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 Academic research in Korea

Se-Jung Ohis at the Dean’s Ofce, College o Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, 151-742, Korea.

e-mail: sjoh@snu.ac.kr

K orea is probably best known or

its accelerated pace o economicdevelopment; in less than hal acentury it rose rom the ashes o the Korean War (1950–1953) to

be the 13th economic power in the world.Undoubtedly science and technology played an important role in this successstory, and the Korean governmentconsistently placed strong emphasis onits development. A special governmentalagency was created (which later becamethe Ministry o Science and echnology) asearly as 1967, which attracted scientists andengineers rom abroad by establishing the

Korea Institute o Science and echnology (KIS). However, during the early stageo economic development, technology was emphasized more than science anda number o government laboratorieswere created to develop the technologiesnecessary or Korean industries instead o improving and using the capabilities o theexisting universities.

Scientic research in Koreanuniversities thereore remained in itsinancy well into the 1980s. For example,in terms o the number o papers publishedin Science Citation Index (SCI) journals,

Korea ranked around 50th in the world atthat time. However, it then started to takeo quite rapidly, and in 1996 Korea ranked21st in the world. Last year (2006), Koreanscientists published 23,286 SCI papers(2.05% o the world total), and its rankingwent up to 13th to become par with thenational economic size (see Fig. 1). In someelds such as materials science, physics,computer science and pharmacology, thepapers by Korean researchers comprisedmore than 4% o the world total. Tisrapid increase in scientic output islargely due to the expansion o academicresearch, as more than three-quarters

o the total Korean publications comerom universities.

Tere are several actors that havecontributed to this phenomenal expansiono academic research in Korea in the past20 years. One is the inux o oreign-educated scientists and engineers to Korean

universities as aculty members. As theeconomic situation o Korea improved,an increasing number o Korean studentsentered universities (today more than 80%o high-school graduates enter college).Accordingly, Korean universities haveexpanded signicantly and many new aculty members have been hired, many o whom were trained in universities inadvanced countries such as the US, Japanand in Europe. Furthermore, Koreanuniversities strengthened graduateeducation at the same time in response tothe increased demand or skilled engineersand scientists rom private industry,

which naturally led to the emphasis on theresearch capability o aculty members.Te government also helped to improveacademic research by implementingappropriate policies. For example, theMinistry o Science and echnology began investing more research money 

into universities by initiating severalprogrammes such as that o the Scienceand Engineering Research Centers, whichsupport a group o aculty members,having good research credentials, or nineyears. Te Ministry o Education alsodevised institutional grant programmessuch as the Brain Korea 21 program,wherein several graduate schools in thescience and engineering elds are selectedbased on their research record, and thestipends and expenses incurred or theinternational activities o their students aresupported. Even the Ministry o Deencehelped by waiving military duty — which

Scientifc research in Korean universities has developed rapidly in the past twenty years. However,

 the quality still lags behind other advanced countries, and Korea aces many challenges in building

premier research universities.

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Figure 1 natioal otpt o SCI paprs i 2006.

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is normally compulsory or all Koreanmales — or graduate students majoringin science and engineering elds in thedomestic universities.

Te eect o these governmentprogrammes on the university campus hasbeen quite proound. Te programmes notonly provided the necessary research money 

and manpower to universities, but alsocreated a competitive atmosphere amonguniversities and their aculty members.Te hiring o new aculty membersbecame primarily based on the researchachievements o the candidates, andaculty members began to eel the pressureto ‘publish or perish’. Large numbers o graduate students enrolled in elite Koreanuniversities to capitalize on the military duty waiver and stipend support. Undoubtedly,these measures were quite instrumental inthe phenomenal increase o research outputrom Korea in the past 20 years.

However, the quality o research inKorean universities does not yet seem tocorrespond to the quantity o publicationsthat has increased at a rapid pace. Forinstance, in a survey conducted in 2006 theaverage ve-year period citation numberor papers published by Korean researcherswas ound to be 3.22, which ranked 28th inthe world. Tis citation requency was lessthan hal o that in Switzerland (rankingrst at 7.14), or the US (ranking third at6.46). Te act that Korean researchersnow publish sucient numbers o papersto be competitive with their counterparts

in advanced countries, but still have togo a long way to compete in terms o quality can be seen in other statistics aswell. Seoul National University (SNU)produced the largest number o paperso Korean universities (3.635 papers in2006) and ranked 32nd in the universitiesin the world, just alling behind MI(3,728 papers) and Ohio State University (3,674) but ahead o the University o British Columbia (3,519) and NorthwesternUniversity (3,328). In 2005, SNU conducteda survey comparing the number o publications per aculty member and the

average citation number o their papers orseveral departments with other universitiesin the US. Te result revealed a consistentpattern: SNU aculty members now publishnearly the same number o papers as thoseo the top research universities o the world,however, the actual citation requency perpaper lags ar behind. Figure 2 shows thesurvey results or the physics department.In terms o the number o papers peraculty member, SNU surpassed IndianaUniversity in 2000–2001 and StanordUniversity in 2002–2003, but the citationnumber was still less than 65% o StanordUniversity in 2002–2003, although the ratio

was steadily improving. Tis pattern is trueor almost all the departments in SNU thatwere surveyed at the time, and also holdsor the other elite Korean universities.

O course the statistics and rankingsmay not tell the whole story. However, this

assessment is also a common nding by oreign experts who have reviewed eliteKorean universities recently. In 2005 theCollege o Natural Sciences in the SNUasked oreign scholars to orm an externalreview committee in order to evaluate thequality o research and teaching or eachdepartment. Tis was the rst time theKorean higher education institutions wereexternally reviewed by oreign scholars, andsoon afer other elite Korean institutionssuch as the College o Engineering in theSNU, the Korea Institute or AdvancedStudy (KIAS), Pohang University o Science

and echnology (POSECH), and theKorea Advanced Institute o Science andechnology (KAIS) ollowed suit. Tendings o the external review committee asto the level o research in these institutionswere airly consistent. Malcolm Beasley o Stanord University, who headed the review committee or the SNU physics department,summed up very succinctly — “SNUphysics department has developed into aworld-class department in a remarkably short period o time, but this is not yet aworld-leading department. And it has toconront and overcome a number o hurdlesi it wants to become the world leader.”

Indeed there are many challengesbeing encountered by Korean researchers.As Korean universities have long beenprimarily teaching institutions, withacademic research being a relatively recent phenomenon, many systemsand inrastructures o the university are not suitable or premier research

universities. First o all, the promotion andcompensation system or aculty membersis still mainly based on the number o yearso service. Junior aculty members, oncehired, are rarely denied tenure and almostautomatically promoted to ull proessorshipafer a given number o years; besides, theaculty salary is almost commensuratewith age regardless o research activities.Although these old systems arebeginning to change in elite universities,a ull implementation o the tenure andcompensation system o the aculties basedon academic achievements is still ar away.

Another problem with Koreanuniversities is the non-availability o technical and administrative supportor academic research. echnicians andcommon research acilities such as machineshops are almost non-existent in many universities. Research space is alwayslimited, and even many libraries cannotadequately support the current researchactivities. Further, these problems areaggravated by the low indirect supportor academic research allowed by thegovernment unding agencies and theindustry. Te overhead rate that the

universities can charge the government orindustry is usually less than 15%, which iscertainly not enough to cover the cost andimprove the research environment o theuniversity. Overall, the nancial situationso Korean universities are considerably worse than those o the premier researchuniversities o the world. For example,compared with Harvard University theoperating budget o SNU is less than20%, and the endowment und is merely 1%. Considering the spiralling cost o rontier scientic research, this is a really big challenge aced by Korean universities

at present.Te government should providesupport or this. Although Korea is knownto invest a relatively high percentage o GDP to research and development (2.99%in 2005, ranking eighth in the world interms o the percentage and tenth inabsolute amount), the government shareis less than 25% o the total. University research, in particular basic research,should be mainly supported by thegovernment, but this small portion o R&Dmoney poses diculties. Furthermore, theKorean government spends only about10% o its R&D budget on actual basic

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Figure 2 Scitifc otpt pr aclty mmbr. A compariso o a, t mbr o paprs ad

b, tir citatios pr aclty mmbr o t pysics

dpartmt at Sol natioal uivrsity, Staord

uivrsity ad Idiaa uivrsity.

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university research grants. Tis is partly dueto the age-old emphasis o the governmenton applied development rather than basicresearch, and the subsequent prolierationo government-supported laboratories. Asa result, individual grants or university proessors are extremely dicult to acquirenowadays, and the competition rate orgovernment grants ofen exceeds the ratioo 10:1. In order to alleviate this problem,the government should invest moreresearch money in universities, especially in the small-scale grants to encourage the

creativity o the individual proessors.In addition, the government shouldmake and implement a long-term plan orthe basic research conducted in universities.Owing to the long experience o managingapplied developments, many bureaucrats inthe Korean government tend to have a very short-sighted view o the R&D policy andits outcome. Tey ofen expect an almostimmediate return even on basic researchinvestment, and this attitude makes itdicult or the academic researchers totackle dicult problems using innovativeideas that usually require a long time

to bear ruit. Tis short-sightednesso the R&D policy and the pressure to

obtain results in the short-term is at leastpartly responsible or the unortunatecircumstances regarding Hwang Woo-Suk’sstem-cell research. More undamentally,the Korean government should abolish allunnecessary regulations and interventionsin the aairs o the university, and allow universities the discretion to compete atdomestic as well as international levels.

O course, academic researchersshould rst do whatever they can toimprove the quality o their research. Oneimmediate task is to lower the barriers

between disciplines and university departments, which was unanimously highlighted by oreign reviewers. Creatingmultidisciplinary research centres similarto the Materials Research Science andEngineering Centers (MRSEC) in the USmight help in this respect. Strengtheninginternational collaborations, especially in the Asia-Pacic region, is anothertask. Good examples are the activities o POSECH such as the Asia-Pacic Centeror Teoretical Physics, and the PohangLight Source (Fig. 3). In addition, Korearecently invited a branch o the Pasteur

Institute to build a centre in Korea, andhas urther plans to invite more oreign

research institutes into several reeeconomic zones being developed aroundthe country. Finally, the Korean researchcommunity should make the utmost eortto accommodate more oreigners andemale scientists. Despite the recent ratherrapid increase in the representation o emale researchers as a result o governmentpolicies such as the establishment o theNational Institute or Supporting Womenin Science and echnology (NIS WIS)and the target setting or the employmento women scientists and engineers in

government research institutes anduniversities, the ratio o women aculty members in Korean universities is still only a little over 10%, which is ar below the levelusually observed in advanced countrieso the West. Considering the dwindlinginterest o young Koreans in careers in thescience and engineering elds, recruitingmore women and oreign researchers is notan option but a necessity or the longevity o the Korean scientic community.

Korea aces many challenges ahead inbuilding world-class research universities.Despite the daunting nature o the task, I

personally believe that Koreans have thewill and power to realize it.

Figure 3 Lar-scal scic i Kora. a, A bird’s-y viw o t Poa Lit Sorc (PLS), a tird-ratio sycrotro radiatio acility wr may xprimts o

matrials rsarc ar prormd. b, Isid t PLS, sowi its bamlis.