Park Won-joo, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office, "Fierce Competition for Technological Hegemony... The Direction for Korea's Intellectual Property"

Park Won-joo, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office, recently discussed the current state of the domestic knowledge industry ecosystem and introduced the direction to move forward in an interview with Asia Economy. Photo by Moon Ho-nam munonam@

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] “To create patents essential for the technological independence of domestic companies, we will expand patent-based research and development (R&D) focusing on core fields of the 4th Industrial Revolution era and materials, parts, and equipment.” Park Won-joo, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), said this in a recent interview with Asia Economy.

According to Commissioner Park, major countries around the world are currently strengthening their market dominance by arming themselves with intellectual property and are making every effort to protect intellectual property and secure overseas intellectual property to seize technological hegemony.

In fact, the United States recently showed moves to dominate global technological hegemony amid trade disputes with China, while in China, President Xi Jinping personally emphasized that protecting intellectual property rights is key to opening and innovating the global economy. Japan has also joined the ranks aiming to secure intellectual property by announcing the “Intellectual Property Strategic Vision,” which pursues a “Value Design Society” in response to future environmental changes.

However, while Korea has grown quantitatively into the world’s fourth-largest patent powerhouse, surpassing 2 million patent registrations as of last September, Commissioner Park diagnoses that it shows insufficient performance in qualitative aspects such as creating economic value through intellectual property.

Commissioner Park pointed out, “Competition among major countries to dominate technological hegemony is intensifying, including the trade dispute between the U.S. and China and Japan’s export restrictions. However, in this situation, Korea faces a reality of insufficient strong intellectual property creation across industries, with a persistent trade deficit in intellectual property rights due to a lack of foundational and standard patents.”

He also emphasized that social infrastructure such as intellectual property finance and trading environments is inadequate, overseas patent applications necessary for securing overseas markets are low relative to trade volume, and especially overseas patent applications by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are even more insufficient. These are challenges that the government and domestic industries must work together to solve.

Regarding this, Commissioner Park stated, “In a situation where economic competition among countries worldwide to secure future technological hegemony is intensifying, rapid patent preemption will determine the outcome of technology and industrial wars. Accordingly, KIPO will expand patent-based R&D (IP-R&D) this year to present a direction for technological independence in the materials, parts, and equipment sectors and support the growth of promising SMEs, ultimately striving to elevate Korea to the ranks of intellectual property powerhouses leading the global market.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.