Trend Regional S&T policy evolves through a sixty-year thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle

Summary

The author traces regional science and technology policy through a dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis over some sixty years. The thesis was state-led rapid growth, as the 1967 creation of the science ministry led to efforts to build a science base in the late 1980s and to research complexes in the 1990s. The antithesis was democratization and balance, as local autonomy from 1995 and regional S&T plans of the following governments mixed democracy, balanced development and science. The first Science and Technology Basic Plan of 2003 put regional innovation for balanced national development on the agenda and strengthened a regional democratization of science. Later governments refined the approach, and the Yoon government made region-led innovation growth a national task, which led to regional S&T innovation bills in 2023 and 2024. The current government treats regional science and technology as both the means and the stage for a synthesis that binds growth and balance into democratic innovation growth.