Could you elaborate? In both Ireland's and Korea's cases, despite their relatively small size, both nations have notable scientific output. What's different about them?
Both do NOW. In Ireland’s case, honestly, we probably have the EU, a massive stabilising influence, to thank for that, along with treaties that make the border a day-to-day non-issue (you can walk across it without noticing). In the case of Korea, the opposite happened; the border became so fixed due to external influence that there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.
Dublin has long been a cultural center, since early Christianity, but modern Irish science benefits hugely from the tax incentive to move Pfizer there.
South Korea is the successful planned economy, like Singapore; on paper it's an open economy, and people are free to start businesses, but the top level is heavily coordinated between the government and megacorps. It was a military dictatorship for years while growing at over 5% a year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee
It’s not just a colonialism thing either; in Europe wars often resulted in territorial change; the territory was then the cause of the next war.