As seem in many developed countries, technological innovation has contributed to more than 50% of Korean agricultural growth during the last 50 years. Development of high yield seed technology, replacement of animal power through farm mechanization, and year-round vegetable production system with use of poly-vinyl materials are typical examples of innovative agricultural technologies in Korea.
There has been several factors contributing to the rapid technological progress in Korean agriculture. Among them, there are three major sources to such a successful innovation in the Korean agricultural sector : Korean government has led agricultural technology innovation by strengthening the national agricultural research and extention system. It was a technology-push or technology supplier-oriented model instead of the technology demand-pull or technology used-oriented : such private sectors as agro-industry has contributed much to importing advanced foreign farm technology from developed countries. It includes modern farm inputs technology such as fertilizer, peaticides, nutritional feed and farm machinery : and finally the farmer's high prospensity to new technology have contributed to rapid diffusion of agricultural innovation at farm level.
Technological development in the agricultural sector contributed more to the consumers than producers in Korea. During the last 40 years, the real prices of rice, egg and green house vegetable have not been increased due to the improvement of agricultural technologies.
Economic efficiency of R&D investment measured by IRR in the agricultural sector has been reported by many agricultural economists in Korea. It ranges from 30% to 50% per year. Even though such high IRR ratios, there are always under-investment for agricultural R&D due to high economic externalities in the agricultural sector.
To prepare the technology-oriented Korean agriculture we have to challenge new areas of technology development path. Intellecutural property right in the areas of new seed varieties and material and BT and IT are already strengthening between countries. Technological gaps between Korea and advanced countries in the areas of bio-tech, food safety, environmental farming as well as bio-fuel technologies are exists.
Therefore, the national agricultural innovation system has to change. In order to forcus and catch up with the advanced agricultural technologies, private sector as well as local agricultural innovation system should be strengthened. For this, privatization of the nation agricultural R&D system should be positively considered for Korean agricultural technology development. Moreover, Korean government should allocate more R&D expenditure on the agricultural sector, because the private sector is not willing to invest R&D expenditure due to high risks under the agricultural trade liberalization situation.