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[Book Review] Hong, Sung-Joo and Wi-Chin Song 홍성주·송위진, Hyeondae hangugui gwahak gisul jeongchaek: Chugyeogui seonggong’gwa talchugyeok silheom 현대 한국의 과학기술정책: 추격의 성공과 탈추격 실험. Paju: Deulnyeok, 2017. 336 pp.
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Hong, Sung-Joo and Wi-Chin Song 홍성주·송위진, Hyeondae
hangugui gwahak gisul jeongchaek: Chugyeogui seonggong’gwa talchugyeok silheom 현대
한국의 과학기술정책:
추격의 성공과
탈추격 실험 (South Korea’s
Science and Technology Policies: The Shaping of Catch-up System and Its
Transformation for a Post-Catch-Up Era). Paju: Deulnyeok, 2017. 336 pp.
KANG Yeonsil
“What
is the driving force that made possible and sustained Korea’s economic
development?” (preface). The case of Korea, which went from being a poor,
war-ravaged country to an industrialized one with substantial technological
capabilities, has received much attention from scholars and policymakers around
the world. In this well-researched book, Sung-Joo Hong and Wi-Chin Song answer
this question by looking into the 60-year history of Korea’s science and
technology policy. This book adopts a
widely used periodization. The catch-up era, following the Korean War to the
early 1990s, is the period when national policies focused on following the
paths of technological development that are experienced by developed countries.
In the post-catch-up era, from the late 1990s to the present, South Korea has
navigated own path for innovation. The authors see science and technology
policy in these two eras as being fundamentally different and thus so, too, are
their analytical approaches. The catch-up era is written by Hong and uses
historical analysis whereas Song handles the more recent period, which is approached
from the perspective of innovation studies. While the two parts are somewhat
independent, together they convincingly illustrate how science and technology
policies have evolved over time in response to domestic and international
circumstances as well as how legacies of the catch-up era continue. The authors argue that
government-led policies during the catch-up era were an unprecedented success
while post-catch-up science and technology policy is still at an experimental
stage. In so arguing, this book emphasizes two things. First, the success of the
catch-up period deserves to be properly evaluated. They directly express their
concern on the recent propensity to evaluate the catch-up era in the late twentieth
century “as if it were easy” or “the past to be buried.” By closely examining
how policy choices were made under what historical circumstances, they claim
that the hard-earned successes of the catch-up period can be better understood.
Part one is devoted to catch-up science and technology policy from the late
1950s to the early 1990s. Based on a meticulous analysis of archival sources,
this part demonstrates how the “internalization of science and technology” was
achieved and how science and technology became a part of a national system. The
author pays attention to blueprints for science and technology development,
technology importation strategies, human resources development, and the
building of a national research system, showing the government’s leading and
overarching role in developing technological capacity throughout the catch-up
period. Understanding Korea’s
catch-up is also beneficial as a guide to developing countries interested in
learning lessons from Korea’s success. Part one, in particular, provides the
key ingredients of the recipe for success. For instance, Hong stresses that maintaining
a nationalistic approach in receiving official development aid and importing
technology was important. According to the author, the nationalistic view
toward science and technology dates back to the post-colonial period when
scientists believed science and technology should be foundational to the nation
building. In the 1960s when the Korean government was dependent on foreign aid,
nationalism enabled the internalization of technology, rather than depending on
foreign personnel. This was further reinforced later, as science and technology
policy was aligned with the national goal of industrial development and
economic growth. Positioned as a means to achieve that larger goal, science and
technology were justified in receiving strong support from political leaders.
In other words, the government built, set goals, and created roles for
researchers as a part of the public sector, as opposed to researchers creating
their own destiny during this period. Second, the key elements
of “success in catching-up” have become major obstacles to the “post-catch-up
experiment.” The authors stress that the repercussions of catch-up policies
have been preventing Korea’s science and technology—innovation systems,
policies, governing structures, research and development—from strengthening
their innovative and creative capacities. At the end of the part one, Hong
particularly draws the reader’s attention to a hierarchical and dependent
relationship between the leading role played by the government and the passive
role of the research and development community. She points out that this
successful catch-up strategy has become a significant liability since the 2000s
because the bureaucratic dynamics of the government leave little room to
explore new paths of innovation. Thus, although this book begins making a
distinction between two periods (catch-up and post-catch-up) in the history of
Korea’s science and technology policy, it actually ends up illuminating how
that distinction remains unclear. The path dependency of
catch-up strategies is an overarching theme of part two, which examines
“post-catch-up experiments” in three major sectors: industry, government, and
civil society. Since the late 1990s, imitating known technological trajectories
has turned out to be less effective. That attributes to both internal and
external reasons; as catching up had succeeded, there were fewer areas of
technology for catching up and developing countries became much more sensitive
to technology transfer. Thus, post-catch-up strategy requires “creative
innovation pioneering a new technological trajectory” rather than imitation and
solving the “open question of building one’s own technology and systems without
any orientation” (155-156). The key argument of the
part two, however, is that a system of catch-up continues to influence thinking
and policymaking regardless of the changing circumstances. For instance,
“selection and concentration,” or targeting strategy was an efficient and
effective resource allocation policy in the catch-up era. But it inhibits Korea
from moving towards post-catch-up innovation by strengthening large
corporate-centered innovation systems, competition over resources, political
influence over science and technology policy, and the hype surrounding new and
emerging technologies. In part two, Song contends that system innovation is
needed. Rather than focusing on technological innovations, what necessary is to
change the “system and context of technological innovation” by developing new
ways of defining problems, making decisions, and governing science and
technology (261). While the two authors
analyze different time periods and use different analytical approaches, they
share a macroscopic view. They each focus on scientific and technological
institutions, such as governmental policies, administrations, organizations,
research, industry, and civil society. In that sense, the two authors inherit
the two influential schools of studying science and technology policy in Korea.
First, historians have paid attention to the creation, changes, and influences
of important scientific organizations or programs. Second, scholars of
management, economics, and public administration have focused to innovation
systems and innovation policy, asking how to foster innovation capacity of an
industry, city, or nation. By taking a macroscopic view, the authors do not
tell the implementation side of the story. For instance, this book does not
provide readers with insight on how the policies made by high-ranking figures
in government and industry were responded to and delivered by scientists and
engineers in the field. In that sense, this book could be complemented by, for
instance, Kyonghee Han and Gary Lee Downey’s Engineers for Korea (2014), which discusses how “techno-national
images,” or nation-wide imaginations and aspirations for development, were
co-created and shared by engineers. Similarly, the authors
put innovation at the center of narrating the history of science and technology
policy. In other words, Linsu Kim’s pioneering study explaining Korea’s
technology development strategy as “from imitation to innovation” forms the
backbone of this work. Increasingly, however, historians of technology are
taking a non-innovation-centric view, for instance, by discussing how
technology importing countries redefine and reinvent the use of such
technologies. Hyungsub Choi’s recently published article on the history of the
power tiller is an example of one such study. His article provides a telling
case of local adaptations, as well as the social changes brought by, and the
political ideals instilled in, the technology. Overall this is a very
welcome book on Korea’s science and technology policy. While there are
understandable limitations as to why such considerations may not have been
included in the book, this book nonetheless provides readers with a better
understanding of Korea’s history of science and technology policy. With careful
analysis, the two authors provide insights for researchers and students in the
relevant fields, including the history of science and technology, development
studies, and innovation studies, as well as modern Korean history. Some chapters
of this book will trigger good classroom discussions in both undergraduate and
graduate classes. More broadly, this book will be of value to scientists,
engineers, and policymakers concerned about policy issues, as well as those
overseas, especially in developing countries, who wish to learn from Korea’s
experience. An in-depth analysis provides readers with a deeper understanding
of the historically rooted, structural characteristics of Korea’s science and
technology policy. The authors’ abundant experience in policy research and
policy advising makes this book not just academically significant but also
invaluable for future science and technology policymaking.
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