State policy regarding human capital as a factor of successful technological development of South Korea 1950-2010

By the beginning of the 21stcentury South Korea has proved successful in creating a knowledge economy. One of the main features of economic development,which allowed it to make such a huge progress in its development, is a well educated, motivated and underpaid, in comparison withdeveloped countries, class of engineers and researchers. The Government of the Republic has always made a great emphasis onhuman development, as well as on science and technology, as a basis for economic growth. Human development policy has evolvedalong with the export-oriented industrialization in the 1960s. Initially, this process required the preparation of the country's skilledlabour force that could deploy and use foreign technology. Then, slowly, the Republic established an infrastructure for thedevelopment of their own base of scientific research: colleges and universities with the world level of the educational process,research institutes and centres with an equipped base for research, science parks in universities and business incubators. Koreanimmigrants, who were educated abroad, mostly in the U.S.A., have played an important role in the creation of a highly skilledworkforce. The Korean government has created many programs for the return of highly educated people to their homeland. Atpresent, the government attaches great importance to the modernization of the education system, establishment of researchinstitutions, development of the invitation of foreign researchers programs, reform of higher education. All these programs havetangible results: the increased private sector and independent research, development in many industries (semiconductors, machinery,automobiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals), South Korea began to occupy a leading position. In terms of international citation indexSCI Republic occupies the 16th place. By the number of international patents Korea ranks sixth in the world. All these indicatorspoint at the right policy chosen for human development. In addition to the positive development, scientists have noted the negativeaspects of Korean knowledge economy. These include such factors as an undeveloped system of basic research, poor employmentpractices in university research, dependence on research conducted in the laboratories of financial-industrial groups - chaebols.Thus, the crisis of 1998 showed the decline in sales of many chaebols, the decrease of the level of costs of these enterprises inscience and research in response to changes in the international market. Now the economy of South Korea is fully restored, but noone is safe from a repeat of the Asian crisis of the 1990s.

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