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BY Yim, Hyun PhD
Managing Director, Technology Foresight Center
Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning |
The creation and acceptance of new
technologies has accelerated in
modern times. In future, science and
technology will be a key driver of
social change. While the convergence
of science and technology will speed up the creation
of new technologies and industries. Admittedly,
there are significant uncertainties about the future
shape of markets, governance and social values.
These will impact organizations and influence their
capacity to meet their objectives.
In order to prepare for these rapid changes and
uncertainties, we should actively respond to future
society by establishing a national science and
technology vision that incorporates changes in the
global environment and the unique conditions of
Korea. It has been also more than ten years since the
1st Korean S&T vision, ‘Dream, Opportunity and
Challenge of S&T Toward the Year 2025 (1999)’
was devised. There is thus a need to formulate a
new science and technology vision for the future in
Korea. The vision will provide a new guideline for
scientific and technological development in order to
actively respond to the sharp changing future society.
This is also expected to present citizens with dreams
and hope, and scientists and engineers with a future
direction and goals for the development of science
and technology. This vision has been formulated
through the following process.
Firstly, we have analyzed changes in the global
environment and unique conditions of Korea
to define a direction for changes in the future
environment. Five megatrends are presented,
which are meaningful for Korea in 2040. The five
megatrends are (1) Intensified environmental
and resource issues, (2) Globalization and the
advancement of the knowledge-based society, (3)
Changes in the population structure, (4) Acceleration
in the convergence of science and technology, and
(5) Emergence of new security issues. In-depth
analysis of the relevant issues for each megatrend is
conducted to identify a direction of change. Based
on these analyses, we derive a vision and goal in the
area of science and technology.
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Secondly, the future society of 2040, when the vision
is achieved, is concretized into four types of worlds
such as natural world, affluent world, healthy world,
and convenient world. Natural world takes place by
developing clean energy and maximizing the reuse
of resources. In the affluent world, a new industrial/
economic structure is formed, owing to materials and
production methods that are based on a new concept
and green revolution. For a healthy world, incurable
and terminal diseases can be treated, state-of-the-art
medical services can be provided, and there are no
concerns related to security or safety in daily life. For
convenient world, there is unrestricted information
exchange, resulting from the establishment of a
ubiquitous ICT environment, and convenience in daily life is substantially improved through robot services.
Finally, future key technologies and policy directions
are proposed to achieve the vision and goal, i.e.,
to create the four types of worlds. In order to
identify future key technologies, candidates that
had a high possibility of contributing to building
the vision were collected from existing science
and technology plans. The final list of 25 future
key technologies is selected from the candidates
through SWOT analysis and expert surveys. The 25 future critical technologies are divided into 2
groups according to the investment strategy. For
the short to mid-term investment, we should focus
on acquiring technological competitiveness by
making concentrated investments over the next ten
years and make continuous investments afterwards.
Technologies related to resolving pending issues,
such as new types of infectious diseases, parts and
materials, and energy-related measures are included
in this group. The green technology that requires
the country to preoccupy an advantageous position
in the world market and new growth engines that
can generate added value are also included. For the long-term investment, we should prepare for the future and contribute to the maintenance of national
competitiveness by making continuous investments.
For this group, technologies that prepare for the
aging society and that realize a safe society are
included. World-leading advanced technologies,
original green technologies, and new growth engines
whose markets have not been fully formed but have
great future growth potentials are also added.
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