A Study on Strategic Competition Index and Supply Chain Simulation for Critical Mineral Security = 핵심광물 안보를 위한 전략적 경쟁 지수 및 공급망 시뮬레이션에 관한 연구

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The global energy transition has placed critical minerals at the center of industrial, technological, and economic security concerns, as lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles, and energy storage systems increasingly depend on mineral supply chains that are geographically concentrated, geopolitically sensitive, and structurally vulnerable. Minerals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, natural graphite, manganese, copper, aluminum, and phosphate are embedded in battery supply chains, where extraction, refining, and international trade are often highly concentrated. This creates a form of strategic vulnerability that extends beyond physical scarcity to include competitive pressure among import-dependent economies for access to concentrated and geopolitically sensitive supply flows.
This study develops an integrated analytical framework for assessing critical mineral supply security by linking strategic competition analysis with operational supply chain simulation. At the strategic level, it proposes a composite indicator, the Strategic Competition Index （SCI）, which systematically integrates demand-side competition among import-dependent countries with supply-side risk factors. The SCI builds on the existing Competition Index by incorporating a Risk Index composed of five factors: mining concentration, political instability in producer countries, by-product dependency, alternative source availability, and competing technological demand. The index is applied to eight battery-related critical minerals across 130 countries at commodity, bilateral, and national levels of aggregation for 2022. The results show that incorporating supply-side risk substantially changes the interpretation of strategic exposure. Cobalt demonstrates the highest aggregate strategic competitive exposure, followed by natural graphite and nickel. At the bilateral level, China-Japan and Korea-China represent highly exposed competitive relationships, while South Korea ranks among the top three countries by aggregate national strategic exposure. Sensitivity analysis across 26 weighting scenarios confirms the overall stability of the rankings.
At the operational level, the study develops a stochastic discrete-event simulation of South Korea’s cobalt supply chain using anyLogistix. The model reproduces material flows from cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo through refining in China to battery manufacturers in South Korea, incorporating maritime routes, port nodes, stochastic demand, and inventory policies. Three scenarios are examined: baseline, disruption, and diversification, with each scenario run across 30 independent stochastic replications. The simulation results show that a single-source configuration performs efficiently under normal conditions but becomes highly fragile under disruption. In the disruption scenario, the system frequently enters a persistent non-recovery regime characterized by chronic unmet demand within the one-year simulation horizon. The diversification scenario reduces the supply deficit by 63.5% and eliminates the non-recovery regime, but it introduces a measurable logistics trade-off in the form of longer transit routes and reduced delivery timeliness.
The combined results demonstrate that critical mineral security is a multilevel analytical problem in which strategic competitive pressure and operational supply chain resilience are mutually connected. The study contributes conceptually by positioning demand-side competition as an independent dimension of mineral security, methodologically by integrating the Strategic Competition Index with stochastic supply chain simulation, and practically by providing insights for diversification, stockpiling, recycling, and resilience-oriented supply chain management. Critical mineral security is therefore becoming a central condition for sustaining industrial resilience and technological competitiveness in the energy transition era.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Chapter 1. Introduction 1
• 1.1. Research Background and Motivation 1
• 1.2. Problem Statement and Research Gaps 6
• 1.3. Research Aim and Objectives 8
• 1.4. Significance and Contributions of the Study 9
• 1.5. Structure of the Thesis 10
• Chapter 2. Theoretical and Analytical Framework 13
• 2.1. Critical Minerals and the Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain 13
• 2.2. Criticality, Supply Risk, and Strategic Competition in Mineral Security 16
• 2.3. Supply Chain Resilience and Simulation-Based Analysis 19
• 2.4. South Korea’s Critical Mineral Security in the Global Battery Supply Chain 22
• 2.5. Analytical Framework of the Thesis 24
• Chapter 3. Development of a Strategic Competition Index for the Global Critical Minerals Market 28
• 3.1. Methodological Approach 28
• 3.2. Data Sources and Scope of Analysis 43
• 3.3. Empirical Results and Analysis 47
• 3.4. Summary of Key Findings 71
• Chapter 4. Development of a Simulation-Based Framework for Cobalt Supply Chain Resilience in South Korea 75
• 4.1. Methodological Approach 75
• 4.2. Data Sources and Model Design 78
• 4.3. Simulation Results and Analysis 95
• 4.4. Summary of Key Findings 112
• Chapter 5. Discussion and Implications 116
• 5.1. Synthesis of Strategic and Operational Findings 116
• 5.2. Policy and Managerial Implications 119
• Chapter 6. Conclusion 123
• References 129
• Abstract （in Korean） 137
• Appendix 139
• Acknowledgements 152