The Culture of Scientific Work: Philosophy and Experience of the Republic of Korea

The modern Korean culture of scientific work has been formed for at least the last century and a half – since the beginning of modernization processes in this country. It is determined by the peculiarities of economic development in the Republic of Korea, as well as its national traditions. Korean scholars put forward a two-culture model to explain the public understanding of science, but this model can also be applied to understanding the Korean culture of scientific work. The philosophy of self-restraint and dedication to national interests has produced the effect that in Korean society in general and in Korean science in particular, harmony is achieved in certain issues where conflicts and misunderstandings continue in Western science. Thus, in the economic, political and cultural plane, a combination of elements of the limited access order and the open access order, which were conceptualized by Douglas North and co-authors as incompatible, is consistently traced. A developed culture of critical thinking does not degenerate into unlimited skepticism about science due to trust in science as the main source of acceleration of national modernization and growth of social well-being. Strict executive discipline at work, due to the thousand-year tradition of resistance to external aggression and the relatively recent semi-military rule of the third president of the Republic of Korea, General Park Chung-hee, does not turn into excessive authoritarianism in the economy thanks to the developed general democratic culture in the Republic of Korea and the reduction of the dominant influence of the chaebols in the economy. However, even today's K-pop youth culture has some characteristics of chaebol corporate culture with its extreme commitment to shared values. The cultural gap between generations, which is inevitable during accelerated social modernization, does not develop into permanent political revolutions, because it is mitigated by the influence of religions and national traditions.