South Korea’s President-Elect, Park Geun-Hye, Promises 5% of GDP for R&D by 2017. (December 24, 2012)

Newly elected 60-year-old Park Geun-Hye of South Korea will assume office on February 25, 2013; she is the daughter of Park Chung-hee the  third president of South Korea who served from 1962 through 1979 and who in fact seized power in 1961 through a military coup, then was the formally elected president in 1963.

Park Geun-Hye, who studied electronic engineering at Sogang University in Seoul, as one of her election pledges has promised to raise support for research and development to 5% of GDP by 2017, i.e. and increase of 25%  from the 4% in 2011 budget. Furthermore, she promises to increase the proportion of its investment in basic science from the current 35.2% of the R&D budget to 40% by 2017.

She also intends to set up a new overarching "Ministry of Future Innovative Science", separate from the current Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. Just what would it do? Dongil Kwon, a materials engineer at Seoul National University who helped to draft President-elect Park’s election pledges, says that: "It is strategically crucial for the president to take care of science and technology across the various ministries, not only through the science and technology ministry. The new ministry would give an opportunity to 'intercross' between science and other fields such as agriculture, national defence, informational technology, medicine and even art."

Another of her promises is to provide more support to female scientists who want to take career breaks to have children, for example — and to reduce the rate unemployment of researchers.

Finally, with what appears to have been an eye to the doings North of the border: "Now is the moment to add momentum to the peaceful use of space." And she intends to send a landing module to the Moon by 2020, and develop a domestic satellite launcher to substitute the current Naro-1 rocket by 2021.