WASHINGTON (Yonhap News) -- South Korea will be attractive to global investors over at least the next five years, a U.S. magazine said, citing its size, recent performance and economic potential.

In its latest edition, Foreign Affairs magazine picked South Korea and five other countries -- Mexico, Poland, Turkey, Indonesia and the Philippines -- as well as the Mekong region.

They are "well positioned to thrive" as China's economic growth slows and many of other once-hot emerging markets have cooled, it said.

"The BRICs are crumbling," it said, using a grouping acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China.

South Korea and Poland have profited from "smart leadership and proximity to bigger players; indeed, both have grown so rapidly in recent decades that they no longer fully qualify as 'emerging,'" it said. "But both remain more volatile than established, fully

developed states, making their manufacturing-driven economies especially appealing for investors."

Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, agreed it is anachronistic to call South Korea an emerging market.

"Yet South Korea is not exactly a developed market, either," he said in an op-ed piece for the magazine specializing diplomatic and international issues.

Among a host of challenges facing the major Asian economy are security threats from North Korea, he said.