Oral-History:Tae-Won Rhee and Duck-Jin Kim

About Tae-Won Rhee and Duck-Jin Kim

Tae-Won Rhee studied electronic engineering at Seoul National University, receiving a master's degree there in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1975. Rhee has taught at Seoul National University, Kwan Ung University, the Chung Ung University, and the Korea University. At the Korea University Rhee directed the University's computing center and its Research Institute for Information and Communication Tehnology (RIICT). In 1988, he served as president of KITE, the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics.

Duck-Jin Kim studied electronic engineering at Seoul National University, graduating from the College of Engineering in 1957. After serving in the Air Force, Kim received a master's degree in electronic engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago in 1962. Returning to Korea in 1963, Kim worked as a research engineer for the Atomic Energy Research Institute, and he worked on the restructuring of the Korean Institute of Electronic Engineers, the predecessor of KITE. In 1985 Kim served as president of this organization, which would later become IEEK, the Institute of the Electronics Engineers of Korea.

In this interview, Rhee and Kim describe their educational experiences at Seoul National University and in the United States. They describe transnational academic and professional collaborations, including the University of Minnesota's exchange with Seoul National University, as well as the work of the IEEE, which influenced Kim's work to reform Korea's professional engineering societies. Rhee and Kim assess change over time in Korean engineering education, describing graduate degree requirements, funding, lab facilities, and computing equipment. The interview analyzes the contributions of government and industry to engineering research; simultaneously, Rhee and Kim characterize University resistance to early computers, as well as the initial skepticism that met the TDX telephone switching project and the TICOM (Tiger Computer) development project. An overview of the history of the IEEK and its predecessor organizations is also provided.

About the Interview

TAE-WON RHEE AND DUCK-JIN KIM: An Interview Conducted by ANDREW GOLDSTEIN, Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, 27 August 1996

Interview #316 for the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Copyright Statement

This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.

Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

TAE-WON RHEE AND DUCK-JIN KIM, an oral history conducted in 1996 by Andrew Goldstein, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Interview

INTERVIEW: Tae-Won Rhee and Duck-Jin Kim

INTERVIEWER: Andrew Goldstein

DATE: 27 August 1996

PLACE: Seoul, Korea

Rhee's career overview

Goldstein:

I wanted to begin by learning about your own background in electrical engineering, so please tell me about your education.

Rhee:

Actually both of us came from the same university, Seoul National University, and we majored in electronics engineering. I got my MS degree in the Graduate School of Seoul National University and the Ph.D. degree in the same university.

Goldstein:

When did you graduate with the undergraduate?

Rhee:

I did the undergraduate here in 1958, and then a year of graduate study. I completed my MS in 1960, and my Ph.D. in 1975.

Goldstein:

Also from Seoul National University?

Rhee:

Yes, and I started teaching electronic engineering in 1959 when I was a teaching assistant at Seoul National University. I taught the primary classes like electronic circuits and electronic network theory. Just recently I taught the introduction to digital systems and digital signal processing. I also had a teaching experience in Kwan Ung University, the Chung Ung University, and the Korea University in that order.

I was at the Korea University for about twenty years, and during that time I worked as a director of university computing center as well as the director of the Research Institute for Information and Communication Technology (RIICT) of Korea University. I was a president of KITE in 1988, the year of Seoul Olympics.

Goldstein:

For the tape, could you repeat what KITE stands for?

Rhee:

Audio File

MP3 Audio
(316 - kim - rhee - clip 1.mp3)

KITE stands for the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics, which was different from the original name of our group the Korean Institute of Electronics Engineering. Unfortunately Korea had a similar association, that is the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers. Also, KIEE is very confusing. Therefore we picked a new name, KITE, in 1987. Before that time, the name was KIEE. In 1998, KITE was changed to the present name IEEK (Institute of Electronic Engineers of Korea).

My field of interest is the processing of speech and image signals. I actually had teaching experience in the Cornell University in New York. I taught the lecture session of Introduction to Digital Systems for a year, from 1981-82. I keenly watch the growth and the progress of the Korean electronics industry since early 1960s.

Kim's career overview; professional organizations

Goldstein:

We'll come back to Professor Rhee. Professor Kim, could you tell me about your education?

Kim:

Audio File

MP3 Audio
(316 - kim - rhee - clip 2.mp3)

I graduated from Seoul National University as well, the College of Engineering and department of electronic engineering in 1957. Then I entered the Air Force. After the three years of service, I was discharged from Air Force and then I entered the Graduate School of Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago in 1960. My major field was electronic engineering. I received the Master's degree, Master of Science degree, in 1962. Then I came back to Korea. In 1963, I participated reforming KIEE (Korean Institute of Electronic Engineers that was the original version of KITE.) I was a president of IEEK in 1985.

I worked as the research engineer in Atomic Energy Research Institute in Korea. Mostly my major field was the nuclear instrumentation. In 1962, I returned home with a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and also with a membership of IEEE, as an IEEE member among the total of 2-3 Korean members. Affected by IEEE activities in USA, I urged Korean professors to establish a Korean Electronics Institute. Finally they decided to reform KIC to KIEE in 1963. KIEE changed its name to KITE and then to IEEK. In 1967, I transferred to Seoul National University, College of Engineering, as a full-time instructor. Two years later I was appointed assistant professor there. In 1971, I transferred to Korea University. In 1969, the department of electrical engineering was established in Korea University. Since 1971, I have been a professor here. I established the RIICT at Korea University in 1990. I had been a director of RIICT between 1990 and 1996.

Electronic and electrical engineering studies at Seoul National University

Goldstein:

When the both of you were at Seoul National University studying electrical engineering, how big was your class?

Kim:

There were twenty-five students.

Goldstein:

What was the expectation of the students for their careers? What did people think that they would be doing?

Rhee:

Expectation after they had graduated?

Goldstein:

Actually, while they were still students. Did the faculty expect that they would get jobs in industry, for government agencies, in universities, or perhaps go to America? What was the projected career?

Rhee:

During our undergraduate?

Goldstein:

That's right.

Rhee:

At the time, the size of the Korean electronic industry was pretty small, so at the time we were expected to have a job in a very limited area, like the government, the Ministry of Communication, the Korean broadcasting system, or several private companies like Tayhan Electric Wire Company or the Gold Star Company. At the time the jobs were quite limited, and we didn't expect that the Korean electronics industry might grow this way.

Goldstein:

Is that what happened? Did most people go to work for the Ministry of Communication?

Rhee:

Yes.

Kim:

The size of the class of the electronic engineering was very small, as we said twenty-five, as compared with the electrical engineering department which had a class of about fifty.

Goldstein:

Did the two departments work together in any way?

Kim:

Each department was independent.

Goldstein:

I see. In the other department, were the people studying power systems?

Kim:

Yes, power systems.

Rhee:

Transmission, transformation, electric, the power instruments like motors.

Kim:

At the time we didn't have any electronic industries.

Goldstein:

How was the training? Did you have much hands-on training? What were your textbooks?

Rhee:

Yes. We did a [inaudible word] lot of the latworks [correct word?], you see? At the time of electronic devices, the electronic element came from vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Professor Kim therefore was very active in creating an experiment kit for himself or his classmates.

Kim:

The instruments were different from the Japanese system.

Minnesota Plan collaboration between U. of Minn. and Seoul National U.

Rhee:

Yes, and around 1956 a special system program was introduced. It was called Minnesota Plan. At the time the University of Minnesota offered to provide us with some types of experimental lab devices, like measurement instruments, radio transmitters, or radio receivers.

Goldstein:

Yes. I've learned that people actually went to the University of Minnesota under that plan.

Kim:

Yes. Many of them were professors from Seoul National University.

Rhee:

Yes, most of them.

Goldstein:

It was the professors who went?

Kim:

Yes. I think something like fifty or sixty.

Goldstein:

For a year.

Kim:

For a year or two.

Goldstein:

I was also curious about the textbooks that you used. Were those books in English?

Kim:

At the time we didn't have a textbook published in Korea. Some professors bought textbooks from Japan and translated them to Korean. We used that.

Goldstein:

I see.

Kim:

At those times, textbooks are very difficult to come by.

Goldstein:

Did you also go to the University of Illinois.

Kim's graduate studies at the IIT; Rhee's graduate studies

Kim:

No. I studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Goldstein:

Was that an unusual opportunity that you had to go to the United States? What were the circumstances that brought you to the States?

Kim:

Yes. The government sponsored my study.

Goldstein:

Was this because you'd been in the Air Force?

Kim:

No, it was because of my affiliation at the Atomic Energy Research Institute. The government selected some people and sent them to the United States for study, and after study was to work for the Atomic Energy Research Institute.

Goldstein:

What was your Masters and Ph.D. thesis?

Rhee:

My Master degree was in physics and examined the automatic control. The title was "The Transient Behavior of the Position Control Submechanism." That is the title of my paper. The Ph.D. thesis was "The Realization of a Network Transfer Function Using Frequency Dependent Negative Resistance." Doing my own research work for that thesis gave me close contact with the computing machines. That's why I later went into the field of computer engineering, like computer architecture or computer design.

Goldstein:

Was that in the 1970s.

Rhee:

Yes.

Goldstein:

What computer system were you working with?

Rhee:

The first computer I worked with was the IBM-1130, which was very small. Its main capacity was only 8 kilobits.And one [inaudible word] 16-bit.

Goldstein:

Professor Kim, what was your Ph.D. thesis?

Kim:

When I was in IITRI I had the opportunity to access the large size digital computer in IITRI (IIT Research Institute). It was a Univac-1105 vacuum tube type, which was a very big one. For my case, it was the first chance to access computer, and I learned how to program. When I came to Korea there were no computers at all, so I didn't have a chance to use a computer. I received the Doctor's degree at the Korea University in 1972. My Ph.D. thesis was “Tunnel-Diode-Transistor Hybrid Couple in Digital Circuits.” At that time I was associate professor here.

1970s shifts in Korean graduate degree system, lab facilities

Kim:

I didn't enroll in the graduate school. We had so-called old style degree system. If you have a 7-year research experience, then you can submit your paper to any university, and then they would review it. If they pass the paper, then you received a Doctor's degree. We don't have such a system any more.

Goldstein:

Are you saying you didn't need to matriculate in a program?

Rhee:

Right. There was no course work.

Kim:

No course work, no graduate program, we don't need anything but a good published paper.

Goldstein:

I had heard just recently that KAIST (Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology), K-I-S-T, was one of the early educational institutions that had the modern system. Is that correct?

Rhee:

Yes, this old system terminated in 1975. Therefore, not only KAIST but also all the universities in Korea took on the new system just like the United States.

Goldstein:

You both graduated under the old system?

Rhee:

I received my Doctor's degree in 1972.

Goldstein:

What impact has the new system had in the sort of training that the students received?

Rhee:

The new system, which required the course work for a certain length of time, and increased or enhanced the capability of the student in the field to do research and the creative theory or creative phenomena. We think that the new system is a better one as compared with the old one.

Goldstein:

What was behind the transition in the 1970s? What caused people to make the switch?

Rhee:

I don't know.

Kim:

In the 1970s, we lacked Ph.Ds. Even in universities and industries, or any other research institute, there were very few Ph.Ds. I think on average less than 20 percent of the researchers were Ph.D. holders. The other professors didn't have any degrees, so the government used the old system to let professors get Ph.Ds. By 1975 Ph.D. holders rose to almost 80 percent. The situation turned out to be more active. Almost every professor had the Ph.D. degree, and they therefore pushed their students to work for the degree.

Goldstein:

Do you mean the students were to get their own Ph.Ds?

Kim:

Yes. There was a big change and a lot of Ph.D. students were produced. It is now almost 100 percent in universities.

Goldstein:

What other changes can you think of? You talked about the change in the Ph.D. granting system. What other changes have there been in the educational system? Are there important ones?

Rhee:

Maybe the increase in emphasis on the practical lab works and the increased opportunities for students to access the computers.

Goldstein:

Now I could see increasing opportunity to access the computers coming from greater availability of computers in the country, but increasing emphasis on lab work, does that mean that there has been a changing educational philosophy, the theory of education?

Rhee:

Maybe. The practical lab works, especially in the field of electronics engineering, is quite important. I think in fields other than ours, say technological field, lab works are regarded as important or indispensable ones. But, as you know, electronics technologies change very rapidly. The life cycle of electronic devices isn’t very long. I think that must be one of the reasons for the growing emphasis on the practical lab works.

As I told you, in 1981 as a visiting professor to the Cornell University I had a chance to experience the American educational system in the electronics engineering. In the Cornell University they had a lab session to every course and every subject. But in Korea our lab facilities were not big enough to do every subject, like an electronic circuit course, or say electric network theory. If it were in the Cornell University each of them would have a lab session attached to it , but in Korea the situation was somewhat different.

We have maybe four hours of lab work per class every week. That is an expanded length of time compared to the old times. The quality of the lab facilities until early 1970s was also very poor. Most of the measurement instruments were very old style, and unfortunately we couldn't expect all of the instruments work properly. But now with government funds or university funds those facilities are upgraded.

Goldstein:

Did that come from the greater wealth of the country and the university?

Rhee:

Yes.

Kim:

I spent my sabbatical year in experiencing American ways of education as a visiting professor at Cornell University between 1978 and 1980. In 1960s and '70s, government brought in IBRD loans from World Bank. And the government supported almost all the university’s acquisition of lab instruments.

Rhee:

Yes, the IBRD did a lot of great work to enhance the lab facility quality.

Kim:

It happened about five times. The average grant was about several hundred thousand dollars for one department. We received it about five or six times, so now our lab is full of instruments.

Goldstein:

The loans from the World Bank, were they limited only to facilities for universities, or could they have also been applied to industry directly? What I'm wondering is whether there was competition between educational institutions and industry for these kind of funding?

Kim:

I think that mostly for the educational institutes.

Rhee:

Yes. My visiting to Cornell University for a year was also supported by IBRD fund, but some of the Korean highways were constructed with the funds from IBRD. But it was not used for industry.

Goldstein:

Was it for the infrastructure?

Rhee:

Yes.

Goldstein:

What was the application process? Did the university have to apply to the Korean government, or did the government apply to the World Bank on behalf of the universities?

Rhee:

Yes, the government. At that time the Ministry of Education has a special section to manage those IBRD projects.

Kim:

They collected the proposals from all of the universities and reviewed them and applied to the World Bank on behalf of the universities.

Assignment of government and industrial funding to universities

Goldstein:

In the United States there is often a controversy about whether resources should be divided evenly among all the universities or whether a few should receive most of the resources to become what they call centers of excellence. Have you had that controversy here?

Kim:

We have.

Rhee:

Actually now we are having such a controversy. In 1970s, however we didn't because professors were selected from prestigious universities like Seoul University, Korea University, Yung University, and to compose a special committee for handling how the funds should be used. At the time there weren’t many universities, something like 100 or so.

Kim:

We have about two or three national universities in every province. They also got the IBRD loans, and didn’t have to repay them. Government refunded the money for national universities. But private universities had to repay the loans with interest.

Rhee:

The interest was six percent I think. So in the field of electronics engineering, just as you said, we have one national university which is called Kyung Uk National University which has the electronics engineering department. That department was increased by the government policy that allowed the recruitment of 800 new students every year. That means 30-100 undergraduate students.

One single department had been identified to be the so-called intensified program department. Kyung Uk University was the site for the electronics industry, another national university was identified for chemical engineering, and yet another for mechanical engineering. But later they realized that was not the best way of producing good quality graduates in the electronics field. Therefore they decreased the number to 400 every year.

Goldstein:

When did that happen?

Rhee:

The late 1970s.

Goldstein:

Was the first idea to build a very large, intensified programs.

Rhee:

Yes.

Goldstein:

Then in the 1970s they found it was more effective to shrink the program than enlarge it?

Rhee:

Yes. So now every university has a department of electronics engineering.

Goldstein:

Can you tell me other things that the Ministry of Education has done to try to stimulate the growth of the electrical engineering education?

Kim:

The first thing is giving IBRD loan, and second thing is to expand the size of the department. Actually it was requested from our electronics industry at first.

Goldstein:

They wanted more engineers?

Rhee:

Yes.

Goldstein:

Did they have to do it through the Ministry of Education? Could they have funded the departments directly with research projects?

Kim:

Are you talking about funding research projects?

Goldstein:

I'm just wondering, if industry wanted larger departments, what their options were to try to make that happen?

Kim:

There are many sources of funding a project. Some came from the government or one of the many branches of government. First Ministry of Education, secondly Ministry of Information and Communication, and thirdly Ministry of Trading and Commerce and Industry.

Rhee:

Yes, those three are the main sources.

Kim:

These are the main sources of government funding, the other part of funding came from industry.

Rhee:

You may know which are the largest electronics firms in Korea, like Samsung, Goldstar, [inaudible name], or [inaudible name]. Those companies offered the project funds.

Kim:

We call them "the Big Four."

Goldstein:

You were starting to say the important things the Ministry of Education did were to give loans and enlarge the departments. What other things did they do? And also, did they make any mistakes?

Kim:

Recently they evaluated every university. They started the evaluation three years ago. And if you get a good score from the evaluation, you got more money from the government.

Goldstein:

So that was a very competitive?

Rhee:

Right. Every university was very eager to get a high score.

Kim:

Fortunately we at Korea University got the highest point in the field of electronic engineering.

Collaborations of academia and industry; Korea Techno Complex Project

Goldstein:

Can you tell me something about the relationship between the departments and industry—the Big Four. Can you tell me about the character of that relationship over time?

Kim:

What do you mean by the character of the relationship? The cooperation between them?

Goldstein:

Right. What were ways did they interact and how have they changed.

Kim:

Audio File

MP3 Audio
(316 - kim - rhee - clip 3.mp3)

I understand. We set up the relations of mutual cooperation between university and industries. The first, we send our graduated students to be hired by them. We also educate their engineers. This is the biggest part of our relationship. And we do contract researches for the industries. They sponsor the projects and we do the research, sometimes we work together and other times we do it independently. Finally, we visit industries and advise them on how to improve their process.

Rhee:

So those Big Four offer special scholarships for the undergraduate and graduate students on one condition, that upon the completion of their academic work they are to be employed by that company.

Kim:

Another thing, we recently opened the techno complex on this campus, which means a joint research complex. We built it using the money from industry funds. We offered the land and they paid for the building. We used half of the building for the university and other part is reserved for industry projects. There they do research or any other part companies work.

Rhee:

As he said, this summer two buildings were dedicated. One is this building, the College of Engineering, and the other one is the university-industry cooperation project building, which is to be manned by the research manpower from those Big Four companies. The whole project is called the Korea Techno Complex Project. That means “the four” finance it on one condition, that for the period of twenty years they can use a certain specified size of space.

We told them that we agree but only if the researchers who come over to the facility are qualified to work in a lab. The hope was for them to use or faculty and graduate students. For instance, the development of bank note recognition system, that was one of my projects. Anyway, the cooperation between university and the industry would be easier and more effective if the industry had their researchers close to the university research labs.

The fundamental idea of the Korea Techno Complex was so we can say that the project had some kind of success and that it set an example in the university community. [inaudible name] University would then have to follow our example. Other universities persuaded the “Big Four” to do similar ones program with them. What they wanted was the funds that came with the projects for their university.

Kim:

We studied this kind of system first in 1993, and following that the Yonsei University started to do the same, and then Seoul National University also started that kind of system. Have you heard of Kyungbuk University in Southern part? They are also considering that kind of system.

[end of Tape 1, Side A] [beginning of Tape 1, Side B]

Goldstein:

You were saying that perhaps an earlier development was the introduction of scholarships.

Rhee:

Right.

Goldstein:

Do you know when that started?

Rhee:

It must be early 1980s?

Kim:

The early '80s.

Korean economy and educational funding

Goldstein:

I'm curious to know how Korea in the last twenty years has become a much more wealthy country, and I'm wondering about the ways that some of that wealth has become available to universities. What are the ways that the prosperity of the country has come to benefit the universities?

Rhee:

It improved the quality of the educational facilities, like classrooms and labs.

Goldstein:

The money for those facilities comes from the government in the case of national universities?

Rhee:

Yes. For government funds, they believed that the national university should be placed on their top of the list. Private universities did not get such attention. The funds we received increased in size and allocation from the older days.

Goldstein:

So if the private universities aren't necessarily getting a lot of government money, then what are the ways that a university such as this one shares in the prosperity of the country?

Rhee:

We produce reliable and qualified graduates from our educational institutions, owing to the improved educational environments. The production of reliable manpower is one thing, and the other is the research projects that are required by the industry community, and then there was the mutual cooperation between universities and industries.

Computing facilities at the Korea University

Goldstein:

Can you tell me about the circumstances around the first computing facilities here at the university? How did that happen?

Rhee:

The university computing facility started in the early 1970s, and at the time the universities did not have enough money to afford the rental fee for the computing systems. The smallest system was the IBM-1130. At the time, the university authority was very scared because the management of that computing system might require big funds. The university was not brave enough to say upgrade those computing machines.

The Korea University was the first university to install a larger computing system like IBM-360 or -370, and that was in the mid-1980s. At the time the idea of networking in the campus was not available. Until 1990 the usage of the computing device in the university campus was only the computer processing done by student or the faculty members, and the computerized school administration work. In those times the usage of the computing system was very limited, and the university authority did not put any emphasis on the introduction of a computing system and applying those systems to a wider aspect of the school management.

But in the case of Korea University, in 1989, Samsung donated the campus land for this to be installed. That was the first example of massive computer investment.

Goldstein:

Before that there were non-network mainframes?

Rhee:

No, the so-called mainframes were available at those times, but that was not applied to constructing a network.

Goldstein:

Right, these were not networked.

Rhee:

There is all the mainframe and the terminals.

Goldstein:

Right. Let me find out when. I want to be sure that I understand what you said. The first such mainframe here at Korea University was an IBM-360?

Rhee:

Yes. That was late 1970s.

Goldstein:

Can you tell me the story behind the university acquiring it?

Rhee:

As I told you, the university authority was not happy with the idea of having such a large-scale computer in the campus.

Goldstein:

Right.

Rhee:

Anyway, in our case a certain daily newspaper company and some engineering company, those were our clients. They let us process their jobs, and so we obtained some money out of those projects. That money was transferred to managing fees.

Goldstein:

Let me get this straight, the university rented the computer and then paid for it by accepting data processing contracting work?

Rhee:

Yes that contracting work was done by members of the computing center.

Goldstein:

You mean the faculty members, right?

Rhee:

Yes. That was one of the ways to manage the financial problems in getting the large size mainframe.

Goldstein:

How did the faculty feel about that?

Rhee:

At the time there were no problems, but later as the number of our clients got smaller due to them getting their own systems, which decreased our income. That was the first problem we came across when trying to increase our mainframe size.

Then we were questioned about why we need to upgrade the mainframe. We said that it was supported by the professors because it answered their request for a network facilities that allowed computerized access to the outer database and sophisticated usage of the computing systems. Due to that kind of request, our university was compelled to upgrade the system. Now we can access the [inaudible word] or Internet.

Goldstein:

Was Korea University one of the first to get large computer facilities?

Rhee:

Right now the university with the biggest computing system is Seoul National University.

Goldstein:

I'm also interested in the earlier periods.

Rhee:

Yes, Korea University was the first one to install a large-scale computing machine.

Kim:

In case of smaller computer systems, we were not the first case. Seoul National University, Soongsil University, Joongang University, those were the first to do that. We were behind them, and we learned what to do from those universities.

Goldstein:

When you say small computing system, what do you mean?

Kim:

I mean the IBM-1130.

Goldstein:

When did they start getting these systems?

Kim:

Beginning of the 1970s.

Rhee:

At [inaudible name] University in 1973 and at [inaudible name] it was 1971.

Goldstein:

I brought up computers because it was the first example that came to my mind, but can you think of other examples of important facilities?

Kim:

Yes. We have one building we call our Basic Research Center, or the Basic Science and Research Center, which was established by government. The center was established by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and so it was not our property; it was still government property. We built the building, and they bought some lab equipment and put there for anybody use it. It's kind of a common facility.

Goldstein:

When was that built?

Kim:

I think about five years ago?

Rhee:

Yes. '91.

History of IEEK

Goldstein:

You were telling me before that IEEK (Institute of Electronic Engineering of Korea; a new name of KITE) is having its 50th Anniversary this year?

Kim:

Yes.

Goldstein:

Can you tell me about how IEEK was established fifty years ago?

Rhee:

Yes. It was established in 1946, right after the World War II. At the time the main concern was to gather communication engineers to take over the Japanese communication equipment left in the country.

Goldstein:

During the colonial period the Japanese operated most of the equipment?

Kim:

Yes. After World War II in 1946 Mr. Jae-Gon Lee, who was a director of the Bureau of Communications of the Korean government, established the Korean Institute of Communications (KIC) that was the first version of IEEK, and they didn't have any publications or seminars. All they did was to gather the engineers and exchange knowledge about how to keep the communication system and improve them.

Goldstein:

Where did they find people who knew anything about it?

Rhee:

Some of the engineers were available because right after World War II, the Korean people found some government documents that identified a list of engineers.

Goldstein:

Those engineers were Korean?

Rhee:

Yes.

Kim:

And most of the members were government hired engineers, from the Ministry of Communication, Ministry of Public Announcement, and Broadcasting station.

Goldstein:

You mean these were the engineers who IEEK tried to train to operate the equipment.

Rhee:

At that time the training was not our project. Our responsibility was to provide some common place or common opportunity for them to talk.

Goldstein:

Can you tell me like what the opportunities were?

Rhee:

Until 1962 there had been no activities. Then in 1962 I think IRE and AIEE were merged together. We were stimulated somehow by that. And then IEEE was born in 1963. Therefore the Korean engineers were awakened to the idea that we must activate our institute, and we reformed in 1963 that old institute to the new institute.

We entirely changed the system. The change occurred in 1963, when the first edition of our journal was published. It went out once in that year and twice in next year, and is now offered monthly.

Goldstein:

What happened between 1946 and 1963?

Rhee:

The Korean War and everything was destroyed.

Goldstein:

There wasn't much IEEK could do in this time?

Kim:

Not much.

Rhee:

Now the IEEK has many members, about 17,000 and a budget of one million U.S. dollars a year.

Publication

Goldstein:

How is publishing a part of the life of professors such as ourselves? Have you always been expected to publish? Have the expectations changed over time?

Kim:

It’s just like the IEEE, we follow the same procedure.

Goldstein:

I guess I mean as professors at the university.

Rhee:

Yes, we are required to present papers in the journal.

Goldstein:

Has it always been the same, or have the expectations changed over time?

Rhee:

Until 1960, due to the Korean War, we lived from hand to mouth, so we didn't have any time to think about those institute activities. In the late 1960s, the regular published works started. The number of those events and the number of those editions increased gradually. In the early 1980s the number of papers to be published in one journal was fixed to a certain numbers, and recently, starting in 1990, we had only one technical journal. Now the journal is divided into two subjects according to fields specific.

Kim:

Monthly journals.

Rhee:

Yes. Every month we publish two technical journals, and one just like the Spectrum. And in addition to that, we have several English versions of the Transactions.

Kim:

That is issued quarterly.

IEEK activities

Rhee:

The headquarters of IEEK is near [inaudible phrase] Embassy the hotel. It has six faculty members, and more than seven telephone lines, in addition to LAN computer facility.

Kim:

They have about fifteen professional groups.

Rhee:

Yes, just like a society.

Goldstein:

Has the group tried to provide any shape to the growth of the electrical technologies?

Kim:

Yes.

Goldstein:

How has it tried to do that?

Rhee:

They hold some specific seminars to introduce new trends, like a [inaudible word] design or ISDN or the mobile telecommunication. For one example, as you know the CDMA Mobile Telecommunication Systems was adopted by the Korean government for the commercial service, and we are following the Hong Kong example. Hong Kong was the first to adopt the CDMA system for the handheld telephones. In the case of Hong Kong most of the technologies were supplied by foreign companies.

In our case the fundamental part of the technologies were supplied by the foreign companies, but the rest of those technologies were developed and implemented by the Korean government, like the four big firms. That is the interaction with CDMA Mobile Telecommunication Systems. Another one is the development of TDX, Time Division Multiplexing.The members of IEEK played a very important role in the development of those systems. We can also say that the development and the implementation of the TDX was not an easy job, but the members of our institute who were working in some like ETRI, Electronics Technology Research Institute, which is the top in research work in the Korea community. We can say that our members are taking key roles in the growth and the development of the electronic industry in Korea.

So KITE says that it exists not only for the university professor community, but also for the electric industry firms, research, manpower and for the improvement of the electronics engineering industry. So every time a new theory is introduced in Korea, just like 1986 the RISC theory was first introduced in Korea, we handle it.

Goldstein:

R-I-S-C?

Rhee:

Yes, Reduced Instructions Computer. At that time Samsung supported us to hold a special seminar to get us exposed to the new technology.

Goldstein:

Who decided what new technology would be studied?

Rhee:

The executive members of KITE. This consists of people, from every field of the university who research and discuss the final decision.

Professors' roles; balance of teaching and research

Goldstein:

Here's a completely different question, but I'm asking the two of you as professors whether you have had to make a choice between devoting your time to educating and training your students or working on your own research. Have you had to choose one over the other?

Rhee:

Generally speaking, we are required to place emphasis on both of them. If we place a greater emphasis on education, then your quality as a professor is not so highly evaluated. But if you place greater emphasis on the research work then your students, especially the undergraduate students, might not respect you.

Goldstein:

Has the prestige of being a professor changed over time?

Rhee:

No. The prestige is still high because the opportunity of getting teaching jobs in a university is very difficult. Until twenty years ago, if you had a Ph.D. degree in the States you are welcome to Seoul National University as a faculty, without any competition.

But now, judging from our case last year, we were able to recruit two professors for our department. There were more than forty applicants, so you can see that it is becoming more competitive. The prestige of a professor cannot be evaluated from the degree of competition, but the status of the professors are placed very highly anyway.

Goldstein:

Because Korea has grown so much in its electrical industries, do professors of electrical engineering enjoy especially high status among professors?

Kim:

Yes and we are proud of leading our industries. The portion of electronics industry that is exported is I think more than 30 percent, so the government knows about our importance.

Goldstein:

And the people?

Kim:

The people too consider electronics more important than other industries.

Goldstein:

As professors, what sort of qualities do you hope to produce in your students? In America there is this controversy between original thinking and expertise. Has that been an issue in Korea?

Rhee:

Yes. We had a similar conflict between the old thinking and the new one, but now we do not have that kind of problem. I think up to 1990 most of Korean engineering focused on copying from foreign technologies. Since then we have changed and work more on original ideas.

Goldstein:

Was there any training for doing that kind of reverse engineering?

Rhee:

No. We do not have any special, any sector of the industry for the reverse engineering.

Kim:

Industry does reverse engineering for themselves.

Goldstein:

The education then was more general?

Kim:

Yes.

Korean industry

Rhee:

In the classroom I kept telling my students to look at the example of optical instruments in Japan. Until the end of World War II, Germany was the top in the field of optical instruments like cameras. Right after the Korean War, American GIs were purchasing cameras in large quantities, so Japan imitated the German product. The Japanese people named their imitated product Canon. Canon is very famous now, but originally it was imitated from a German Leica.

The Japanese people did some of their own creative improvement of that German product, and now they can produce that. Canon is totally different from the original Leica, so we had to learn some lesson from Japanese people in developing our own technologies.

In the early stages they do the imitating; secondly, they make some improvement; finally, they cultivate their own new ideas and apply it to their new products. As you know, the transistor was first announced by American scholars, but the Japanese were the first in utilizing the transistors for commercial purposes.

Knowing this I told my students we should learn some lessons from the Japanese people. The first stage of the Korean electronic industry, therefore started with the only simple assembling of the radio sets or products of some OEM base.

Goldstein:

OEM, does that mean Original Equipment Manufacturing?

Rhee:

Yes. But anyway, now we produce and export our own products based upon our own cultivated technologies.

Goldstein:

Korea's industry has recently been very successful in the area of computer memory. Dynamic RAMs. Would you say that the areas that Korean industry has been successful are the ones that matched up pretty well with university research?

Rhee:

Yes, especially, the field of semiconductors. As you know, Korea is placed in a high position in the field of memory devices. The Korean government established a Semiconductor Research Institute on the campus of Seoul National University. That institute was originally designed to be used by all university professors in Korea who had interest in semiconductor technologies. And so encouragement came from university professors, and the ETRI, Electronic Technology Research Institute

Finally, the electronic industry firms united to produce the current status. In the case of TDX the electronic switching system was primarily developed by ETRI, and they transferred those technologies to those Big Four. In some part of the development of TDX, consequently Professor Kim made contributions.

TDX telephone switching project

Goldstein:

That's interesting. Can you tell me more about that, how that project was organized and how it happened?

Kim:

The developing plan was initiated by our government. They set up the budget and they chose the institute.

Goldstein:

When did they initiate it?

Rhee:

in 1983?

[end of Tape 1, Side B]

[beginning of Tape 2, Side A]

Goldstein:

Yes. You were saying that the government initiated the TDX project in the late 1970s. Where did this take place?

Kim:

At ETRI (Electronic and Telecommunication Research Institute). The government supported it with a lot of funds. It turned out to be a successful system. It was tested, everything was good, and they put it into the local station, and it was a small size exchange.

Goldstein:

You mean a telephone switching exchange.

Kim:

Yes, telephone switching system. The operation was very successful, so government decided to expand the capacities. Now they produce the large size exchange system with about 100,000 lines.

Goldstein:

Was it used in the cities first?

Kim:

Yes. We said earlier that the TDX project was the first successful government-supported development project. The government started believing the quality of Korean electronic engineers.

Goldstein:

Did they start relying on the Korean development organization.

Kim:

Yes.

Goldstein:

What division of the government was this?

Kim:

Ministry of Communication at that time. Now they changed the name, Ministry of Information and Communication. They are proud to supporting these projects.

Government computer development projects, TICOM

Goldstein:

I spoke with someone this morning, a former director at ETRI. Are you familiar with Man Yung Chung?

Rhee:

Man Yung Chung, yes.

Kim:

He is retired now. Before developing TDX exchange system, we imported the telephone exchange system from foreign countries. After the successful development of TDX system, we decreased the amount of imported systems. It saves dollars. Convinced by development of this TDX system, our government started a new project, the computer developing system for homemade computers. This has been carried out by ETRI. They have the computer division.

Goldstein:

What size computers? Do you mean microcomputers or PCs?

Kim:

Medium size. The first version has already finished the developing stage and we are producing in mass production level. We call it TICOM, or the Tiger Computer. Now at this stage of TICOM-3, TICOM-3 is produced by those big electronic industries. They are carrying out the new version of TICOM now.

Goldstein:

I see. So ETRI developed the first TICOM?

Kim:

Yes.

Goldstein:

Did they sell them directly, or was that just a demonstration model?

Kim:

They sold them.

Rhee:

Yes, it's on commercial scale.

Kim:

They sold several hundred systems.

Goldstein:

Mostly in Korea, or were there exports also?

Kim:

Mostly in Korea because the government was recommending Koreans to buy homemade systems.

Goldstein:

Did the government offer advantages to companies that bought Korean technology?

Kim:

Yes.

Rhee:

They gave them a tax break.

Kim:

They recommended every government branch to buy homemade computers.

Resistance to TDX and TICOM

Goldstein:

Can you tell me some of the stories from the development of the TDX or the TICOM?

Kim:

There are many funny stories about that. At the time of planning of TDX project many people were opposed to it. They thought it wouldn’t be successful. There were a lot of arguments among the engineers and among government officials.

Goldstein:

Are you saying before they got started there were arguments?

Kim:

There were big arguments. You know, first arguments between government and people. President Park was considering constructing the first highway. Many people stood against it. "Why do you need a highway?" many people, "We don’t have many cars.” Now the highways are the most important infrastructure.

Goldstein:

In the argument concerning TICOM, there were two sides? What were they arguing about?

Kim:

In case of TICOM planning the development was a big argument. About half of the people didn't believe it would turn out to be successful.

Goldstein:

Are you saying it was not a technical argument?

Kim:

No, there were many technical sides to the argument.

Rhee:

Technical and economic sides. Because they believed it would not be successful, they questioned why we should allocate large amount of budget to it.

Goldstein:

How did the people in favor TICOM eventually win the argument?

Rhee:

They strongly insisted and did some lobbying for continued supply of their research fund. The same thing happened with the development of other new technologies. The Korean people like to have some controversy, so every time we announce a new project we expect some objections from a certain part of the community. In the TICOM case people insisted on getting American products which should be much cheaper than the locally developed ones. The imported ones would be much more reliable, they argued.

Goldstein:

Did the people see it as an investment in Korean self-sufficiency?

Kim:

Now they do. We export the TDX system to Russia and Southeastern Asia.

Rhee:

Yes. The TDX has package handling facility that can be applied to the ISDN.

Goldstein:

The people who argue against new development projects, can you describe them as part of a particular group in society, either a political party or a demographic group?

Rhee:

Every time we start some new project, we get the IEEK to moderate because it is composed of university people, industry people, and research institute people. Therefore, when the objections emerge, those people can expect to be persuaded over to our side. IEEK provides such a very fair and common area for us in the technical community to explain our situation and to persuade others.

[End of Interview]