that over time the advantages of Seoul would swing the pendulum back to SNU. There is not much interest in either supercomputing or practical parallel computing at SNU. Perhaps faculty in the engineering departments are able to do all their necessary computations on workstations. Interests in electronicsrelated research are wide and varied, including research in semiconductors and superconductors. Epitaxial semiconductor structures are grown by both molecular beam and organometallic methods under the direction of U.S.trained scientists such as Prof. Prof. Jung-Chun Woo. Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI) The visit to KORDI, located in Ansan on the west coast, was very brief. Their new ship, the ONNURI, was just arriving from its construction in Norway, and they will be getting another ship, the EARDO, which will be the support ship for their submersible. The capacity of KORDI to participate in international programs is growing. Wilde's impression was of great potential capabilities but with facilities just coming on-line for other than just coastal work. SUMMARY Korean computing research is behind that in the United States in most of the areas Kahaner was told about and this corresponds to earlier experiences he has reported in previous Scientific Information Bulletin articles [see, for example, "Snapshot of Computing Activities in Korea," 16(2), 7-13 (1991); and "First Korea-Japan Conference on Computer Vision," 17(1), 37-49 (1992)]. Koreans are aware of all the main thrusts in computing science and often are working up to their own approaches to finding solutions to problems being pursued widely. Parallel computing research is highly oriented around transputers. Supercomputing is concentrated at one laboratory (ETRI) along with some industrial applications at Kia Motors, but the field is not thriving, nor did I hear about much research in numerical computation. Networking is improving, with the soon-to-be-opened T1 link between Seoul and Taeduk and other 54-kbit lines in operation or soon to be and enhanced Internet access. Facilities at the research laboratories are good to very good and include a variety of advanced workstations and graphics terminals. Korean work in ocean science and engineering shows great promise after a period of heavy investment. They have a period of heavy investment. They have the equipment, buildings, governmental support, and well-trained staffs. Right now, they are in the pre-active research phase, advancing on the learning curve by doing routine survey work in coastal areas, mainly as service to government agencies and industry. Their fisheriesmarine biology work is close to par with Western nations, but as expected it's far smaller than the effort in Japan. On the international level, Korea is actively cooperating in Antarctica with many nations. KORDI is involved in several global oceanographic experiments with components in near Korean waters. Once they have people familiar with the equipment, they have the potential of developing active basic research programs. Right now, much of the research is applied, which may be suitable for a country as small and emerging as Korea. Korea might benefit from a more active exchange program with the United States. They do gram with the United States. They do have a relatively small program with Japan. However, because of historical reasons, Korean-Japanese cooperation may be expected to be limited and less valuable to the Koreans than with Western nations. Due to the lack of research funds in the United States, any Korean exchange would have to be supported by Korean money both ways. A Korean scientist, already paid for, would be more likely to get a welcome reception at a U.S. facility. On the other hand, even with good facilities, the culture shock may be an inhibiting factor in any U.S.-to-Korea exchange. A Korean equivalent to the Humboldt Prize, where the German Government thanked the United States for the Marshall Plan, might be required to attract senior U.S. scientists. From the U.S. side, presently there is little active research going on of other than regional interest to U.S. scientists. The potential is there, and there would be opportunities for young researchers struggling for funds and space in the United States. Some of their active research programs such as the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) program and Ocean Mining are essentially defunct in the United States. It may be in the interest of the United States to maintain some times to these programs as insurance on potential emerging technologies. Korean research groups have emphasized electronic materials and semiconductor heterostructure studies for their obvious commercial potentialities. Korea is determined to earn a share of the HDTV market, which requires development of very sophisticated digital and analog IC production capacity. Both silicon-based and GaAsbased ICs are being developed at ETRI, KIST, RIST, and SNU, especially among the laboratories visited. In addition, there are strong industrial research programs in laboratories of Samsung, Goldstar, and Hyundai Electronics, which Rehn will attempt to assess later. From this bird's eye view of Korean government-sponsored research in electronic materials and semiconductor heterostructures, we heard about research on quantum heterostructures and superlattices in III-V and in Si-Ge materials. We heard about organometallic vapor phase epitaxy and molecular beam epitaxy growth facilities at ETRI, KIST, and SNU. We saw application of Josephson junction technology in standards research at KRISS and femtosecond laser spectroscopy studies at KAIST on optoelectronic devices grown at ETRI. We also saw the beginnings of the Pohang Light Source (PLS), a 2-GeV synchrotron-radiation (SR) facility under construction at POSTECH. Plans for PLS beam lines are not yet available, but a committee has convened in Seoul to study effective application of SR in electronics-oriented research programs. Korean scientists and research managers are eager for international collaboration. They realize, however, that they do not now have as much to offer as to receive in such exchanges. Hence, they are willing to provide the greater share of the funding and make other contributions. For example, Korean research scientists may be sent, fully paid, to the United States for extended (6-12 months) visits in U.S. laboratories, where they can contribute to U.S. research activities while learning U.S. research techniques. Exchanges the other way are more problematic, however. Although the Korean laboratories are eager to host U.S. scientists for extended visits, and to pay much of the cost, they recognize that the benefits to the U.S. scientists may not be so great. The depth and breadth of Korean electronics-oriented research was not apparent from this brief overview. In the near future, Rehn will report in greater depth on electronics-oriented research in Korea and on the opportunities for international cooperation. ERATO AND JAPAN'S DREAMS OF The 10-year-old ERATO program is one of Japan's most innovative programs for moving the frontiers of science toward advanced technology. Covering a broad scope from the biological and life sciences to the chemical sciences and new areas of nanoscience, ERATO is a highly visible program of 17 individual projects, currently, involving 576 researchers (24 foreign) in 145 laboratories, with a total funding of about $51M per year. The impact of these multidisciplinary, time-limited, exploratory research projects is beginning to be felt in several areas of science and technology, both within and outside Japan. INTRODUCTION TO ERATO ERATO is a high-visibility, highly political research program spanning a wide range of research from genetics and biological sciences to surface and semiconductor physics and chemistry. Considering the long tenure in office of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, as well as the Japanese cultural concern for continuity and harmony, the continuity of ERATO in the foreseeable future seems assured. ERATO (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology) is a 10-yearold program of the Research and Development Corporation of Japan (JRDC). JRDC, in turn, was founded by the Science and Technology Agency (STA) in 1961. STA is an element of the Prime Minister's office, along with the Council for Science and Technology (see Figure 1). There seems to be no program in the United States similar to ERATO. It differs from National Science Foundation (NSF) programs in the scale, tenure, and organization of the projects: total funding for each project is typically $15M over a 5-year period, by Victor Rehn sometimes to be followed by a post- around" with new research ideas, even Projects are organized around a ERATO research is carried out at Three or four new ERATO projects are announced annually. With the 1991 announcement of four new projects beginning 1 October 1991, there are currently 17 in all, and 12 others have been completed (see Appendixes A and B). ERATO projects are reviewed publicly annually in the ERATO Symposia given in Tokyo. Although these reviews are presented in Japanese, English translations are published later. Several English translations of the 1990 ERATO reviews were reproduced in |