Basic research and application research imbalance in South Korea

On June 2nd, the official website of "Nature" magazine published an article "Revitalize the Basic Science in Korea, not only by budget, but also values." The article mentioned that since the 1970s and 1980s, South Korea has vigorously developed industrial infrastructure and has developed rapidly. In 1989, the South Korean government announced the "Basic Science Promotion Law", which provided institutional guarantees for the basic scientific research and development funding system. From 1990 to 2020, the basic science research center funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology increased from 13 to 122, and the amount of funding also increased from US $ 2.2 million to $ 147 million. In addition, basic scientific research funds have also doubled in recent years. From 2017 to 2022, it increased from US $ 1.07 billion to $ 2.1 billion. Nevertheless, the level of basic scientific research in South Korea has not reached a leading position worldwide, and it is necessary to further think and plan for the development of basic science.

The article mentioned that there are many world -class scientists in the fields of chemistry and materials in South Korea, but their achievements in basic science research are not significant. Although Korean researchers have sufficient research funds, it is still difficult to achieve innovation in the evaluation of scientific research results, funding procedures and scientific research and culture. At present, South Korea's scientific research policies are more suitable for application science, that is, hoping to maximize the results of scientific research results in the short term, not applicable to basic scientific research. The article summarizes several major problems currently existing: First, the Korean scientific research results evaluation system stipulates that researchers should regularly produce results, such as reviewing the number of papers, leading scholars to continuously reduce their scientific research risks and focus more on short -term projects. Second, the South Korean government's funding for a single researcher is only 1-3 years, which is not enough for many basic studies. Third, most of the scientific research infrastructure in South Korea is mostly to promote application research, which has contributed to the cultural atmosphere of scientific research on scientific research, which has led many scholars to give up basic research.

In the future, the South Korean government should formulate research plans for basic scientific research and application science research, and stimulate the interests of scholars for the characteristics of different disciplines. Only in this way can it better boost the academic level of South Korea.

Source: China Social Science Network-Journal of Social Sciences of China

Author: Zhao Qi/Compilation

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