Research that analyzes emerging issues to develop strategies for the future is a very important process. In the meantime, there have been various studies to explore emerging issues. In this study, the emerging issue search method proposed by the National Assembly Futures Institute was used and analyzed. This paper aims to propose a method for exploring and analyzing emerging issues based on keywords that can assist in determining the direction of national research and development investments. Through this, the aim is to provide a more systematic and information-driven approach to the decision-making process involved in establishing national research and development strategies. This method extracts and analyzes emerging keywords and related ripple keywords by utilizing emerging issue search indicators such as ‘Novelty’, ‘Fast growth’, and ‘Impact’ from the results of the thesis DB (Web of Science) search for major keywords. Through this, we intend to derive insights that can be used for future R\&D investment It has been observed that three consistent value keywords, namely ‘scientific innovation,’ ‘economic development,’ and ‘quality of life,’ have been recurring in past Korean R\&D investment directions. Therefore, these three keywords have been selected as the primary keywords for conducting searches. An analysis was conducted on emerging keywords and cascading keywords related to these three primary keywords.