President Chung Yang-ho of Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) (Photo: KEIT)

President Chung Yang-ho of Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) said, “My goal is to upgrade KEIT into such institutions as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States, which has created innovation technologies such as the Internet.”

“The industrial technology research paradigm needs to be changed,” President Chung said in an interview with a vernacular daily at the KEIT office in Seoul recently. KEIT is a research institute under the umbrella of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), which is in charge of the execution of state-financed industrial technology research projects worth 1.5 trillion won annually.

KEIT is providing state-financed support for industrialization in major fields such as AI, system semiconductor, future car, robot and bio.

DARPA is a research agency under the control of the U.S. Defense Department and plays a part as a midwife for the development of technologies such as the Internet, self-driving cars, and humanoid robots. DARPA is spending big in R&D support to the development of not only defense industry technologies but also advanced technologies that bring benefits to human beings.

 The Hubo, a walking humanoid robot developed by Prof. Oh Joon-ho of KAIST, won the disaster robot competition hosted by KARPA in 2015.

“DARPA designates challenging research tasks, which are essential to human beings, but of which the private sector cannot even conceive the idea, and researchers are given full authority for three years,” Chung said. He stressed Korea’s research paradigm shift into a first mover one of creating unrivalled technologies, departing from the conventional “fast follower” approach.

Squad X, using drones, robots, and AI to gather information for soldiers in the field, which has been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States. (Photo: DARPA website)

The state-financed R&D success rate stands at as much as 90 percent, he said. It means that a lower goal has been set, and innovative growth cannot be attained through such gradual technology development, Chung said.

President Chung emphasized the establishment of an R&D environment in which failures are forgiven for technology innovation. He said innovative technologies for global leadership cannot be developed in Korea if only success rate is counted.

Chung was a seasoned official which had been with the MOTIE for 31 years. A graduate of Andong High School, President Chung graduated from Seoul National University Economics Department. He began a civil service career after passing the 28th higher administrative examination.

He held positions such as the head of the general affairs’ team at the MOTIE, director in charge of industrial technology at the ministry and deputy minister of energy and resources at the MOTIE as well as administrator of the Public Procurement Service before he was appointed to be KEIT president in a public contest on March 27.

KEIT President Chung said Korea should overcome a partitioned R&D regime in which public research projects are divided by each ministry and its budget. He called for the establishment of a regime in which R&D tasks are integrated and managed in the national perspective.

As to KEIT marking the 10th anniversary, President Chung said KEIT has played a passive role in executing given tasks for the decade, but the institution will ramp up planning capabilities to draw a bigger picture through collaboration with companies and universities and research circles in accordance with an era of open innovation down the road.