Time to revamp the R&D subsidy system

Oh Se-jung
The author is a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Seoul National University and former president of SNU.

Government subsidies for research and development will likely expand sharply next year after this year’s abrupt cut. President Yoon Suk Yeol personally made the pledge several times, and his senior secretary for science and technology last month vowed to appropriate record-high R&D spending in next year’s fiscal budget. The news would comfort the science and engineering community aggrieved by the sudden budgetary axe in this year’s R&D outlay. This year’s misfortune was regrettable, but the government at least is trying to make amends.

The government must overhaul its R&D support system before scaling up next year’s budget to mitigate the science and technology field’s apprehensions about government whims.

This year’s budgetary cut was relevant to the government campaign to root out deep-seated collusions between the authorities and industries. But what really caused the cut was the skepticism about the effectiveness of R&D outputs from enormous government spending. Efficacy of the government’s R&D investment had long been questioned. The regular question that comes up in a parliamentary audit on government is why Korea fails to produce R&D achievements in the likes of Israel or the United States in spite of making one of the world’s largest spending against its gross domestic product. The Ministry of Science and ICT promises to hone efficiency in R&D investment every time a governing power changes.

At first glance, Korea does not lag behind advanced countries in R&D turnouts versus spending. It is among the top 10 rank in the production of publications and the number of citations in subsidized research works as well as patent registrations and grants. Korean universities are on par with global peers in the number of theses, and local companies are listed in the top-tier rank in patent registrations. Korea’s supremacy in IT, carmaking, shipbuilding, and defense technologies can be attributed to government support to the field. Korea still incurs a deficit in the technology trade balance, but this owes largely to the country’s relatively short industrial history. Moreover, the deficit in the technology trade balance has been improving lately.

But why do many still underrate the efficiency of government R&D investments? That could be owing to the absence of milestone achievements like winning Nobel prizes or inventing game-changing technologies like the Internet Revolution that originated from a research program by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. What Korea lacks is history-making inventions.

The science and technology community is well conscious of the weakness. Despite the large quantity of research publications, few are novel enough to awe the rest of the world. The number of original patents crucial for further technology advance still remains small. Korea must resolve these shortcomings to gain confidence in R&D and ensure the effectiveness in spending.

Korea fails to produce groundbreaking inventions because it lacks ingenious ideas. Bringing about a creative concept is like paving an entirely new path that often leads to a dead end. Only exceptional inventions end up successful. Uncovering potential winners from the heaps of ideas cannot be easy. U.S. and Israel grant full authority to selective experts and do not hold them accountable for failures. Because experts do their best to study the feasibility in advance and are condoned even if their efforts fumble, they are able to midwife extraordinary outcomes.

Such a method cannot work in Korea because its administrative system prioritizes “management,” not “mutual trust.” The so-called “honest failure” program adopted in 2010 under which funding continues despite risks of failure has not yet taken root in the field.

Korea can never make globally-accredited achievements if it keeps scientists and inventors in the frame of management, not encouragement. Instead of the supervisory nature of R&D programs, the government must provide a trust-based support system for researchers. If it cannot change the 30-trillion ($22 billion)-won worth subsidized R&D program that way, the government should at least carve out some R&D projects to be free from any conditions, just as the government had exempted preliminary feasibility study for some programs this year. Without such radical actions, we cannot expect any productive results despite the president’s repeated promise to back enterprising R&D programs no matter how much they cost.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.