Nikkei Asia Prizes 1997

Pushing people to spur technology

At the end of 1964, Hyung-sup Choi was given a request that would put South Korea on the road to its economic miracle.

Then-President Park Chung-hee told Choi, then head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute, to mastermind a plan to develop the country's science and technology base and transform the still-agrarian South Korea into a high-tech, export machine.

South Korea had only recently emerged from the rubble of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Choi, then 44, was told by the president to formulate a strategy to get the country an international competitive edge in industrial technology. He was picked apparently because of his copious knowledge about research in the United States and Japan, where he had studied engineering.

The first major project Choi undertook was the creation of the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, a governmental organization to support corporate R&D. He was in charge of the project until its completion in 1966.

The organization adopted a novel system of recruiting leading researchers for educating corporate engineers and technologists. Building similar organizations later became popular in many developing countries.

Choi said he had to "start from scratch." People still talk about how frantically the researchers at the institute worked in the early days. The organization's main task was reverse engineering, or studying high-quality foreign products by taking them apart, then replicating them to help South Korean companies build their technological base.

While he was serving as minister of science and technology from 1971 to 1978, Choi established a university system for skilled workers on the model of Germany's meister system, believing skilled workers should constitute the core of manufacturing.

Choi stirred a national controversy when he proposed that the students of the Korean Advanced Institute for Science should be exempted from military service to allow them to focus on their studies.

Park was reluctant at first, saying military service was the obligation of all the people. But Choi succeeded in persuading him to adopt the proposal by arguing that a war cannot be fought with guns alone. Few in the government at that time had the stature to stand up to the president as Choi did.

"Why could I speak to the president so bluntly? It's because, unlike other ministers, I was ready to quit at any time," said Choi.

Park was assassinated in 1979 and, after much political turmoil, Chun Doo-hwan grabbed power.

Choi resigned from public office during that transition period to distance himself from the new government and started his activities overseas. Many Asian countries eagerly sought his advice on science-and-technology policy with an eye to emulating South Korea's economic development.

Choi helped the Thai government draw up a science-and-technology development plan and assisted the Sri Lankan government draft science-and- technology laws. He lent a helping hand to most countries across Asia.

South Korea has emerged as a major threat to Japanese high-tech industries. Choi, however, limits his praise of the country's achievements, saying South Korea has caught up with Japan in only a few areas.

Choi, currently president of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies, still has a strong presence in Asia as a prominent adviser on science-and-technology policy.

Japan and South Korea are both striving to develop original technologies for the future and have many common problems. Choi says he has learned a lot from Japan, but Japan can probably learn as much from his firsthand experience as the man behind much of the South Korean economic wonder.