South Korea's government has set next year's research and development budget at 39.5 trillion won ($28.4 billion), an increase of 4 trillion won, or 11.2%, from this year. The spending plan expands investment not only in strategic industries such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors but also in basic research, state-funded research institutes and regional research infrastructure.
Major R&D programs, which are allocated and adjusted through deliberation by the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology, will receive 33.8 trillion won, up 3.5 trillion won from this year. General R&D, which is drawn up by the Ministry of Planning and Budget, will rise by 500 billion won to 5.7 trillion won.
The government will also channel a record 3.3 trillion won into new R&D projects planned under the current administration. With the abolition of preliminary feasibility studies, the review period for large-scale R&D projects with total costs of 100 billion won or more has been shortened to three months from about two years, allowing 23 projects worth a combined 1.1 trillion won to be included in next year's budget.
Investment aimed at spreading research capacity beyond the capital region will also increase sharply. The regional R&D budget was set at 4.5 trillion won, up 1.2 trillion won from this year. Autonomous R&D, under which local governments design projects around their own strengths, will expand roughly fourfold to about 550 billion won from 140 billion won.
Basic research will receive 3.6 trillion won, with the budget for individual basic research grants more than doubling. Following the abolition of the Project Based System, which tied researcher salaries to individual project funding, the government will strengthen stable personnel cost support and raise the budget related to state-funded research institutes to about 4.8 trillion won. Moving away from the existing subsidy and grant model, the government will also introduce investment-type R&D, under which it takes direct equity stakes in companies, for the first time at a scale of 100 billion won.
The government will spend 1.8 trillion won on developing research talent, including expanding schools for gifted students and building career paths for young researchers. It will also increase investment in solving social problems closely tied to daily life, such as disasters, narcotics, cyber threats and public safety, while broadening access to science and culture services and expanding the development and distribution of information and communication devices for vulnerable groups.
