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Korea in 2007 ranked seventh in the world in investment into research and development by spending US$33.69 billion based on purchasing power. That was equivalent to 3.4 percent of the country's gross domestic product. In terms of the number of research papers registered in the Science Citation Index, Korea rose from 53rd place in the world in 1981 with 236 papers to 12th in 2007 with 25,494.
It ranked fourth in the world international patents in 2007 and also fourth in patents registered in the United States in 2006. Korea won an average of 1.66 international patents for every $100,000 in R&D investment, behind Germany (2.51) and Japan (1.95), but ahead of France, the U.K. and the U.S.
But there are clear limits. Korea ranked 30th in the world in the number of citations per research paper, which was 3.44 times, much lower than the U.S. (6.69), the U.K. (6.11), Switzerland (7.41) and Germany (5.93). The reason was that most of the research being conducted in Korea was either an extension or a supplementary portion of research underway in advanced countries. There are also huge imbalances between research into basic and applied technologies, between large conglomerates and small and mid-sized companies and between IT companies and non-IT companies.
In Korea, private businesses account for 73.7 percent of all R&D spending. Yet most of the researchers with PhDs teach at universities. As a result, most of the R&D spending is allocated to developing applied technology rather than on research into basic science. Also, 21.8 percent of government R&D and 39.8 percent of private sector R&D are focused on the field of information and communication, while the 20 biggest conglomerates account for 53.5 percent of the country's total R&D spending. This is why R&D spending generates a lot of patents but a lower number of research papers.
A closed system is another problem. Foreign investment accounts for only 0.3 percent of Korea's R&D spending. Along with Japan, that's the lowest among the member countries of the OECD. Out of all of the patents registered by Korea, only 4.9 percent of them were developed in conjunction with other countries, which is much lower than the U.S. (12.2 percent), France (16.6 percent) and the U.K. (23.2 percent). There are also a very small number of foreign researchers being allowed to take part in projects in Korea.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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