KDI 한국개발연구원

요약 The 1960s, Korea did not feel the need to develop technology because the country’s industry was based on labor intensive ones, but the government started to draw up a variety of inducements to stimulate private enterprises’ efforts to develop technology as competitiveness in exporting products based on low wages began to be lost in 1970s and as a result, it was stressed that we should make efforts to increase productivity through learning and improving introduced technology in order to secure market competitiveness.
In the early 1970s, the tax support system was focused on investment in facilities as then economic policies focused on qualitative growth in economy, but in the late 1970s the system changed and it was believed that technological innovation was important along with accelerated restructuring of industries and rapid economic growth.
In the 1980s, the government pushed active technology drive policies and drew up various supporting systems to encourage businesses to innovate technology and expanded subsidies and taxes, financial, information and infrastructure support to make this possible.
In the 1990s, government support to enterprises was banned in principle and the government also reduced direct support, especially support to investment in facilities, to big companies by downsizing the existing industrial policies as South Korea joined the WTO and OECD, but they were accepted as exceptions that the government offered support for technology development or small and venture businesses and for that reason, the government maintained and expanded the fund for research and development and the loan support business. Furthermore, in 1990s technical innovation support system experienced changes from direct support to indirect support and the innovative system that included expanding support systems helped new technology to be commercialized.
It can be said that Korea could learn how to expand research organizations of private companies and how to help them innovate technology and have international competitive power although most of private businesses in developing countries had little interest in technology development by succeeding in developing technical innovation support system focusing tax and financial support systems we had experienced in the 1970s to the early 1990s.
We hope that this study can help a majority of developing countries facing problems like the gap in technology innovation between the government and private companies and poor technical competitiveness of private businesses by fostering a technical innovation support system.