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Why Korea scientists doesn't win Nobel Prizes

Published: 17 Oct. 2025, 00:01

Oh Se-jung

The author is a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy and a former president of Seoul National University.

Every October brings an uncomfortable moment for Korea’s scientific community. When Nobel Prize winners are announced, Korean scientists are absent once again. The disappointment is sharper when, as this year, two Japanese researchers win. Media coverage immediately fills with comparisons such as “0 to 27,” contrasting the number of Nobel laureates from Korea and Japan, and questioning why Korea still has not produced a Nobel Prize in science. More than a decade ago, a National Assembly committee chair even scolded officials, saying they should “kneel before the public” for failing to produce a laureate.

Staff from Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun distributes extra editions reporting on Japanese Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi winning the Nobel Prize in medicine, along with scientists Mary E. Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell, for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance, in Tokyo, Monday, Oct 6, 2025. [AP/YONHAP]

Koreans’ fascination with the Nobel Prize has long been intense. In 1985, KBS aired a special series titled “Challenge for the Nobel Prize.” I was invited to explain the “Quantum Hall Effect” experiment, which earned the Nobel Prize in Physics. When asked whether Korea could win a Nobel for such work, I replied without hesitation, “Impossible.” Korea lacked the ultra-low-temperature, high-magnetic-field equipment needed for such experiments. Forty years later, however, the environment has changed dramatically. Korean researchers now have access to most advanced instruments, so the lack of equipment is no longer an excuse.

In terms of papers and citations, Korea’s basic science research now appears comparable to Japan’s. According to Clarivate’s 2024 list of the world’s most influential researchers, 75 are Korean and 78 Japanese. Yet the gap in history remains critical. Japan’s RIKEN Institute, a government-funded center dedicated to basic research, was founded in 1917, while Korea’s Institute for Basic Science (IBS), created to serve a similar purpose, opened only in 2011. Because Nobel-caliber discoveries often take 30 to 40 years to mature and be recognized, this difference in institutional history matters. Japan’s heavy investment in basic science during its economic boom from the 1970s to the 1990s is now bearing fruit, producing 22 Nobel laureates since 2000. Korea, which began serious investment in basic research only in the 2000s, still lacks that accumulation of time.

A screen displays the 2025 Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry, Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University, Japan), Richard Robson (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Omar M. Yaghi (University of California, Berkeley, U.S.), as they are announced during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, October 8, 2025. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Waiting alone will not bring a Nobel Prize. Achievements of that level require long-term, original research in untested and uncertain fields. Yet most government projects in Korea demand short-term results, and their priorities shift with each administration. The legacy of viewing science and technology merely as tools for industrial growth still lingers. In contrast, advanced countries sustain long-term funding for fundamental research through both public institutions and private foundations such as the Wellcome Trust in Britain, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Kavli Foundation in the United States. These institutions maintain independence from political cycles, ensuring stable support over decades.

While funding and institutional support are essential, creativity among scientists is even more crucial. History shows that great discoveries often emerge from hardship. India’s C. V. Raman won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics despite poor facilities, discovering the “Raman effect” that revolutionized molecular analysis. Japan’s first laureate, Hideki Yukawa, conducted his pioneering research during World War II. Tu Youyou, China’s first Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, made her discovery amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

Then-Democratic Party leader Lee Jae Myung, center, and party officials visit the Rare Isotope Science Project at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Yuseong District, Daejeon, on November 15, 2023, to inspect the RAON heavy ion accelerator facility. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

If Korea had produced such a trailblazing scientist, the nation’s long-held hope for a Nobel in science might already be fulfilled. Koreans have repeatedly achieved the impossible — marathoner Sohn Kee-chung and golfer Pak Se-ri in sports, and Hyundai founder Chung Ju-young in industry. Why, then, has science not produced its own heroes? The answer, I believe, lies in our education system, which nurtures students who obediently absorb knowledge rather than question authority. Those who write down even a professor’s jokes often earn the best grades, as Lee Hye-jung observed in her book “Who Gets an A+ at Seoul National University?” (2014). Many Korean scientists are these “model students.” Perhaps that is why, when the previous administration cut research funding, not a single scientific association issued a strong protest.

What Korea needs most are young scientists unafraid to challenge authority. Only when such minds thrive will the nation move closer to its first Nobel Prize in science.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.