Northeast Asian Supergrid: Awareness and Support in South Korea for International HVDC Connections

Since 2015, China, South Korea, and Japan have joined 194 countries in ratifying the United Nations’ Paris Climate Agreement. Transnational cooperation to develop renewable energy sources and transfer them across borders has intensified rapidly. However, geopolitical tensions have stymied plans to lay high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cables on the seafloor between Weihai in China’s northeast region to Incheon in South Korea’s northwest region, and Busan in South Korea’s southeast region to Kyushu in Japan’s southwest region. The successful completion of the plan would provide access to abundant solar and wind energy from the Gobi Desert. This paper explores whether increased public awareness of the projects in South Korea would increase support and whether economic benefits or transnational trust are significant factors that influence support. I used a Likert Scale survey including four sections, which I distributed to one hundred participants. The first section measured project awareness and whether participants supported them. The second section provided a one-page fact sheet, which the participants were asked to read. The third section measured attitudes toward economic benefits and trust. Finally, participants were asked to rate how strongly they support the project’s immediate commencement. Descriptive statistics and linear regression were used for analysis. The results showed that no participants were aware of the project or its benefits, but once made aware, a majority expressed support for the project’s completion. Significant relationships were found between valuing the economics of the projects and transnational trust support for the projects, with trust showing more significant results.