South Korea launches mission to become space powerhouse

SEOUL – From Samsung’s smartphones to SK Hynix’s semiconductors, South Korean companies have spent decades catching up to – and in many cases then overtaking – powerful rivals from the United States, Japan and other places.

So far, the country has been an also-ran in the space industry, with weak funding and a few technology flops. But a new wave of government officials like Mr Lee Jong-ho is betting that history could repeat itself.

As science and technologies minister, he oversees an agency that was launched on May 27 with a mission to propel South Korea into the ranks of major space nations. The government is planning to double the current annual space budget by 2027 to 1.5 trillion won (S$1.5 billion).

While South Korea got off to a late start in space, it has proven it can leapfrog nations, according to Mr Lee.

“When I was young, people used to say that hoping Korea would become a semiconductor powerhouse was like hoping for a rose to bloom in a garbage can,” he said.

“However, we managed to do it.”

President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration is spending two trillion won on a new rocket programme and another 3.7 trillion won for navigation satellites.

The country launched Nuri, its first locally developed rocket, in 2021 and, a year later, deployed its first satellite.

Last month, a SpaceX rocket put in orbit

a military surveillance satellite for Seoul.

This was the second in a series of launches using home-grown probes aimed at putting five South Korean-made spy satellites into orbit by 2025.

Despite these achievements, South Korea’s space programme lags behind neighbours Japan and China. North Korea has also made inroads by using its ballistic missile programme as a springboard to develop rocket engines and technology.

Seoul is looking to set up a launch facility in the southern coastal Goheung area for private companies and a fund with more than 100 billion won to support private-sector space companies.

The next step came with the official opening of the Korea AeroSpace Administration (Kasa).

“We need to learn from nations that have plenty of experience in the field of space,” said Mr Lee. “Kasa is benchmarked to Nasa’s model in many ways.” Nasa is the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

That is one reason the head of Kasa’s R&D programme is Mr John Lee, a 30-year Nasa veteran who most recently served as a senior adviser at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland.

Kasa will work on ambitious projects such as an uncrewed moon landing by 2032, with a Mars mission proposed by the middle of the following decade.

With the new space agency, the government is looking to build on its industrial policies over the past half century, when state support provided the lift that upstarts like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics needed to gain access to technology and become globally competitive.

Optimists look to South Korea’s shipbuilding industry as an indicator of what could happen in the space sector, said Mr Son Byung-hwan, associate professor in the global affairs programme at George Mason University in the US.

“In the 1980s, the government identified shipbuilding as a thing we have to do and said ‘let’s concentrate all the resources onto it’,” he added. “All the money went there, and they took over global leadership.”

Korean business leaders hope “this is the next shipbuilding”, Mr Son said.

The government-guided industry strategy might be more difficult to pull off this time, though, in part because of the major successes that Koreans have already enjoyed in other industries, said Mr Lee Mun-seob, assistant professor in the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.

“Korea was able to catch up quickly because Japan and the US were quite willing to sell their technology,” he said.

“In the long run, it i risky because it is possible that Korean firms can catch up and become the No. 1 producer.”
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