ABSTRACT
Introduction The investment cooperation between Russia and the Republic of Korea1 increased significantly during 1999-2009, which led these two countries to sign an agreement for strategic partnership in 2009. Recognizing the importance of this growth, the given study re-examines factors of growth by comparing Russia to other countries that experienced an increased inflow of Korean outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) during the same period. Those countries include some Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Central Eastern European countries, plus Turkey2 and Asian economies. Some economies that should automatically be part of the analysis were excluded due to unstable nature of Korean investment. As shown in Annex 12.1, South Korean companies did not invest into Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine until 1996-7; Bulgaria and Slovakia stopped receiving Korean FDI after 2008. A lack of data limited the timeframe of analysis to years when data was available for the largest number of countries. For the same reason, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Tajikistan were left out of the scope.
