The Korean approach to Industry 4.0: the 4th Industrial Revolution from regional perspectives

ABSTRACT

Today the concept of Industry 4.0 has been widely adopted by many countries. It is rather a narrow concept, compared to that of 4th Industrial Revolution, which presumes a wide impact on the national economy and society. The Korean approach to the Industry 4.0 is the 4th Industrial Revolution. The Korean government established the ‘Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (PCFIR) and has initiated major agendas related to the Industry 4.0. One of the ‘Committee’s’ major agendas is the diffusion of smart factories, which play an important role in the Industry 4.0. However, the Korean approach to the 4th Industrial Revolution has been difficult to be successfully implemented because regional governments have not participated in the ‘Presidential Committee’. Smart factories have diffused unevenly since Korea’s R&D potential, which needed for their adoption, have been concentrated in Seoul, Gyeonggi and a few industrialized regions. Korea needs to take these points into consideration in its implementation of the 4th Industrial Revolution in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry 4.0
• 4th Industrial Revolution
• Korea: long wave
• smart factory

Acknowledgement

This paper was supported by Konkuk University in 2019.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, the Korean government established a government-sponsored research institute, Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI), in Daedeok in 1976, which is in the center of South Korea. It has made a great contribution to the development of most Korean ICTs, for example, computers, semiconductor, telecommunications, systems engineering and so on. ETRI has concentrated on making smart Korea in the 2010s and leading the 4th Industrial Revolution since the middle of the 2020s (ETRI 2017).

2 Ulsan belonged to Gyeongnam province and, due to its industrial development, it was separated into and become a metropolis in1997.

3 The mission of the Committee is to discuss and coordinate the major related activities of all relevant ministries regarding the 4th Industrial Revolution. For two years since the establishment of the Committee there have been ten official meetings to discuss major issues such as hyper-connected smart network (3rd meeting), smart city (4th meeting), smart factory (5th meeting), AI R&D (6th meeting), data industry (7th meeting) and cloud computing (8th meeting). Most of agendas for the meetings have been prepared by relevant ministries (PCFIR 2018).