By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
The government said it will allocate 316.4 billion won ($336 million) to various space projects this year, roughly the same as the previous two years.
Considering the government's ambitious plan to make South Korea a space power by 2020, the sum is a modest amount ― about 0.12 percent of Korea's 2008 budget of 257 trillion won, and 2.9 percent of its total R& D spending. It is also about one 50th of the money demanded by the incoming Lee Myung-bak government for the construction of the controversial Seoul-Busan canal.
The Ministry of Science and Technology said Wednesday that about two thirds of the space budget will be spent on building and launching satellites. Some 50 billion won will go to the construction of a launching pad on the southwestern island of Oinaru, which will be completed this September.
Another 2.5 billion won will be spent to send Ko San, Korea's first astronaut, to the International Space Station this April aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.
``We have general agreements with the Ministry of Planning and Budget that the space budget should be raised to 5 percent of the R& D budget. But we can't increase it to the level so soon,'' an official of the Ministry of Science and Technology said. ``The government reorganization also affected us.''
The space budget jumped to 312 billion won in 2006 from 189 billion won in 2005. Since then, it has remained flat, despite the fact that the government's total budget has continued to rise. As a result, the portion of space projects to the national R& D budget has decreased to 2.9 percent in 2008 from 3.5 percent in 2006.
Korea's investment in space projects is about 10 percent of Japan's spending on its space programs, and about 1 percent of that of the United States, the ministry official said.
NASA spends around $17 billion every year, which is about 0.6 percent of the $2.9 trillion United States federal budget. Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency also has an annual budget of about $1.5 billion.
Last month, the science ministry said that it planed to send an unmanned probe to orbit the Moon in 2020, and to land another one on its surface in 2025. According to its roadmap, the Korea Aerospace will develop a large-size rocket that can carry 300 tons of freight into space by 2017.
President-elect Lee Myung-bak plans to break up the science ministry and to merge the separated parts with other ministries.
``We hope (the incoming government) does not spend all the money in digging a canal,'' the science ministry official said.
indizio@koreatimes.co.kr