This concept was primarily developed for the so-called "middle powers," but in the case of South Korea, it stems from the country's foreign policy desire to address specific challenges and sectors relevant to the economic development of other countries one at a time.

The term derides from the niche concept of business administration applied in foreign policy (Wallace, 1987). It was first outlined by the Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans as "concentrating resources in specific areas best able to generate returns worth having, rather than trying to cover the field" (Evans & Grant, 1991, p. 353). Later was widely used by Andrew Cooper in diplomacy analysis and the study of the countries that "choose to allocate their technical resources to particular international policy issues" (Cooper, Higgott y Nossal, 1994, p. 26). In terms of international assistance, this method "focuses on the ability of individual countries, like biological species or firms, to identify and fill niche space on a selective basis through policy ingenuity and execution" (Cooper, 1997, p. 5).

Following this strategy, countries should be selective in the areas in which they extend their assistance. "There is no prestige, or likely result, in enthusiastically pursuing ideas which are premature, over-ambitious, or for some other reason unlikely to generate any significant body of support" (Evans & Grant, 1991, p. 324). Therefore, a constant evaluation of the implemented policies shapes "the niches in which a country plans to operate and reap the benefits of its own specialization" (Fromm, 2019, p. 25).

South Korea, given its particular history of rapid poverty overcoming, has sought to replicate the domestic strategies in the countries it supports, which makes it one of the countries that "have built up economic niches using well-planned strategies and a focus on education and technological infrastructure development" (Cooper & Shaw, 2017, p. 4). According to Taulbee (2014, p. 12) "it involves a specific pattern of statecraft based upon entrepreneurial skill, technical leadership directed at coalition building to generate political energy around a particular issue set", but Korea has managed to identify these particular issues and "has become an artful proponent of finding functional niches with which it can run" (Cooper, 2012) focusing in interdisciplinary fields "such as development, environmental, and security studies" (Cooper et al., 2006) setting mutual development as the main objective of its foreign policy.

According to Cooper (2011), countries like South Korea "form a natural constituency for a liberal global economic order, having benefited so much from one in the past. They have the credibility to defend those principles" and its main strategy to achieve said order has been to transform the paradigm of international assistance from energy linked to non-energy or non-string condition to being completely human centered (Ahn, 2019, p. 108) setting not only infrastructure for people development but training programs to secure enough HRD.

In this sense, South Korea's application of niche diplomacy is distanced from the 'middle power' framework and is more related to the strategy of identifying the most relevant niches for economic development, which are infrastructure and HRD.

Regional innovation systems (hence referred to as RIS) are systems that encourage enterprises (or parties) in a region to innovate, with the goal of improving economic and social development and competitiveness (Hudec, 2007). Nonetheless, this notion is constantly growing, and it is now a frequently utilized analytical framework in the development of innovation policy. Several parties collaborate in a RIS to help a specific region target certain regions with high growth potential.

When discussing a RIS, it's also vital to recognize that there are two main bodies of theory and research. The first is "built on evolutionary theories of economic and technological change" (Edquist, 2004). These systems can be viewed of as evolutionary and social processes in this way. In fact, "the social aspect of innovation refers to the collective learning process between several parties" (Cooke et al., 2000), implying that it is a collaborative task involving multiple actors.

Regional science is the second conceptual body to be examined as part of a RIS. "From a regional perspective, innovation is a regionally entrenched, rather than a placeless, process" (Storper, 1997). The concept of proximity between areas is considered a crucial point in regional science. This also takes into account "the benefits deriving from localization advantages and spatial concentration, and the territorially prevailing sets of rules, conventions and norms through which the process of knowledge creation and dissemination occurs" (Kirat & Lung, 1999).

As a result, regional innovation systems are born out of the need to promote "interactions between different innovative actors that (should) have good reasons to interact, such as interactions between firms and universities or research institutes, or interactions between small start-up firms and larger firms" (Cooke, 2001). They also promote the acceptance of "common norms, expectations, values, attitudes and practices, where a culture of innovation is nurtured and knowledge transfer processes are enhanced." (Cooke, 2008). Simply put, RIS are defined as collaboration between two or more parties that "enables them to evolve over time" by leveraging an innovation-friendly culture and proximity (Doloreux, 2004).

"Government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries" is what official development assistance (ODA) is defined as (OECD, 2019). Several studies have interpreted ODAs as "a response to either the donors' interests, which are those criteria that serve the donors' strategic and/or economic interests, or the low standards of living of the recipients" in the context of international progress and diplomacy (Wall, 1995).

According to the OECD Development Assistance Committee, "ODA remains the main source of financing for development aid, and it is (1) provided by official agencies and (2) Concessional and administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective" (OECD, 2021b).

Korea has a long history of taking use of ODA, both as a beneficiary and as a giver. The flood of foreign finance helped the country rebuild quickly following the devastation of the Korean War. "Korea's development is recognized as an exemplary model for economic and social development based on ODA from the global community" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2013). Korea officially joined the Development Assistance Committee in 2020, establishing itself as a donor country and serving as a link between developed and poor countries.

Korea's ODA is organized as follows: "1) ODA policy making and coordinating institution, 2) supervising institutions, and 3) implementing agencies" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020). Korea's bilateral ODA in 2019 was mostly focused on Asia. According to the OECD Korea's Development Cooperation Profile, USD 1.0 billion was committed to Asia (OECD, 2021a).

Korea's ODA policy will be one of the key frameworks used throughout this study to quantify and qualitatively examine the impact it has on Mekong countries, how this has shaped their RIS strategy for reciprocal growth, and how it may be replicated in the Latam region.

The priority areas of the agreement have changed according to the Han-River (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2012) and de Mekong-Han River (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019) declarations:

Figure 2 Source: The authors

Despite the fact that Korea's Mekong diplomacy has focused on topics such as water resource development (Mekong River Commission, 2020) and production facilities (World Bank, 2021), the country's plan "tends to make huge different contribution to the existing literature of ODA" (Ahn, 2019, p. 108). ). Because the ultimate purpose of Korea's ODA isto help recipient nations achieve true development, the government not only provides financial resources, but also mobilizes a full system of ongoing evaluation and intervention through specialized organizations. This will assure mutual advantage in the short, medium, and long term. Infrastructure (Rogers, 2022), communications technology (Hwangbo & Park, 2021 ) and human resources development (Sangkhamanee, 2019), have all had a direct impact on company capacity, communication efficacy at many levels, and individual technical and professional training.

The impacts of the assistance in each of the Mekong alliance countries in terms of HDR and infrastructure have been visible and described in the Voluntary National Reviews done for the United Nations and other resources.

For education, the reforms "have enhanced life opportunities for youth and created an improved supply of quality human resources and skills to the job market." (Ministry of Planing, 2019, p. 3) while life-long learning is recognized as the key for a "structural change of the economy" (Ministry of Planing, 2019, p. 35). This shows that the Korean human centered approach in its ODA has been reflected domestically and has been applied in special governmental efforts for education. As for infrastructure, the government, development partners, and private sector have targeted "essentially roads, rail, bridges, ports, hydropower, solar farms, power transmission lines and irrigation systems" and the Foreign Direct Investment has been mostly used for "real estate and tourism development" (Ministry of Planing, 2019, p. 66). This shows that development is accompanied by investment, not only in human capital, but also in better infrastructure that becomes the means to achieve the development objectives.

The Lao PDR Government "is investing in infrastructure and human resources to establish, by 2021, centers of excellence for (i) agriculture in Champasack, (ii) logistics in Savannakhet, (iii) engineering and tourism in Luang Prabang, and (iv) engineering and environmental studies at the National University of Laos" (National SDG Secretariat, 2021, p. 42). Additionally, the Government has launched the National Human Resource Development Strategy and "increased efforts in private sector development [that] will include R&D cooperation and innovation promotion" (National SDG Secretariat, 2021, p. 79). Lao PDR's unique combination of linking infrastructure with education has enabled great advances. In terms of infrastructure alone "Lao PDR's total road network has more than doubled over the last decade" (National SDG Secretariat, 2021, p. 78) confirming that a twin-track human and infrastructure approach is the key to a faster development.

The national efforts for education have resulted in a "dramatic increase in literacy rates, and many more girls are in school than ever before." (United Nations Myanmar, 2022), the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan has focused also in improving the quality of the human capital "that will be needed for the emergence of a modern developed economy and improving and expanding vocational education and training" (Ministry of Planning and Finance of Myanmar, 2018, p. 6). This evidences the connection between education, equality, and development that the government considers for their internal policies. On the other hand, the Government has taken infrastructure development as a priority and are undertaking "a massive scale-up in electricity infrastructure under their National Electrification Plan (NEP)" (Burgess, 2018). This as a result of the Korean interest on improving these areas for Myanmar, although there have been some difficulties for the implementation after the coup, the most recent updates for the development plan of Myanmar continue to set both human resources and infrastructure as top priorities.

Thailand's implementation of the goal 4 of SDG has experienced good success, especially "with regards to the provision of inclusive and equitably quality education, the improvement of the capacities of the education system and teachers, and application of technology in the education system" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, 2021, p. 25). At the same time "the Government has promoted lifelong learning in order to raise the capacities of the population as a whole and

to develop human resources that respond to the needs of the 21st Century as a means to advance the economy" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, 2021, p. 27). As for infrastructure, "Thailand has made significant progress. Particular progress has been made in expanding road coverage throughout the country and connecting travel in the ASEAN sub-region" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, 2021, p. 42). This shows a uniformity in the impact that foreign assistance has had internally, since in the other countries hRd and infrastructure have also been set as main issues within government agendas.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment (2018, p. 38) "The percentage of trained labourers has increased steadily over the years. In 2000, this rate was 10.3 per-cent and by 2016 it had doubled. In 2017 alone, 2.69 million people received vocational training, including 600,000 rural labourers", revealing the constant effort in the improvement of its human capital. "Investment in expanding and upgrading energy infrastructure to serve people, especially those in remote, mountainous and island areas has been significantly encouraged" (Ministry of Planning and Investment, 2018, p. 48) showing the connection between development, especially in remote regions, and infrastructure investment and development. Like this, it is evident that the idea present in Korea's ODA and its emphasis on HRD and infrastructure has been reflected in the domestic policy and development rationale of each of the five Mekong countries. The impact of these actions and policies on the global position in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals will be shown below.

In terms of Sustainable Development Goals, there were changes in the 5 countries of the Mekong Region according to the annual report of the Goals generated by United Nations since the establishment of the new goals in 2015. In the rankings of all the member states the 5 countries performed as follows:

Figure 5 Source: The authors

The comparison between the 2016 annual report (Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2016) and the 2021 annual report (United Nations, 2021) showed positive changes in the development of the 5 nations, even for Lao PDR that showed a decrease in the ranking of 3 places, it had 13.11 more points on the score for accomplishment of the overall development goals. This shows the positive impact of the ODA received by the Mekong countries that along with the national efforts for improvement changed the internal realities and better positioned the countries in the world ranking. Below, the similarities between the Mekong region and the Latin American region are going to be described.

According to Ahn Se Hyun (2019, p. 105) the four reasons why Korea takes Mekong so seriously are as follows: 1) it is considered a vast blue ocean of a huge economy, 2) the region is full of young and dynamic population with a potential of fast growth rate, 3) the region is selected for Foreign Direct Investment and has a big consumer market, and 4) It has a continuously growing middle class population. All these reasons are also appliable to Latam, since it is a region that has vast natural resources, with a young and dynamic population that has a growing potential, has a consumer market as well as having a growing middle class.

More than that, Korea has also been present in the region with the ODA through agencies like KOICA and supporting the HRD through scholarship programs like the Global Korea Scholarships and with other institutions such as foundations and organizations that have social programs and offer financial aid to face different problems and finding solutions in terms of development.

The Latam region as well as the Mekong one is composed by developing countries that share weather, resources, economic and demographic conditions that make suitable a replication of the Korean niche diplomacy strategy that aims to ensure development that not only benefits the donor nation, but also mutual development, and the ultimate goal is to ensure that, just as Korea has gone from being a recipient of foreign aid, the countries it supports can become donor countries.