Gov’t chases ‘risky, high-tech’ projects in R&D support overhaul

After a 4.6 trillion won ($3.4 billion) budget cut in research and development (R&D) this year, the government has put forward a targeted and prioritized approach in the overhaul of its industrial R&D support programs.

Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Ahn Duk-geun, center, speaks during a round table meeting held in southern Seoul on Thursday. [MINISTRY OF TRADE, INDUSTRY AND ENERGY]

After a 4.6 trillion won ($3.4 billion) budget cut in research and development (R&D) this year, the government has put forward a targeted and prioritized approach in the overhaul of its industrial R&D support programs.

The priority will be on “high-risk, future-oriented and large-scale projects," the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said in its latest plan for R&D investments in the industrial and energy sectors, focusing on "world-class projects with challenging goals."

The announcement was made during the round table on R&D innovation chaired by Industry Minister Ahn Duk-geun on Thursday, held at Samsung Electronics’ R&D campus in southern Seoul.

Under its reform plan, the ministry will push up the proportion of funding support provided in failure-prone projects from the current 1 percent to 10 percent in five years, and conduct a preliminary feasibility study on a 1 trillion won budget package for developing 10 “game-changing” technologies.

Moreover, the government plans to allocate 70 percent, or 1.3 trillion won, of the budgets newly allotted to the Industry Ministry from the previous year to 40 “super-gap” projects aimed at securing advanced technologies in 11 sectors, including semiconductors, energy transition, EV batteries, biotech, robotics, nuclear power and new materials.

The semiconductor sector, in particular, will receive 214.2 billion won in investments this year and the energy sector — which involves hydrogen, fuel cells, renewables and more — 523.1 billion won.

In a bid to maximize commercial potential, the ministry plans to focus on larger projects and push up the number of R&D projects budgeted over 10 billion won from last year’s 57 to 160 this year.

While experts welcomed the government’s plan to foster a failure-tolerant research environment and facilitate commercial applications, some researchers remain wary of policy uncertainties and shrinking opportunities, especially in the comparatively emergent or marginalized fields, with the impact of the budget cut still fresh.

“Early-stage research has high risks, so it will be helpful if we can create a DARPA[U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]-like research environment through investments from the initial stage of such projects,” said Lee Seung-kyou, the vice president of the Korea Biotechnology Industry Organization.

“Because many biotech projects are now heading to the commercial stage,” said Lee, “we need a strategic approach from the government to help bring [the result of R&D] into the market," stressing the importance of expanding the business portfolio in the field.

Meanwhile, a postgraduate researcher who wished to speak on the condition of anonymity said, “research teams in the AI and programming fields had to reduce the scale of their projects after the budget cut,” expressing concerns over some of the research fields, including their own, being marginalized with the R&D support policy focusing on bigger projects. As the budget cuts have already led to downsized personnel expenses, younger researchers feel the hardest hit.

The Yoon Suk Yeol government slashed this year’s R&D budget by 15 percent from the previous year at 26.5 trillion won, the first budget cut in the R&D sector in 33 years, as the president said in June last year that “self-rewarding types of R&D grant handouts need to be rethought from the ground up.”

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]