South Korea will amend regulations to allow overseas research institutions to directly participate in state R&D projects as lead or joint research institutions, facilitating international collaboration between Korean researchers and their counterparts in other countries.

The Ministry of Science and ICT said on Monday that the government is aiming to finalize the revision of the Enforcement Decree of the National Research and Development Innovation Act by December 2023. The revision is expected to allow prestigious foreign research institutions, such as Germany’s Max Planck Institute, to take a lead role in government-funded research projects in Korea.

According to a report, the proportion of Korean R&D expenses used overseas was a mere 0.3 percent in 2021, a stark contrast to countries like the United Kingdom (11.9 percent), France (7.7 percent), and the United States (6.7 percent). The figure also indicated a significantly lower international appeal for collaborative research efforts in Korea, with some experts attributing it to current regulations preventing foreign research institutions from leading state R&D projects.

Korea’s investment in R&D has been steadily growing to the tune of 30 trillion won ($22.6 billion), making it the world’s fifth-largest spender in this domain and second in terms of R&D investment as a percentage of gross domestic product. However, the country still lags in terms of research outcomes, competitiveness, and university rankings.

According to rankings from the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands, which evaluates university rankings based on the proportion of their top 10 papers, Korean universities have struggled to make their mark. In the 2018-2021 period, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) was the only institute to be ranked within the top 200 at 178th place, followed by Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) at 442nd place and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) at 519th place. In addition, Korea ranks 14th globally with 3.54 percent of papers in the top 1 percent of the impact factor, a measure of paper quality.

The government believes that international collaboration is the strategic solution to this situation. Collaboration across borders has become a prominent trend in the scientific community, with many groundbreaking research achievements, such as the first-ever black hole observation and the development of the Covid-19 vaccine, resulting from international cooperation. However, Korea’s research collaboration with other countries is on the decline. In 2021, Korea’s research collaborations with the United States and China decreased by over half compared to 2020. During the same period, collaborations with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan also declined. Korea’s proportion of internationally co-authored papers is lower than the OECD average and continues to decrease with time.

By Ko Jae-won and Minu Kim

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