In January 2019, the South Korean president Moon Jae In announced his plans for the transformation of the South Korean economy into a “hydrogen economy.” This involves the replacement of fossil fuels for the production of energy on a large scale. The government’s plan supports the use of hydrogen fuel cells (HFCs) for industrial and residential energy production and promotes the replacement of vehicles with internal combustion engines that burn fossil fuel by cars that are powered by HFCs. This study is primarily interested in the plans of the South Korean government to facilitate the production of hydrogen for mobile purposes and to promote fuel cell vehicles (FCVs); and it investigates whether this South Korean policy can be considered a case of ecological modernization. Ecological modernization is a concept that has been developed in a European context and was adopted by the European Union as its main principle in environmental policy making. The new South Korean policy is outlined in the government’s Hydrogen Economy Roadmap which specifies the measures that have to be taken to initiate the transformation of the South Korean transport system based on hydrogen and announces several ambitious goals which the government wants to achieve with this program until 2022, 2030, and 2040, respectively. At its center is an effort to build a nationwide network of hydrogen gas stations, to reduce the price of hydrogen by more than half, and to facilitate the purchase of FCVs. It was found that the overall environmental benefits of this program would be meager in the medium-term, but in the long term it could contribute to a considerable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and of fine dust, depending on the technology that is used to produce hydrogen.

2019年1月，韩国总统文在寅宣布了将韩国经济转变为“氢经济”的计划。这涉及到替代化石燃料以大规模生产能源。政府的计划支持将氢燃料电池（HFC）用于工业和民用能源生产，并促进用内燃发动机代替车辆，该内燃发动机由HFC供电的汽车燃烧化石燃料。这项研究主要是对韩国政府促进移动氢气生产和推广燃料电池汽车（FCV）的计划感兴趣；并调查了这项韩国政策是否可以视为生态现代化的案例。生态现代化是在欧洲范围内发展起来的一个概念，已被欧盟采纳为其环境政策制定的主要原则。政府的《氢经济路线图》概述了新的韩国政策，该路线图指定了必须采取的措施来启动基于氢的韩国交通运输系统的转型，并宣布了政府希望通过该计划实现的一些雄心勃勃的目标，直到分别是2022、2030和2040。其核心工作是建立全国性的加氢站网络，将氢价降低一半以上，并促进燃料电池汽车的购买。人们发现，从中期来看，该计划的整体环境效益将是微不足道的，