K-Developedia offers big data on development

Chun Hong-tack, Dean of the KDI School of Public Policy and Management

By Yoon Ja-young

Korea is a miracle in the history of modern world economic development, achieving stunning economic growth from the ashes of the Korean War. The graduate school run by Korea Development Institute (KDI) established K-Developedia, a database of Korea’s economic development, to share this knowhow with the rest of the world.

“Our graduate school has two missions. The first is to nurture professionals in development economics and public policy, and the second is to share knowledge, providing advice and doing research on development policy. K-Developedia stems from such missions,” said Chun Hong-tack, Dean of the KDI School of Public Policy and Management.

The school, where all courses are provided in English, was established in December 1997. About half of its students are from overseas, many of whom are government workers from developing countries. Most of its professors are equipped with not only theory but also experience in the field, setting up policies in diverse institutes such as the World Bank. With students and professors with such background creating synergy, KDI School is being acknowledged as one of the best schools in public policy, being the first school outside of the United States to get accreditation by the NASPAA, or Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs & Administration, for its Master of Public Policy degree.

It currently has around 1,500 international alumni from 119 countries. Over 70 percent are working in government, and some of them have already risen to high levels such as minister. “They are contributing to bilateral cooperation between Korea and their countries. Our alumni are our most valuable assets,” Chun said.

KDI provides consulting for developing countries, based on its experience in economic development. It thus needed to systematically organize experiences in development, whether they were research papers, issue papers or video documents, so that anyone could easily find them. “For instance, those who want to learn about Korea’s e-government system may easily find out how Korea developed it by visiting the K-Developedia site,” the dean said.

The content will be updated continuously, and KDI, which designs the country’s development policy, is in the best position to do this. K-Developedia currently has over 35,000 full-texts and multimedia content, with on average 20 more updated daily. People from around 210 countries have accessed the system so far, and many are from developing countries.

“As our students come from governments of developing countries, they have a strong motivation to contribute to their country based on what they have learned here. K-Developedia will help them set up development policies in their countries as well,” Chun said.

While K-Developedia is focused on Korea’s development experience, KDI’s ultimate vision goes beyond this. “We plan to set up a world-developedia, which has everything about the development experience of every country,” Chun said. Currently, the school is working on the Asia Development Open Access project, aiming to establish a development knowledge hub for Asian countries.

The plan goes hand in hand with the project to prepare modularization reports on Korea’s diverse development topics. “Just like Harvard Business School is known for case studies, we hope that KDI School will be a leader in case studies for development policy,” the dean said.