Pursuing the truth and devoting oneself to learning for the future is what a college student should always be challenged by and dream about. Although NTU may not have a long history behind it compared to the UK’s Cambridge University and Harvard in the US, NTU is in the right place for pursuing the truth and devoting itself to learning for the future because NTU fully supports all its students in every way to help them focus on pursuing their dreams and learning for the future. That’s why its alumni and students have played a singular role in Taiwan's democratization and economic growth.

I conceived my dream of customer-oriented education for 4 years under NTU’s academic environment while I was pursuing my Ph. D degree majoring Agricultural Extension. After returning to Sunchon National University in South Korea with my Ph. D, I have started to unroll my dream of customer-oriented education, and consequently my dream led me to become the president of Sunchon National University (SNU). Today, the dominant influence of NTU on my leadership in the Century of Globalization and the Information World can be seen in SNU.

Taiwan has become my second home; the first time I came to NTU was in 1990. Among many precious memories while I was studying in NTU, the unforgettable one is the road of palm trees which cross the center of the campus to reach the main library and the interdisciplinary programs that NTU offered to provide students with opportunities to be more employable.

Whilst teaching and carrying out research at SNU, I soon realized that although my dream was stimulated at NTU, I wasn't gaining enough practical experience.  Though most world leading universities offer good education programs, I didn't think those programs would fit well into SNU programs. I think so many things around us are invisible, yet yield much power. Take electricity, solar waves, air, wind and the human mind. Because the Gwangyang Bay Area where SNU is located has tremendous visible power, needless to say it also possesses numerous invisible factors that provide a powerful driving force for development. The Gwangyang Bay houses national industrial complexes including POSCO Gwangyang  Works, the Yeocheon Industrial Complex and the Gwangyang Container Terminal. I think these industries are making the area grow into a leading Northeast Asian business hub. Foreseeing the area's importance, the government designated it as a free economic zone. The goal of the Gwangyang Free Economic Zone (GFEZ) is to become an economic center for Northeast Asia and a world-class industrial city where human resources, capital, and new industries meet. SNU is located at the center of the whole hardware-focused area.

Sunchon National University is the only national university in the Gwangyang Bay Area, home to so many of Korea's backbone industries.  We strive to become a leading university in Northeast Asia. Thus, we have both great expectations and a tremendous responsibility for invigorating the GFEZ.

Nowadays, industrial technology is developing rapidly and only companies with innovative technology can survive. This environmental change requires businesses to continuously invest in R&D, and for universities to adopt new technologies and produce human resources capable of harnessing these new technologies. Against this backdrop, universities are required to come up with strategic ideas to create currently invisible and/or nonexistent software for innovative industries’ demands.

Sunchon National University is a comprehensive university consisting of departments and graduate schools of humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, agriculture, education, arts and physical education. It possesses a highly qualified faculty and well developed research systems for each field of endeavor. As the think tank of the Eastern  Gwangyang Bay Area, Sunchon National University has not only produced policies for regional development, but also taken the lead in promoting the region's culture. Moreover, it has supported the industrial development of the region and has actively cooperated with large Korean companies such as POSCO Gwangyang Works, the Yeosu chemical complex, and Hyundae Hysco on such matters as technical consultation, institutional exchanges, and new technology development.

That’s why I think we need our own customer-oriented education programs, and now is the time for Sunchon National University to rise into the company of leading world universities through our own regional cooperative relationships and to use the industrial hardware to invigorate the GFEZ.

The GFEZ functions as a logistics base for Gwangyang Port and its hinterland. It has developed a strategy for becoming a production base by developing steel and petrochemical industries and also by forming new advanced materials industrial clusters. With all this in mind, GFEZ plans also to utilize a strategy where international conventions are promoted to continuously foster further developments in bonded export processing and by doing so, to continue marking the area as the most sophisticated logistics place in Northeast Asia.

When this strategy is smoothly in place, we will achieve our goals of attracting $20 billion in investments, 9,33 million TEU of cargo, creating 200,000 jobs, achieving a regional per-capita income of $50,000 and establishing a city with a permanent population of 1,2 million, to be achieved by 2020.

To be part of the GFEZ vision, I think SNU has to contribute in two ways. One is through industry-academic cooperation, the Gwangyang bay area's invisible software strategy. The other is by developing international education to produce graduates who are fluent in foreign languages and have the qualifications to become global citizens.

The results of new technological advances made so far at SNU not only meet the demands of advanced industries in the Gwangyang Bay Area but will also surely create an industrial milieu. For innovative technology businesses to succeed in today's economy requires vast funds and human resources, and SNU can help them meet the need for management and technology innovation with its research staff in various specialties such as engineering, agriculture, life sciences, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Our university is known for its achievements in advanced technology such as the development of a chitosan anti-cancer medicine by Professor Na Jea Oon in the School of New Materials and Engineering, the birth of a feline through somatic cell cloning by Professor Gong Il Geun of the Department of Animal Resources Science in the College of Agriculture, and the low-priced RFID printing technology by Professor Cho Gyou Jin in the School of New Materials and Engineering. Those technologies have been developed during my term as the president of SNU based on my dream to develop customer-oriented education.

Industrial-academic cooperation, such as distributing technologies and technology development through consulting and consortiums with local companies, which SNU has carried out regularly, has greatly contributed to the development of human resources with an interdisciplinary education. If education disregards rapid technological changes and sticks to the same old textbooks, companies will need to expend enormous amounts of money and time on educating employees entering the workforce for the first time. It would be a national loss and a waste of education if steps were not taken to give future employees interdisciplinary training.

But if universities fully reflect the technologies required by businesses through industrial-academic cooperation, a practical interdisciplinary education will be possible allowing graduates to easily adapt to the workplace and provide the kind of human resources required by businesses.

In 2004, SNU was selected by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy as the hub university for industrial-academic cooperation for the Gwangju, Jeonnam and Jejudo regions. The ministry chose eight such universities across the nation. Based on its rich experience in industrial-academic cooperation, Sunchon National University will continue to build an effective and useful cooperative model for the companies of Gwangyang Bay.

Moreover, the GFEZ's plan of becoming a global business city should be realized in order for the Gwangyang Bay Area to become an economic center in Northeast Asia. If industrial internationalization is the basic concept in establishing a free economic zone, then we need sufficient human resources, people with an interdisciplinary education capable of conducting international business. SNU’s Global Challenge Project will serve as the very system to provide such personnel.

Meanwhile, SNU has emphasized heightened international exchanges not only with the traditionally preferred countries such as the United States, European countries, China, Japan and Australia but also with India, Southeast Asian countries, Mongolia and the Buryat Republic of eastern Russia, which may be key regions after a railroad through to Syberia opens. In particular, the university has set up a sisterhood relationship with Buryatia State University for the exchange of students, and dispatched Korean language instructors there. SNU sends a student to sister schools overseas as either exchange or dual-degree students to equip them with a global mindset and cultivate globally -oriented human resources skilled in foreign languages. SNU will help GFEZ take a leap toward becoming a global business center by producing international-caliber graduates who possess language skills, a global mindset and a keen understanding of diverging world cultures. The agreement to build a government-academic cooperative system, which was concluded on February 9 between SNU and the GFEZ Authority, demonstrates the university's willingness to actively participate in efforts to vitalize the GFEZ.

New industrial-academic cooperation does not end with simply sharing information or practical on-site training but extends to pursuing the blue ocean strategy toward a new ever-shrinking world era.

The Gwangyang Bay Area's achievement of its vision, the vision of SNU, and my dream are inseparable and need to continue. Close industrial-academic cooperation, which developed originally from our Gwangyang Bay area, will promote technological development and management innovation among the region's leading industries. Furthermore, practical educations and the nurturing and provision of international-caliber human resources are obligations that SNU must fulfill in this age. It serves as its way of meeting the demands of the Gwangyang Bay Area.

金在棊小檔案

Dr. Kim, Jae-Ki，1994年台大農業推廣學博士。2003年接任韓國國立順天大學校長，上任後積極推展與本校之學術交流，2004年6月與本校生物資源暨農學院簽署合作協定。

圖説：

圖1：金校長強調在台大接受4年博士養成教育，對他的治校理念影響深刻。

圖2：金校長接任順天大學後，積極促進與母校交流，圖為今年6月本校生農學院到訪。

圖3：透過產學合作，金校長要讓順天大學成爲國家經濟推手，推動Gwangyang自由經濟區成爲東北亞經濟中心，並躋身世界產業大城。