Reporter Song Hyun-so songh@busan.com
Entered: 2023-05-19 14:33:15
High-ranking officials from South Korea and the United States met in Seoul on the 19th to have comprehensive follow-up discussions on cooperation in the field of science and technology discussed at the Korea-US summit last month, including concrete measures to strengthen cooperation.
The Ministry of Science and ICT held the ’11th Korea-US Joint Committee on Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as the ‘joint committee’), a representative consultative body (ministerial level) for science and technology cooperation between the two countries, to discuss comprehensive follow-up measures for the outcome of the visit to the United States last April. ‘ was held at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul on the 19th.
On this day, the Joint Committee was headed by Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong-ho and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar as chief representatives of the two countries. Korea Polar Research Institute, Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology, Korea Institute of Nuclear Fusion Energy, Advanced Nanotechnology Institute, National Research Foundation of Korea, etc. On the US side, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the State Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Science Foundation (NSF), Energy About 100 people from the Department of Energy (DOE), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the US Embassy in Korea attended.
The United States and the ROK shared bilateral policies in the fields of next-generation semiconductors, nuclear fusion and nuclear physics, artificial intelligence (AI), and biotechnology at a joint committee and outlined priorities and plans for future cooperation. They also discussed ways to strengthen solidarity on the basic elements of international cooperation, such as human resource exchanges, research ethics, and standards, as well as ways to solve global issues using science and technology, such as climate change response and polar oceans.
A separate meeting was also held between high-level officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the US Department of State to discuss plans for follow-up cooperation on the overall achievements of the ROK-US summit in the field of science and technology, such as space and quantum science and technology.
The joint committee was held as a face-to-face meeting seven years after the ninth joint committee held in Seoul in March 2016. In December 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 10th joint committee was held through video conferencing.
Minister Lee said, “For this joint committee, a large-scale visit by US government ministries in the field of science and technology for follow-up discussions in the field of science and technology agreed upon by the leaders of the two countries during the Korea-US summit was held in order to share policies among government officials and exchange broad views with each other. It is very meaningful to receive it,” he said.
“With this Joint Committee on Science and Technology as an opportunity, various cooperation will be newly promoted, such as joint research and development and manpower exchanges in all fields of advanced science and technology between the two countries,” he said.