The Processes and Governance of Growing Daedeok R&D Special District in Korea

Transcription

1 , pp The Processes and Governance of Growing Daedeok R&D Special District in Korea Dong-Ho Shin 1 Department of Public Administration, Hannam University Hannam-ro 70, Daedeok-gu, Daejeon-si 34430, South Korea dhshin@hnu.kr Abstract. The current paper attempts to shed some light on the planning issues related to Daejeon's science park. It reviews the process of growing and transforming the science park, and examines how the nature of policies and planning contributed to the growth of the park based on conventional planning theories. The paper concludes that the planning style of the earlier stages can be well explained by the Synoptic model, while the later stages by Incrementalism. Even if there have been many new planning models developed in the recent past, it is viewed that the two models are sufficient for explaining the planning issues of Daejeon s science park. Keywords: Daejeon, Science Park, Planning Theories, Governance 1 Introduction In the early 1970s, the Korean government started building a 24 square kilometer science park in the city of Daejeon, located in the middle of South Korea. While it was originally called "Daedeok Research Complex (DRC)," it grew initially with new establishments and the relocation of several Government-Supported Research Institutes(GSRIs) such as the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. Even if the process was not smooth in the earlier stages, it now has grown to be a major science park hosting diverse educational, R&D and spin-off activities. The DRC was originally planned and created by the central government's Ministry of Science and Technology with a purpose to advance the technological level of economic activities of the country. It was intended to host advanced higher education and R&D institutions and GSRIs targeting basic sciences. It was managed mainly by the central government in its early period. In the 2000s, however, the park was expanded three times larger than its original area. Its governance has also become more complicated as other stakeholders have been added and local governments have stronger powers as Korean society has become more decentralized since the mid- 1990s. The GSRIs have also been expected to conduct R&D activities with more applied sciences. ISSN: ASTL Copyright 2018 SERSC

2 The park now hosts many activities other than higher education and R&D, such as production and commercialization activities, which were originally restricted, or prohibited. However, the policies were changed to promote such activities as the park is expected to create more spin-offs and jobs and commercializing R&D activities. To host such activities, the area has been expanded and the name of the DRC has also been changed to Daedeok R&D Special District (DRDSD). While previous papers written on the DRC have reported the processes of creating the park and its characteristics in 2000, this paper attempts to examine the changes and transformations that have occurred since then. This paper will investigate the processes influencing the evolution of the DRC and its changing governance. 2 Processes of Creating and Transforming the DRC 2.1 The DRC from inception to the late 1990s The processes of the emergence and growth of the DRC up to the late 1990s has been briefly documented by Oh (1995) and Shin (2001). To summarize, first, the DRC was originally planned and managed by several ministries of the central government. Second, the location of the DRC was chosen by then President Cheong-hee Park. Third, major purposes underlying the DRC include advancing the level of national science and technology by integrating government-sponsored higher education and research activities in a certain location and decentralizing national R&D institutions from the Seoul region. Fourth, even if the plan did not go well in the earlier stages, the process went well later on up to the early 1990s. In 1994, the central government indeed announced that the DRC was completed as it was planned. Fifth, even though there were some shortcomings, such as the lack of local involvement in the planning and policy processes as well as local economic impacts, it was believed that the DRC was created as the original plan intended. The overall landscape of the DRC was found to be a decent environment for housing advanced educational, research and residential activities. Not only the physical development of lands and the accumulation of research institutions, but also R&D activities of the DRC research institutions demonstrated considerable successes, as major GSRIs, such as ETRI and KAIST showed. As it was believed that the roles of the GSRIs had been accomplished, they in fact lost a major portion of their reasons for existence, which was to advance the technological levels of the Korean economy by supporting the private sector. The private sector indeed had already grown to establish its own R&D capacity sufficient enough to surpass the GSRIs capacity. From this time, the private sector did not need to rely on the GSRIs anymore. Losing roles for helping the private sector, the DSRIs have had to go through a few rounds of serious restructuring since Since then, the central government began to impose a new budget system called the Project-Based System (PBS) on the GSRIs. As none of the previous papers have written on this issue, the current paper will document it through the following sections. 166 Copyright 2018 SERSC

3 2.2 DRC s Transformations since the late 1990s The Korean economy grew rapidly through the 1970s and 1980s. However, the economy started to show some signs of trouble from the early 1990s, as indicated by the growing negative trade balance, which in turn led to Korea s sovereign debt crisis in late In order to overcome this crisis, Korea had no choice other than asking for the IMF s assistance. IMF s assistance packages were not free of charge, however. Rather they came to Korea to open its financial market, drastically cut government spending, and sell off some of the major conglomerates and financial institutions, such as Daewoo, Seoul Bank, Jeil Bank, and etc. While government budget cuts affected almost every aspect of Korean society, most of the GSRIs of the DRC suffered severe impact. In the previous era, all budgets of the DRC s research institutions were provided by the government, where researchers did not worry about their research costs, nor did they have any obligations to make research budgets. They were reasonably free to choose the direction of their research activities, either basic or applied sciences. They did not need to worry about commercialization of their R&D activities. Since the 1997 economic crisis, however, the central government was not going to fully support the GSRIs. Rather, it introduced the Project-Based System (PBS), under which each GSRI needs to finance a major portion of its budget by itself. As the government was going to support only 20-30% of the required budget for each GSRI, the rest must be supplied independently. The financial burden for each GSRI created by the new PBS was transferred in turn to institutional research teams. Since 1996, therefore, the project manager of each GSRI research team was obliged to acquire money from external sources. While this budget system is still in operation, GSRIs tend to survive only by relying mainly on consulting work for governments and large corporations. The DRC was challenged once again by President Mu-hyun Rho's government transition committee in Since there were growing criticisms of the GSRIs, as they were mainly believed to not create sufficient local economic impact lacking commercialization of their R&D activities, the committee moved to eliminate the government s budget for GSRIs. Alarmed by such movement, an active local business association called The 21st Century Ventures Federation", approached the local government, the Metropolitan City of Daejeon, to obtain money to alter the committee s plan. After securing some money from the local government, the Federation mobilized some local experts, including the author, to develop rationale for continued government assistance to the DRC and to promote this to the public through local media. The Federation in fact hosted several conferences and forums locally and at the National Assembly in Seoul, to argue for continued governmental support for the DRC. After obtaining the committee's attention and successfully persuading the members, the committee changed its policy to support the DRC even more than previously. The committee was ready to solve the problems of the DRC, such as the lack of local economic impact, dynamic commercialization effects, and spin-offs. Local scholars who took part suggested that the committee provide more money and expand the DRC's land area in order to make extra space for the commercializing of R&D activities. They also lobbied the committee to change the name of the DRC to Copyright 2018 SERSC 167

4 DRDSD. Accepting all of these recommendations, the committee s succeeding government planned to promulgate a new law called the "Special Law of Promoting Daedeok R&D Special District," to institutionalize such suggestions. After spending a year or so drafting the law at Daejeon s local policy institute, the government attempted to enact the law by obtaining approval from the National Assembly. However, the approval was strongly opposed by many assemblymen representing other parts of the country, such as the cities of Daegu, Busan and Kwangju, which at that time did not have any science parks. They in fact wanted to create science parks in their own localities as well. In the end, the draft law was amended and enacted to allow new science parks outside Daejeon as well. In Daejeon, additional lands were designated to expand the area of the DRDSD and extra budget was secured to promote and assist commercializing and spin-off activities under the new law, while other cities such as Daegu, Busan and Kwangju began to build new science parks in their own regions during Rho's government beginning in The DRDSD grasped a new opportunity to grow during the government of President Geun-hae Park. During the presidential campaign in 2012, one of the big issues for the area of Daejeon and its surrounding areas was what to do with the DRDSD. Since the DRDSD was considered an important matter not only for the locality centered in Daejeon but also for the country as a whole, choosing what to do with the DRDSD was a central issue both in national and local politics. After going through several stages, Park's election camp came up with an idea to create an International Science and Business Belt (ISBB) in the Daejeon region. The idea originated from the following diagnosis of the stagnated Korean economy: first, Korea lacked high-level basic sciences and second, while the DRDSD was supposed to conduct such sciences and commercializing R&D activities, it had been unable to do that. One of the reasons for the DRDSD's inability was thought to be the lack of large corporations conducting mass-production activities in the Daejeon region. In order to solve these problems at one stroke, the camp proposed to build a larger science park by integrating the DRDSD with its neighboring cities, such as Cheongju, Sejong City, and Cheonan, all of which are located within 50 kilometers from Daejeon. Through such integration, the camp expected to encourage commercializing R&D activities of the DRDSD, not only by connecting large industrial facilities with the DRDSD, but also by providing the business community with more industrial lands. It is in fact true that the neighboring cities were hosting some large corporations, which could be used for processing materials created from the R&D thereby commercializing R&D. Another aim of this industrial belt was creating the Institute of Basic Sciences (IBS) which would have a Heavy Ion Accelerator (HIA) as its core facility. The HIA was intended to promote big sciences, while the IBS was expected to support the establishment of the HIA and promote the commercialization of its output. The HIA was in fact the third of its kind in Korea, as the country had already established two accelerators, the Electron Accelerator in Pohang and another Proton Accelerator in Kyungju, both about 200 km away from Daejeon. While the government, born from Park's camp, initiated the belt by projecting budgets and creating plans not only for organizing the IBS and HIA but also for preparing land for such institutions. The government announced that it would spend 1.4 billion US dollars to build the belt and 400 million dollars each for the IBS and HIA. While a large portion of the belt facilities and activities would be located in the 168 Copyright 2018 SERSC

5 core region of Daejeon, it was believed that successful function of the belt necessarily required cooperation with and coordination among the neighboring regions and other regions of the country, equipped with their own science parks. Therefore, the governance of the DRDSP became much more complicated while its evolutionary process provides several theoretical issues to be debated. 3 Conclusion The current paper attempts to shed some light on the planning issues related to Daejeon's science park. It reviews the process of growing and transforming the DRC and DRDSD, and examines how the nature of policies and planning contributed to the growth of the science park based on conventional planning theories (see Hudson 1979) and an analysis of its operational mechanism. The paper concludes that the planning style of the DRC era can be well explained by the Synoptic model, while the DRDSD era by Incrementalism. Even if there have been many new planning models developed in the recent past, it is viewed that the two models, each for a specific era, are sufficient for explaining the planning issues of the DRC and DRDSD. While another major issue that can be drawn from the current research, worthy to be debated, is governance, the current paper has demonstrated that the policies and planning for Daejeon s science park have created three major layers of governing structure over several decades. The planning mechanism composed of multiple layers of governance, including increased input from local communities, has made the governance of the current DRDSD more complex and challenging Acknowledgment. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF- 2017S1A5A2A ). References 1. Shin, Dong-Ho An Alternative Approach to Developing Science Parks: a Case study from Korea, Papers in Regional Science, vol. 80, no 1, pp Oh, D-S High-technology and Regional Development Policy: an Evaluation of Korea s Technopolis Program, Habitat International vol. 19, no. 3, pp Hudson, B. M Comparision of Current Planning Theories: Counterparts and Contradictions, Journal of American Planning Association vol. 25, no. 4, pp Copyright 2018 SERSC 169