ABSTRACT

Science, technology and innovation form a group of key related inputs that play a significant role in achieving national development and are part of a cocktail of essential strategies. Certainly, there are many other factors that affect national development and several metrics for describing what national development means. Generally the level of national development is discussed qualitatively in terms of the level of industrialization and quantitatively in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). The Asian Tigers provide relevant learning experiences worth considering and emulating by other developing countries. As a typical poor agrarian country through the 1950s, South Korea’s example as a country with little or no natural resources, suffering many atrocities and yet emerging as an economic superpower within four decades is extremely impressive. The country started developing and implementing national strategic policies, which were based on technologies and innovations. South Korea had only two public institutions dealing with scientific research and technological development at the turn of the 1960s. Despite this limitation, the country managed to expand its educational system to create a profoundly literate society and highly skilled labour force, and a strong research and development culture to support its quest for the creation of a new system of economic growth based on technologies and innovations.