KIAT President Seok Yeong-cheol.

Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), marking its 10th anniversary, declared a “leap forward” as a global innovative platform to lead the future of industry technologies. KIAT plans to work out a regime to support the localization of raw materials, parts and equipment.

On Sept. 9 KIAT President Seok Yeong-cheol, marking 100 days in office, unveiled the “2030 Future Vision,” designed to cope with changes of the industry ecosystem in an era of the 4th Industrial Revolution anticipatorily and nurture the competitiveness of the future industry.

The vision calls for strengthening corporate competitive advantages, an expansion of innovation foundation such as data, infrastructure and manpower, establishing innovative network hubs, and dealing with the new economic and industry paradigm anticipatorily.

President Seok Yeong-cheol of Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), attends along with his executives and staff a ceremony to unveil the “2030 Future Vision” at KIAT headquarters on Sept. 9.

KIAT President Seok emphasized the innovation of the technology ecosystem, saying that a full-fledged R&D regime needs to be established to ensure innovation. He served as KIAT vice president in 2009. Seok also served a chair-professor at Inha University before he returned to KIAT as the 4th president in June. Seok is the first KIAT president who has climbed up hierarchy of KIAT. He is one of Korea’s seasoned industry technology experts.

Seok won the prime minister’s award in 2003 in recognition for his contributions to the development of the industry’s technology and the prime minister-education minister’s award in 2017 for his roles in realizing competency-based society.

In order to ramp up a corporate competitive edge, KIAT plans to reinforce full-cycle support such as manpower, verification foundation, commercialization, investments, regulatory reform, expanded sales in Korea and abroad, and global market entry so that outcomes of corporate new technology development can lead to future growth engines and new industries in a swift fashion.

In particular, a support regime ranging from certification to mass production and expanding of sales will be upgraded to speed up the localization of raw materials and parts.

KIAT plans to build a database related to technology, industry, manpower, regulations, policies and regions in order to expand innovation foundation of data, infrastructure and manpower.

Working-level on-the-job educational programs will be opened to cover would-be industry manpower, incumbents, the jobless and retires. KIAT plans to consider the establishment of an educational institution specializing in nurturing industry manpower in a long-term perspective.

KIAT plans to upgrade all consultative bodies and networking of each business division to provide room for open innovation so that diverse collaboration opportunities can be explored to meet corporate needs.

The institute plans to expand policy planning capabilities by expanding the scope of the conventional policy research and reinventing research methods to cope with changes of the economic and industry paradigm anticipatorily.

KIAT also plans to establish a mid- and long-term master plan according to each field and each function - regional industry, verification establishment project, international collaboration project, regulatory relaxation, and manpower development.

As for Japan’s removing Korea from its “white list” of countries subject to eased customs clearance for exports, KIAT President Seok said it should serve as a good opportunity to dramatically transform Korean R&D policies.

It is impossible to localize raw materials and parts fully, but it could have an effect of killing three birds with one stone - diversifying a global value chain, reinvigorating regional economies through raw materials and parts self-sufficiency and job creation, he added.

Director General Kim Hyun-cheol, in charge of industry technology policy at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, said, “Technology commercialization is a core part of innovative growth and job creation.”