The conflict between the image and role of physics in South Korea

Abstract

In South Korea, the physicist is popularly perceived as a theoretician who writes the laws of the universe in mathematical language rather than as an experimentalist who discovers or measures. In fact, since 1948 South Korea's governments have supported physics as an eminently practical route to the development of a nuclear arsenal, improvement of nuclear power plants, and the growth of South Korea's semiconductor industry. This article attempts to answer how and why this strange conflict between the image and role of physics emerged and continued in South Korea during the last half of the 20th century.