The Republic of Korea is one of the leading global research nations. From its humble beginnings in the 1960s as a poor nation until today, Korea has made impressive progress in quality of research. Korea is now a globally leading R&D power in areas of industrial research (IT, communication, transport, civil engineering). The Korean Government also invests heavily in R&D and its numerous public research institutes and universities constantly improve.Recently, the Korean Government has heavily invested in basic research (creation of the Institutes of Basic Research), internationalization of its research and increasing recognition of creativity in R&D by supporting research freedom and start-ups/technology transfer.