Korea was relieved and congratulated itself when the first Korean in space returned to Earth completing her 12-day mission Saturday.
We, too, send our compliments and congratulations to Yi So-yeon, not just for successfully exploring territory unknown to her compatriots but for making Korea the 11th country conducting scientific experiments in space.
Not all views on the first Korean astronaut are favorable, though. Some say it's just a $26 million show, blasting off a Korean and briefly placing her in space, with its entire process done by technology belonging to other countries. Others belittle even the 18 experiments, saying they are simple and easy, costing little. They may be right and the nation should not be overexcited or fantasize about becoming a space power.
But this only points to the need for the nation's fledgling space industry to quicken its pace to narrow the gap with advanced countries. In this vein, Korea will take an equally significant step in December when it will launch its own satellite on its own rocket at a space base on a southwestern island. And this should be another landmark on Korea's ``space road map," which calls for sending a satellite to explore the moon by 2020.
The global space race has long shifted from the two-horse event of the United States and Russia to a multilateral competition, which also involve such Asian countries as China and India. Considering only participants can claim vested interests in untrodden territories and the increasingly apparent limitation of this planet as a habitat, the need for Korea's active investment is only self-evident. This is especially because Seoul's contributing ratio to global space industry still remains just one eighth of its industrial power.
As space investment cannot guarantee its money's worth, the government needs to make a cautious strategy based on a national consensus. This is important, as there are already debates whether Korea should aim to launch its own rocket or it had better spend the money on advancing basic space science.
Yi and her backup astronaut, Ko San, will be doing lots of work in the process, which is why the domestic media outlets should refrain from treating them as some sort of TV celebrity but let them follow the paths of pioneering scientists. It is also because they and other Koreans who set foot in space again should not be ``space flight participants," as Yi was called, but pilots and engineers.