Research and What?
According to the Hyundai Research Institute’s recent report, the ratio of foreigners residing in Korea for research and educational purposes to the total research personnel in the country stood at just 1.8 percent as of the end of 2013, whereas many other countries were making good use of foreign researchers.
“Funding from abroad accounted for only 0.34 percent of Korea’s total financial resources for R&D purposes in 2012, when the OECD average was 5.41 percent, and the percentage amounted to 19.84 percent in Britain,” the report continued, adding, “In addition, Korea recorded 3.2 percent in the same year when it comes to the ratio of international cooperation to major patent achievements, while the OECD average was as high as 12.2 percent.”
In 2011, 79 out of the 376 faculty members who had a sabbatical at 39 major colleges that year chose enterprises and public research institutions as their temporary places of work, but the percentage of those who opted for enterprises was only 8 percent. This means the flow of human resources from colleges, which have a concentrated pool of research personnel, to enterprises was far from smooth.
In the meantime, Korea’s score in the index of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) showing the degree of knowledge transfer between industries and colleges fell from 5.18 to 5.04 between 2010 and last year. During the same period, its ranking fell from 24th to 29th as well, which implies that a number of R&D outcomes did not lead to technology transfer.