Korea to become a top-three AI powerhouse. During the last presidential election, five major economic organizations jointly released "Proposals from Citizens and Businesses for Future Growth." This went beyond listing grievances by individual industries — it signaled that the business community had begun proposing the national growth model itself. Businesses are no longer confined to reactive policy responses; they have started stepping to the forefront of institutional design.

At this juncture, Korean businesses need to more actively present a new national vision to break through the bleak outlook of Peak Korea. The key question — befitting Korea's reputation as a manufacturing and medical powerhouse — is how to convert the vast experience accumulated in manufacturing sites, medical facilities, logistics, and energy systems into "data assets." Data imbued with the context and skilled intuition built over years on industrial frontlines is Korea's true asset.

The problem is that this asset has not yet been organized as a national resource. Abundant data is scattered across factories, hospitals, logistics networks, and energy facilities, but a system to convert it into national competitiveness remains inadequate. This is precisely when leading companies, industry associations, or business federations should step forward. They should be the first to present a "National AI Roadmap" covering data standardization, quality management, principles for data sharing and protection, sector-specific transition priorities, and structures for sharing the costs of workforce reskilling and transition. The government should then institutionalize these proposals, and labor should negotiate safeguards for the transition. The path beyond Peak Korea will open only when a national vision and transformation strategy are built on such a grand social compromise.

Consider the experiences of Germany, which overcame Europe's prolonged stagnation, and Japan, which is writing a new growth narrative after its lost three decades. Nations that reopen an era of growth are not those where the government produces answers alone. They are nations where the business community imagines the country's future first and places that blueprint into the public arena. What Korea needs now is not vague technological optimism. What it needs is strategic imagination — and the bold nonmarket strategy to translate that imagination into the language of policy, the structure of institutions, and the form of a grand social compromise. That is precisely where the starting point for shattering the bleak outlook of Peak Korea lies.