Simple reason why Science is Golden for South Korea

The Republic of Korea, better known as South Korea, and its communist neighbour North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), were created from the Cold War power struggle following the end of WWII, when China and the Soviet Union disputed control of the Korean peninsula with the West. Since the 1950-1953 war between the two Koreas, the frontier between them has remained the most militarized in the world.
While North Korea today is largely impoverished, South Korea is one of south-east Asia’s major powers, and a major world economy. It is the world’s premier shipbuilder, and a leading producer and exporter of electronic goods, automobiles, petrochemicals and steel. Its GDP in 2007 was USD950 billion, ranking it 10th highest worldwide. The affluent home consumer market, avid of cutting-edge technological goods, fuels a vibrant and innovative manufacturing base.
South Korea was established on an authoritarian model of society common to several other south-east Asian countries; strong and direct links between state and industry– involving substantial credit opportunities and selective supplementary aid to family-owned conglomerates (like the Samsung or Hyundai groups), import restrictions, strong state encouragement for investment savings, and subsidized imports of raw materials.
Economic advancement was finally met with democratic political reforms in 1987, when a multi-party system was introduced. But 10 years later, an economic crisis was triggered by largely unrestricted bank lending, precipitating a USD58 billion bail-out by the International Monetary Fund. The 1997 crisis was partly due to the dependence of South Korea’s economy on just a few key industries. Since then, the watchword has been diversification, and the government has vigorously encouraged the development of a broad range of high-tech activities and increased funding of scientific research.
The country’s long-term economic ambitions are now solidly anchored in a range of state-driven scientific R&D programs, and are generously funded by both the private and public sectors. A major part of South Korea’s scientific development strategy was the creation in 1999 of the “21st Century Frontier R&D program”, launched as part of a national plan called the “Long-term Vision for Science and Technology Development Toward 2025.” It involves 23 projects aimed, over a 10-year period, at significantly developing core technologies that hold commercial potential, including nanotechnology, space technology and bioscience. Each of these projects benefits from funds of at least USD1 million.
Today the country is back on a strong financial footing and the future looks bright for this ambitious Asian country; in a worldwide comparison, the proportion of its GDP spent on R&D–at around 3%–is second only to Japan, and ahead of the US, Germany and France. Indeed, South Korea’s R&D structure is very similar to the Japanese model, but with even more reliance on private investment. In 2007, this accounted for 80% of total R&D spending against 75% in Japan. Last year, South Korea’s total investment in R&D was USD28.5 billion.
South Korea is particularly impressive in the domain of patents. In the 10 years to 2004, the number of registered patents tripled. In 2007, South Koreans registered 7061 patents, placing it fourth-highest worldwide (behind the US, Japan and Germany but ahead of France, the UK and China). In terms of patents by total population, South Korea is in 2nd position, and for patents by GDP, it is in 1st place.