Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
INTERVIEW Korea urged to enhance technological prowess to survive US-China rivalry
Lee Kwang-hyung, president of KAIST / Courtesy of KAIST
By Baek Byung-yeul
KAIST head stresses importance of nurturing manpower in semiconductor industry
By Baek Byung-yeul
The Yoon Suk-yeol government, which was inaugurated on May 10, is urged to focus on developing the country's capabilities in science and technology, which have emerged as key drivers to protect national security and survive in the escalating hegemony war between the United States and China, the head of the nation's top science and technology university said.
“Science and technology have now become key drivers of national security and international politics at a time when the U.S. and China are fighting to gain technological supremacy,” Lee Kwang-hyung, president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), told The Korea Times in a recent written interview.
“Countries that secure high technology will take the lead in international politics, the economy, military and industry. The new government needs to run state affairs with the idea that science and technology are the basis of everything,” the president added.
Among the emerging technologies, the president especially emphasized the need to secure technological advancement in semiconductors, which are becoming a key commodity that all countries need for their development.
“Without semiconductors, all industries could be severely damaged. The fact that Japan implemented an export control policy against Korea three years ago is a great lesson. Even now, due to the lack of chips for vehicles, car production lines are not running smoothly,” he said.
Lee added that the supply chains of materials, parts and equipment related to strategic items must be managed in detail.
“As not all parts and materials can be self-sufficient in a single country, a cross-country alliance must be established to safely cooperate and manage the supply chain. That's why international cooperation is more important,” he said.
President Yoon Suk-yeol greets KAIST President Lee Kwang-hyung during his visit to National Nanofab Center, an affiliate research center of KAIST, in Daejeon, April 29. Joint Press Corps
In April, Lee met President Yoon Suk-yeol who visited KAIST before his inauguration. During the meeting, Yoon promised the KAIST leader that he would spare no policy support to enhance the country's competitiveness in the chip industry.
Lee told the president-elect at the time that the government needs to provide more support to achieve that goal as nurturing talented people in the chip industry is also essential.
“At that time, Yoon recognized the importance of chips and promised active support for universities, research institutions and companies. This is because universities play a role of training people in chip technology. The biggest difficulty in the Korean chip industry is a lack of trained workers. I think universities should be more active in training students in the sector. It is necessary to improve experimental equipment so that universities can develop a professional workforce by conducting sufficient laboratory training,” Lee said.
The KAIST leader said the new government should strive to develop the national capabilities of technologies ― aerospace, quantum computing, nuclear power generation and drone technology- that can be used in both the private and military sectors.
“Korea has shown its leadership in some technological areas, but it is generally lagging behind other advanced countries. Realistically, we cannot gain a leading edge in all sectors. We need to concentrate our capabilities on national strategic technologies that will be useful in the future. It will be effective to focus on technologies that are both useful in private and military sectors,” he said.
Converging technology and humanities
Lee is a renowned futurologist here, leading the establishment of the Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy, Korea's first futurology research institute, in 2013. He is better known as a role model for Professor Park, one of the main characters in the 1999 drama “KAIST,” which was about KAIST students who dreamed of becoming scientists.
Since becoming KAIST president in 2021, Lee has presented a new paradigm for this period of convergence of all studies, such as developing a curriculum that has no boundaries between the humanities and science.
Under his vision, KAIST recently launched the School of Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences. The newly-established school will recruit new students for the 2023 spring semester this autumn to nurture Master's degree and PhD students who will conduct convergence research between humanities, science and engineering suitable for the digital era.
“For the past 50 years, KAIST has been striving for the development of the Korean industry. As a result, Korea has become an advanced country and KAIST has grown into the top 40 universities in the world,” Lee said.
“Now, the university is trying to become the top school in the world. The way to become a world-class university is to do research that doesn't exist in the world. To that end, we have to find what humans want 10 years from now. Humanities is the study of researching our nature and needs. To know what we're going to want 10 years from now, we need to know human nature, so of course we need to study humanities,” the president said.