Science belt project should be carried out to serve original purposes

SEOUL, May 16 (Yonhap) -- The much-disputed selection of the site for South Korea's new science belt was finally completed with the picking of the Daedeok district in the central city of Daejeon, 164 kilometers southwest of Seoul, as the main base of the belt.
A joint government-private committee headed by the education minister said Monday that Daedeok will be home to the National Basic Science Institute and a particle accelerator, which are key research facilities in the multi-billion dollar project.
Cheongwon, Yeongi and Cheonan, all in nearby Chungcheong provinces, have been tapped to carry out associated research and development (R&D), and the training of expert personnel.
Of the 50 research bases to be established under the national science belt project, 25 will be housed in Daedeok while the rest will be distributed in North Gyeongsang Province, Daegu and Gwangju City, which had contested to become the main base of the science belt.
The selection result brought forth fierce repercussions from the province and the cities, which argued the selection was made under political considerations rather than through fair and objective assessments.
It has also attracted criticism that the sites of the science belt were split under political considerations although the government said the selection process was carried out through fair and objective assessments.
The splitting of research bases was designed to distribute the budget to the regions that were not selected as the site for the main base, critics say. The government boosted the budget for the project to 5.2 trillion won (US$4.76 billion), up 1.7 trillion won from the 2009 blueprint, which will be injected in the next seven years. Critics suspect the increased budget will go to the regions that did not get the main base.
In our earlier editorial, we stressed that the government should reject any political or regional considerations and purely stick to scientific and economic principles in selecting the site for the new science belt.
We once again would like to stress that state projects should be carried out without being affected by political influences and under fair processes that are faithful to the principles. Political considerations and regional selfishness will not serve the national interest.
Now that the decision has been made, the government should put forth its utmost effort to push ahead with the project to attain the original purposes of enhancing the research of basic sciences, which will help the country become a global technology leader instead of copying the know-how of others.