Moo-Young Han
Editor-in-Chief, KASTN/IEKAS
Professor of Physics
Duke University
myhan@phy.duke.edu
The so-called HAN projects (Highly Advanced National) are nearing its 10-year run (1992-2002). During that period, HAN went through the hands of almost as many Ministers of Science and Technology. Now another new run is initiated, this time under another slogan, 21 FRP, the 21st Century Frontier Research Program. Different name, different policymakers, the same money, the same old research culture, or the lack of it.
After 10 years of HAN (the so-called G7 projects) and some $200 million later, there is very little to show for the effort. It falls far short of making Korea one of the top 10 in the world in the fields of science and technology. So, they try again, with the same money, the same policy and the same recipe, that is, a recipe for failure.
Often we find ourselves at a loss when asked," With so much money thrown into it, why is it that Korea does not have anything significant to show for it?" What lies at the heart of the problem? There can be no simple black-and-white answers, of course; problems are multi-dimensional and often deep-rooted in the very fabric of society and culture. A few things, however, come into focus when one examines the pattern of policies and their implementations that characterizes the development of science and technology in Korea over the past three decades.
1. Top-down centralized bureaucracy
Korea loves to have all organizations and bureaucracies in the centralized top-down hierarchy. MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology), as well as MOE (Ministry of Education), sets policies, directs implementation, controls budgets as well as personnel. KOSEF (Korea Science and Engineering Foundation) is not at all an independent entity; it is rather an extension of MOST and in fact serves at the pleasure of MOST. MOST controls everything. Even under the best possible situation, such a centralized top-down hierarchy stifles healthy competition, creativity, and often impedes true progress in research and development. The situation in Korea however is far from being the best possible situation.
2. Constantly shifting winds
The average half-life of a cabinet minister in Korea is less than a year. As the minister is shuffled, sometimes in a matter of a few months, the personnel under the minister changes, policies change, old policies are discarded and new ones introduced (often the same old plans wrapped in new clothes), priorities of implementation shifts, budgets are redrawn, and the whole cycle of instability repeats itself with each changing of guards.
3. Proliferation of duplication
Rather than trying to improve existing research structure, projects, institutes, research centers and so on, a new incoming team almost always create and establish new projects, new institutes, new research centers and so on. The number of research centers, most of which are mediocre at best, grows exponentially. The number proliferates, budgets swell, turf war flares for the self-preservation and survival. Another new team comes in and rearranges the landscape - merging institutes, changing their names, and adding more new institutes.
4. Individual creativity squashed
One theme that runs through all the "new" programs is that individual research, rather than team-based projects, is less and less funded. In fact the notorious Brain Korea 21 project completely wiped out whatever meager individual grant funds there were. According to one report, the university faculty members in Korea have been in their worst depressed mood for the last two years. All this comes from the centralized bureaucracy that micromanages research down to how many test tubes. And this micromanagement shifts in every so many months!
This has been the characteristics of the development of science and technology in Korea for the past three decades and it shows no sign of improving. Each new team keeps rediscovering the same old wheel, a broken wheel at that. In some quarters, HAN is referred to as Highly Advertised Nothing.
To conclude, the centralized top-down bureaucracy that is constantly shifting with the winds of politics, MOST being the central such organization as far as science and technology are concerned, may very well be the most detrimental impediment that stands in the way of creative progress. It may be time to ponder an unthinkable: ABOLISH MOST ALTOGETHER.
In its place, a creation of several "KOSEF"s, each in charge of different sectors of science and technology, each independent and autonomous, with a well-established framework of continuity, may go a long way toward fostering a climate of sustained creativity.