Korea’s Roadmap for the Future: Longer Life Spans, No Disease, Space Travel, and Robot Use

A total of 23 Korean scientists, including Professor Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University, have started working in earnest in order to make it possible for Korea to have an era of long and healthy life with no disease, space travel, and robot utilization 10 to 20 years from now.

On June 2, the Ministry of Science and Technology held a first-ever meeting at the Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul in order to nurture world-renowned future technologies that could turn a cinematic future into a reality after forming the “Committee for Korea’s Promising Future Technology.”

The committee for future technology consists of three co-commissioners, Professor Hwang, Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Yun Jong-yong, Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies chief Vice President Shin Jae-in, and 20 other experts.

Hwang, one of the co-commissioners, said that the work of selecting promising technologies in the future would be to create a structured voyage map over a broad sea.

The committee for future technology will choose promising technology sectors among the 761 subjects suggested from a forecast survey on scientific techniques, which was released by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) on May 17, by the end of July.

The NSTC forecasts that in 10 to 20 years, many incurable diseases will be overcome, space travel in Korea will be available at a reasonable price, and robots will be utilized for various purposes in daily life.

Regarding the promising technology sector, 10 to 20 sectors that are viewed to reach a high level of development at an early stage will be selected through medium and long-term investments over the course of 10 years.

This January, Japan has announced 10 core technologies that look possible for it to develop within 15 years from now, and China has selected 21 core technologies by predicting technology trends until 2015.

cosmos@donga.com