Future of Marine Bio-Technology in Korea

Abstract

The scale of Bio-Industry of the world showed an annual growth of 11% during year 2001 to 2005, and it is anticipated that the size will increase to 154 billion dollars in 2010. The national bio-market size showed an steep growth of 28.3% on average from 170 billion wons in 1995 to 27,000 billion wons in 2005. As a national goal, Korea built a plan for entering to the 7th strongest country in the rank of Bio-Technology field in the world in 2016, with making the first act of the promotion of 『Bio-Technology (Biotech 2000)』 in 1993 and the second promotion act 『Bio-Vision 2016』 in 2006. Deriving visions, goals, strategy through analysis of national environment and assessment of international status, and plans for promotion by fields under the connection of the 2nd Science & Technology Basic Plan and the Bio-Vision 2016.Marine life is expected to form around 80% of the entire living organism, but mere part of developing useful new material is in progress. MLTM planned 『Blue-Bio 2016 (Marine Biotechnology)』as one of national programs for the Bio-Vision 2016 in order to actively deal with the overall changes in marine biotechnology by establishing systematic mid and long-term strategy for development of MB. Marine Biotechnologies such as search for genetic information of marine life and resources, new-functional marine-resources development technology are in their early stage, thus preoccupying the upper position in the world by concentrating on investment at national level is possible.The objectives of 『Blue-Bio 2016』 are 「sustainable utilization of marine bio-resources」, 「establishment of safe marine BT society」, 「realization of abundant marine bio-economy」 and 「establishment of healthy ecosystem」. A proposed national vision is to「attain one of the highest per capita income in the world through first-rated marine bioengineering technology」. Major performance goals are to「improve the level of patented technology and publication in world class