Looking Forward
The Future Preparatory Committee (FPC) of the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning released a Future Issues Report on July 23 with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP) and the Research Center for Future Strategy of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
According to the report, the major issues of 2025 are expected to include low fertility and an aging population, social inequality, instability of life and employment, increase in cross-border environmental impacts, cyber crime, depletion of energy resources, security matters regarding North Korea and inter-Korean reunification, climate change and natural disasters, low growth and growth paradigm shifts. The report was prepared based on a survey conducted in April and answered by 1,477 college students, scholars, and research experts.
As the issues most closely associated with science and technology, the FPC picked a manufacturing revolution, disaster risks, a lifestyle putting the quality of life first, biodiversity crisis, depletion of energy resources, fight against incurable diseases, low fertility and aging population, industrial structural polarization, and low growth and growth paradigm shifts. It also said that artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are likely to be very closely related to those issues.
The ministry is planning to make use of the analysis result in choosing a couple of issues and coming up with future strategies from the latter half of this year so that the potential problems can be tackled by means of scientific techniques and information communications technology,
In the meantime, the ministry recently completed its deliberation on three agenda items, that is, patent analysis, selection of new flagship projects and action plans for future growth industries. “We analyzed 100,000 Korean, American, Japanese and European patents relating to key techniques in 13 industrial sectors and reached a conclusion that Korean can excel in the wearable smart device and realistic content sectors,” it explained, adding, “Meanwhile, its comparative advantage is predicted to be weak in personalized wellness care and convergence material development.”