Bridging the Technology Gap

Preface Youngsoo Bae i
Introduction Buhm Soon Park ix

Chapter 1
Bridging the Technology Gap in Japan: Technology, Culture and Identity in the Late 19th to the 21st Century
Morris Low 1

Chapter 2
Accelerating Transformation: High Technology, Nationalism, and Developmental Authoritarianism in Indonesia, 1966-1998 Sulfikar Amir 33

Chapter 3
Development in Science and Technology of South Korea During the Cold War: Focusing on the US Policy toward South Korea
Tae Gyun Park 63

Chapter 4
The Historical Development of Technological Capabilities in Korean Steel Industry: The Case of Posco
Sungsoo Song 95

Chapter 5
Technology Gap, Research Institutes, and the Contract Research System: The Role of Government-Funded Research Institutes in Korea Manyong Moon 125

Chapter 6
Technonationalism, Technology Gaps, and the Nuclear Bureaucracy in Korea, 1955-1973
Buhm Soon Park 153

Chapter 7
The “Koreanization” of Nuclear Power Technology: The Case of a Joint Design
Byung-Koo Kim 199

Index 221
About Authors 224

Preface(서문)

There remains a wide technology gap between nations, though some countries made a great progress in catching up with developed countries during the last decades. Many developing countries are left behind, while industrialized nations continue to mobilize people and resources toward technological progress. In addition, there is a serious gap within nations; people have different access to advanced technology, depending upon their region, income or generation.
These gaps have attracted attention among social scientists, along with policy makers, who are mainly concerned with technology diffusion since intellectual property rights are increasingly consolidated these days. Needless to say, however, technology diffusion is part of the larger process in which humankind has made advances in technology from time immemorial. Moreover, this process involves not merely economic development but cultural, social and political changes. Still, it is true that besides specialists in the history of science and technology, historians interested in the other fields have by and large neglected issues related to the technology gap.
Such a consideration led the Institute of Historical Research, Seoul National University, to hold an international conference in early November 2010. The conference, titled “Bridging the Technology Gap,” asked historians in general, as well as specialists in the history of science and technology, to think about how developing countries understood the technology gap they had with advanced countries and the efforts they made to bridge it. Focusing on Asia since the late 19th century, it called attention to the broad context in which nations built up technological capabilities, such as educational reform, social movements, political initiatives, or other projects that they had launched trying to catch up with industrialized countries. In other words, the event was organized to encourage historians to provide historical perspectives to current discussion about the technology gap.
The international conference turned out to be a two-day-long warm conversation among responsive participants, including five Korean speakers and three international speakers from Australia, India and Singapore. By the closing session, speakers had begun talking about a book developing out of the conference. Two speakers were not able to follow up for personal reasons; instead an engineer who helped to design a nuclear power plant in Korea joined the ensuing process, making an eye-witness description of technological transfer beyond the national boundary. The end result is this handy book.
A number of people played an essential part in this final product as well as in the international conference. First of all, the contributors made the conference into this book by revising their paper. I feel heavily indebted to these friends, in particular Professors Low and Amir, who took a long trip to Seoul in November 2010. I would also like to sincerely thank Dr. Byung-Koo Kim for his generosity with manuscripts; he kindly allowed part of his autobiography to be reprinted in this book. Thanks also goes to Professor Buhm Soon Park, who agreed to find time to review the whole manuscripts and write an introduction, while immersed in another project during his 2011-12 sabbatical. Furthermore, I am deeply appreciative of the prompt and appropriate advice offered by Professor Jong-tae Lim and other colleagues at the SNU Institute of Historical Research who helped to organize the international conference in November 2010. Special thanks to my meticulous editor Hyunho Kim, who paid attention to each and every detail of this book.

Youngsoo Bae
Professor of History, Seoul National University