The Fourth Industrial Revolution as an ‘Infrastructural Slogan’ in South Korea
This post is by Hyungsub Choi, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, and Chihyung Jeon, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
On April 11, 2018, Klaus Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), visited South Korea. He was greeted by President Moon Jae-in, who sat down with him to discuss the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), an idea made popular by Schwab himself in January 2016. In the meeting, Schwab commented that his book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, has sold one million copies worldwide; in South Korea alone, 300,000 copies are in circulation. This, the WEF chief added, “attested to [the] significant interest Korea [has] in the new trend.”¹
Schwab’s observation was well-grounded. All indicators point to South Korea’s unusually high level of interest in 4IR. The Google Trend search of the phrase “Fourth Industrial Revolution” shows a sharp rise of interest in early 2016 when Schwab publicized the term in the WEF annual meeting. Divided by region, South Korea occupies the top spot, followed by South Africa, with Singapore trailing at a distant third place. Within South Korea, the 4IR discourse entered the mainstream with full force in the period leading up to the (premature) presidential election in May 2017. During the campaign, virtually all major candidates agreed that the 4IR is the wave of the future. Ways to prepare for the impending revolution were common and prominent features in their platforms across a broad political spectrum.
Moon, as the leading presidential candidate, was one of them. As part of Moon’s presidential campaign, his key advisor for science and technology policy published a book outlining the platform, entitled The 4th Industrial Revolution and Competitiveness in Science and Technology. Perhaps more interesting than the content of the book itself was the fact that Moon wrote the preface. In it, he pointed out that, in the past, science and technology had disproportionately served the state and large corporations. He intended to achieve fairness and justice for all, made possible by a “sociopolitical technology” known as “democracy.” “The 4IR can only succeed,” he continued, “with the simultaneous maturation of democracy and technological progress.” More specifically, Moon argued that the state should have a limited role of infrastructure-building (“Internet of Things network and public big data network”) and investment in “basic scientific research.”² Indeed, within months into Moon’s presidency, he established the Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, charged (among others) with formulating a comprehensive national strategy for 4IR.
What accounts for South Korea’s exceptional enthusiasm toward 4IR? According to a folk narrative, the key turning points were the baduk (or Go, a strategy-based board game) matches between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. Grandmaster Lee, one of the strongest players in the game’s history, went up against artificial intelligence (AI) AlphaGo in March 2016. The matches were broadcast live on national television, watched by millions around the country and the world. Before the match, grandmaster Lee was confident that he would win. Although AI was already smart enough to defeat human champions in chess, it was unimaginable that a computer program would defeat the 18-time world champion in the vastly more complex game of baduk. Thus, when the result turned out to be 4–1 in favor of AlphaGo, it came as a shock, especially for the millions of Koreans who had kept close eyes on the games.³ The event set the stage for a public discussion on the future of Korea.
The public conversation that followed focused primarily on AI and the future of jobs. If smart computers were capable of beating one of the smartest human beings on earth, what could it do to take away our jobs — those jobs that apparently require less intelligence than playing the game of baduk? The discussion took place within the broader context of a prolonged economic recession. After the global financial crisis of 2011, the South Korean economy had shown annual growth rates of 2–3 percent, a meager figure compared to the years of rapid economic growth. Youth unemployment was at a record high, fluctuating around the 10 percent mark. Sparked by the “AlphaGo shock,” Schwab’s high rhetoric on 4IR suddenly took a concrete form. The wave of the future was about to disrupt our livelihoods. It would threaten to take away our jobs. Something needed to be done, so that we could prepare ourselves for this semi-dystopian future.
More striking than the swiftness with which the South Korean society adopted the 4IR rhetoric was its continuity with the past. South Korea has always been known as a nation constantly conscious about the latest “emerging” technologies in the more advanced industrial countries. Korea was a model case of what some scholars call “fast follower.” Since its “late” industrialization in the 1960s and 70s, South Korean leaders have been obsessed with closing the gap with the United States and Japan. In the early 1980s, when information technologies (IT) were the wave of the future, the widely-used slogan was “late in industrialization; ahead in informatization.” The strategy of fast-followership helped achieve South Korea’s rapid growth in semiconductors, computers, high-speed internet, and mobile communication. From a historical perspective, the recent enthusiasm for 4IR can be seen as just another episode of the same story.
Slogans were convenient shorthands for political leaders, not only to circulate their policy platforms to the broader public, but also to persuade them in the reallocation of resources to achieve their goals. Characteristically, previous Korean governments utilized such slogans to launch and justify major infrastructure projects, designed to materialize their political goals. For example, President Kim Dae-jung (1998–2002) called the nation’s attention, once again, to “informatization,” which led to a massive investment in renewing the communications infrastructure. The broadband internet infrastructure installed in the late 1990s catapulted South Korea’s reputation as an “IT powerhouse.” At the same time, it served as the material basis for the proliferation of small-scale, IT-based start-ups, which the government wished to promote. In short, the economic policy of the Kim Dae-jung government took concrete form in the infrastructure project of broadband internet, which in turn was justified by the flashy slogan of “informatization.”
The slogan-driven political platform for infrastructure development was a common feature in successive governments in the early 21st century. President Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) packaged his policies with the slogan “green growth,” which served as a useful umbrella term to promote his signature project to “restore” the four major rivers in the Korean peninsula. The project reallocated a large portion of the nation’s resources toward the suffering construction industry, a sector that Lee favored. (Lee’s rise to fame was based in large part on his success as CEO of Hyundai Construction.) He was also able to hang the project to export nuclear power plants to United Arab Emirates on the same slogan. Similarly, President Park Geun-hye attempted to capture her policy platform through the slogan of “creative economy,” although many could not figure out what the term truly meant. Nevertheless, the slogan made possible the establishment of a network of 19 regional Centers for Creative Economy and Innovation (CCIE), charged with providing “startups with customized consulting services.”⁴
Continuing this pattern of the entanglement of engineering and politics, the “fourth Industrial Revolution” can be considered as the most recent example of what we call “infrastructural slogan” in South Korea. An “infrastructural slogan” refers to a phrase that is strategically chosen and circulated by each “technopolitical regime,” a la Gabrielle Hecht, as an urgent national agenda whose fulfillment requires a new major infrastructure development, whether it is highway construction, broadband internet network, or river management. Since the 1990s, infrastructural slogans such as “informatization,” “green growth,” and “creative economy” were invented and introduced by successive governments to justify and boost large-scale infrastructure projects. These slogans gave urgency to the infrastructure projects, which in turn functioned as material articulation of the slogans.⁵
In sum, since the 1990s, the South Korean leaders have appropriated emerging technologies or (technological) visions as political slogans. Although their usage had some parallelism with their Western counterparts, the Korean versions were almost always tweaked in such ways to suit the particular political needs of each leader. Kim Dae-jung’s “informatization” was heavily influenced by Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave,” although tweaked in large part by Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi. “Green growth,” a term typically associated with the concept of sustainability and alternative models of economic growth, was used to justify large-scale construction projects and nuclear power plants. “Creative economy,” a term originally popularized by Richard Florida, served as the theoretical basis for the promotion of K-Pop around the world. At first sight, these terms seem to have become “meaningless words,” to borrow from George Orwell, in the sense that “they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader.”⁶
But not entirely. The key difference between Orwellian “meaningless words” and the Korean political slogans is that the latter was linked to concrete infrastructure projects promoted by the government, although the logic between the two have not been entirely clear. At times, the emphasis on infrastructure was motivated by the politicians’ urge to materialize and perpetuate their respective policy platforms, which in turn made possible the reallocation of national resources in particular patterns. In other instances, political leaders seemed to practice politics to build infrastructure, without overt motivations to claim specific political gains. In all cases, however, infrastructural slogans, such as green growth, creative economy, and the 4IR, make the connection between infrastructure-building and politics more articulate and legitimate.
Infrastructural slogans have been favored by both political leaders and the career bureaucrats in South Korea. The underlying character of infrastructure projects, which tend to remain in place, made them an appealing tool for presidents with single five-year terms. The infrastructure built for the “restoration” of the four rivers remained in place long after Lee’s departure from office. The CCIE’s continue to operate as loci of Park’s vision to establish a collaborative relationship between large corporations and innovative startups, even after she was ousted out of office in early 2017. The continued reliance on infrastructural slogans may also have been a product of organizational routine programmed in the bureaucratic machinery in South Korea. Given the visible nature of the large-scale projects, it makes for fancy achievements allowing bureaucrats to advance in their career ladders. Taken together, it is no surprise that infrastructural slogans have been the modus operandi during the last two decades.
So, what is at stake in the 4IR in South Korea? Obviously, the Korean government is not concerned about locating the 4IR within the histories of the first, second, and third IR. In South Korea, historical continuity or discontinuity between industrial revolutions does not fascinate or worry politicians, bureaucrats, and business people. More at stake for them is the next big infrastructure project to be driven by the government, which will likely have a large impact on the nation’s political configuration and the people’s livelihoods. Browsing through the minutes of the Presidential Committee on the 4IR, it seems that the next big one currently in the works is the “5G network,” which will serve as a high-speed communications backbone for IoT and big data. Indeed, as President Moon himself has singled out in the preface to Park Ki-young’s book, infrastructure-building is the proper domain of the state (despite Moon’s belief in its limited role in the political economy). At the time of this writing, Moon’s ultimate political objective for the promotion of 4IR and 5G infrastructure is still unclear. Is Moon simply following the bureaucratic routine? Or does he have a specific political agenda in mind? Since the nation’s attention has been focused on North Korea during the last few months, it remains to be seen what will play out on the 4IR front.
Footnotes
¹ “The President Meets with World Economic Forum Chairman Klaus Schwab,” The Republic of Korea Cheong Wa Dae Briefings, 11 April 2018.
² Park Ki-young, The 4th Industrial Revolution and Competitiveness in Science and Technology (Hanul, 2017), 7–8.
³ For an analysis of the “AlphaGo shock” and the 4IR in South Korea, see Maeng Miseon, “AlphaGo Shock and ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ Discourse” (M.S. thesis, Seoul National University, 2017).
⁴ Center for Creative Economy and Innovation website, https://ccei.creativekorea.or.kr/eng/main.do.
⁵ One can observe a similar dynamic in an earlier episode in South Korean history. See Chihyung Jeon, “A Road to Modernization and Unification: The Construction of the Gyeongbu Highway in South Korea,” Technology and Culture 51(1) (2010): 55–79.
⁶ George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon, April 1946.
