By Oh Young-jin
Staff Reporter
Korea needs to readjust its research and development focus from its development-era old paradigms to more public-conscious targets.
According to the Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI) Monday, the new focus should be placed on energy, environment, public health and other related sectors, with more financial support to be rendered to these areas.
``Compared with advanced countries, Korea has overemphasized the importance of economic development,'' the institute said in a report entitled ``Secret of Success to Finding New Growth Engines: Government R&D.''
The institute said that new areas of R&D emphasis include mad cow disease and global warming, the solutions to which are pivotal to the enhancement of quality of life.
At the same time, the report said that this effort should be carried out with the conversion of R&D results into industrial use so as to establish them as new economic growth engines.
The report also calls for different approaches to different goals in terms of government involvement. For instance, biotechnology is in the initial stage of industrialization and the private sector lacks the resources to convert it into lucrative business model, requiring active support from the government, which is required to play a role in creating a market for nascent industries.
``The current model is to have the government provide technologies and help the private sector raise its competitiveness so as to enable corporations to reinvest in securing core technological competence,'' the report said. `Private firms prove to lack power to commercialize core technologies.''
In conclusion, it says that it is the government's role to simultaneously strategize standardization and global marketing.