In this blog post, I’ll examine the achievements and limitations that South Korean engineering has produced throughout the nation’s industrial development, and consider what engineers must do to go beyond technical expertise and develop an understanding of business and society so they can take a more proactive role in leading society.
This is a conversation I had last winter over drinks with a friend from my department. He had taken a leave of absence for military service and had just left the training camp to begin his alternative service. He told me that while at the training camp, his fellow recruits asked him many questions simply because he was a student at Seoul National University. However, the content of those questions—such as “If you’re smart enough to get into Seoul National University, why on earth did you choose the College of Engineering?” or “I graduated from an industrial high school and landed a job right away; what makes you guys any different from us?”—was, for the most part, less about genuine inquiry and more about mocking him. Although to some these might have been trivial questions best brushed off with a witty remark, this friend took them so seriously that he ended up standing there dumbfounded, unable to give a proper response, and had to swallow his anger on the spot. The fact that even a student enrolled at Seoul National University’s College of Engineering—which stands at the pinnacle of engineering education in South Korea—was viewed by certain segments of society as a “greasy engineer” was a source of great shame and humiliation to him. Some might say that all he had to do was point out that such an assessment was wrong, but it seemed that for my friend, the very reality that such a misguided prejudice existed in the first place was what bothered him. After finishing his lengthy explanation, he turned the exact same question back to me, who was sharing drinks with him, and asked, “Can we really achieve a position of respect in society while carrying the label of ‘engineering students’?”
While I’m not entirely unable to understand my friend’s so-called “sense of injustice,” I have never considered the title of “engineer” to be a factor that would lead to the exclusion of engineering students from mainstream society. This is because the academic disciplines we study in college are, after all, merely knowledge in and of themselves; I don’t believe that the field I studied should limit my social role. Nevertheless, since there are quite a few engineering students like this friend who harbor such skepticism toward engineering, I decided to use this article to reflect on where the limitations lie for South Korea’s technical research community—led by engineers—and, furthermore, how engineers can overcome these limitations to become leaders who guide society in a more proactive and assertive manner.
Electrical engineering, architectural engineering, and mechanical engineering are representative technical disciplines that have formed the foundation of South Korea’s industrial development. Over the decades since industrialization, South Korea has achieved remarkable progress through relentless research and technological development in these fields, and has now transcended its former status as a developing nation to establish itself as a world-class advanced economy. It would be no exaggeration to say that this rapid, compressed growth was made possible by the tireless efforts of the people, coupled with bold investments in technological development by South Korean companies. Engineers were among the researchers who responded to these investments, and now the responsibility to carry on this mission falls upon us, the engineering students.
However, following the 1997 foreign exchange crisis, South Korea’s industrial structure became even more risk-averse. Companies downsized as much as possible and sought to avoid risky investments; due to this corporate attitude, college students naturally tended to seek stable careers rather than pursue adventurous ventures. Ultimately, these changes in the social structure led to a negative shift in public perception of engineering—a field that values challenge and creativity—and eventually spread to an attitude that belittled the social status of professionals with backgrounds in science and engineering. Moreover, beyond public perception, an invisible hierarchy and sense of distance emerged between research teams and management within companies, creating an atmosphere where it seemed that “if management orders it, we must produce it.”
However, it is absurd to expect that technology produced—or intended to be produced—within such a closed and vertically compartmentalized structure would be competitive in the global market. To develop high-quality technology that a company can successfully bring to market, harmony and constant coordination between the R&D team and management are essential. The R&D team must clearly understand management’s intentions before undertaking a project, and management, in turn, must fully grasp the technical mechanisms and limitations of newly developed products.
As a mechanical engineering student speaking from the perspective of the R&D team, I believe that corporate researchers should no longer adopt a complacent attitude—thinking they have fulfilled their duty simply because the project they worked on was successful. The R&D team must independently assess whether the project they have completed is truly worthy of being applied to the exact product intended by management, and they must be able to verify this. This is because products “completed simply by following orders” in isolation are all too likely to become nothing more than toys for the researchers themselves, failing to meet market demands. Furthermore, researchers must not only establish more direct relationships with professional managers and corporate executives than they do now but also know how to present their arguments to them proactively when exchanging opinions through dialogue. Of course, it is true that this requires specialized knowledge in business and economics, such as an understanding of corporate financial management and the principles of market pricing. However, engineers who dismiss this knowledge as irrelevant to their work and make no effort to understand even the basic principles of management and the market will ultimately have no value beyond being mere “corporate tools” who can only do as management instructs.
As engineering students, we must realize that we cannot possibly develop a vision if our concerns remain confined to doubt and frustration over the question, “What on earth is the use of the difficult major-specific content we are learning right now?” Rather than that, it is far more desirable to adopt an attitude of actively participating in and understanding the overall trends of business and society—beyond merely having an interest in engineering itself—in order to apply the knowledge gained here to society. As the saying goes, “Even a thousand beads are worthless unless strung together”; if we study engineering relentlessly while remaining indifferent to the movements of society, that knowledge alone will struggle to demonstrate its full value. As mentioned earlier, the negative and narrow-minded perception of STEM professionals today is linked to the perception that the rewards for the products of their arduous efforts do not directly return to them. However, if we reverse this line of thinking, it is clear that engineers who can explain and assess the value of their own technical expertise have the potential to create higher added value than any other member of society, and their role in that society will inevitably grow. Therefore, if we engineers truly wish to recognize our limitations and strive to overcome them, we must endeavor to acquire knowledge in business administration, social sciences, and other humanities alongside our engineering expertise, thereby cultivating a well-rounded perspective that encompasses both fields.
