Analysing stakeholder discourse on just transitions: the case of South Korean trade unions, academia and NGOs

Just Transition has become a pivotal concept in climate change policy, yet substantial divergence exists among non-state stakeholders regarding its practical implementation. Drawing on energy justice theory – encompassing distributive, procedural, and recognition justice – this study analyses stakeholder discourse on just transition in South Korea through text mining and semantic network analysis. Written responses were collected from 10 key stakeholders representing labour unions, academia, and NGOs. Three research questions guided the study: (RQ1) How do non-state stakeholders conceptualise just transition in terms of discursive themes and their structural relationships? (RQ2) How do thematic clusters differ across stakeholder groups? (RQ3) Which cluster is most extensively interconnected with the other thematic domains? Modularity-based cluster analysis identified six thematic clusters: “energy transition”, “government/governance”, “funding”, “jobs”, “support for vulnerable groups”, and “worker participation and training”. The Jobs cluster (G4) showed the largest number of direct inter-cluster connections, linking employment concerns to all other thematic domains and mediating across distributive, procedural, and recognition justice concerns. Trade unions prioritised support for vulnerable groups and worker education; academics emphasised governance frameworks; and NGOs focused predominantly on employment creation. These findings suggest that employment-centred concerns – captured in the Jobs cluster (G4) – appear to function as the integrating logic of just transition discourse among non-state stakeholders in Korea, with each group contributing a distinct but complementary role. This study contributes both methodologically and empirically to the growing literature on stakeholder-led just transitions in Asian industrialising economies.