Excelsior: The Korean Innovation Story; By Making Continuous and Massive Investments in Human Resource Development and R & D, Korea Has Succeeded in Building a Unique Innovation System (Global Innovation‪)‬

When Korea launched its industrialization drive in the early 1960s, it was a typical developing country, with poor resource and production bases, a small domestic market, and a large population dependent on foreign powers for national security. The economic situation was more than bleak: Korea's gross domestic product (GDP) in 1961 was only $2.3 billion or $82 dollars per capita. It was a mostly agrarian economy, with manufacturing accounting for just 15% of GDP. International economic interactions were very limited. In 1961, Korea's exports totaled $55 million, and imports $390 million. The science and technology (S & T) situation was even worse. There were only two public S & T institutions: the National Defence R & D Institute, created immediately after the end of the Korean War, and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, founded in 1959. On such a base, Korea invested $5 million on R & D in 1964, which enabled the employment of fewer than 5,000 scientists and engineers. As far as S & T was concerned, Korea was no more than a barren land.