Multilateral Development Cooperation in Higher Education: Insights from South Korea

Drawing on its economic development history, South Korea has invested considerable effort into improving higher education in developing countries to assist their economic development. Although South Korea has increased its official development assistance (ODA) to higher education through multi-bi channels over the last decade, there is a marked lack of attention to this action. As this field is relatively new, this study aims to characterize South Korea’s multi-bi ODA projects in higher education (2010-2019) using the co-word analysis method. The results show that cooperation with multilateral organizations has supplemented the existing weakness, at least regarding the objectives and contents of projects. However, to mitigate the regional concentration and the fluctuation in the number of projects, South Korea should make more effort to allocate ODA based on the recipient’s needs and establish a consistent policy.