Expanded Stride of Lee Jae-yong's Accompanying Philosophy, Samsung Ho-Am Prize as Korea's Nobel Prize (Comprehensive)

[Asia Economy Reporter Changhwan Lee] The recent expansion plan for the Ho-Am Prize by the Ho-Am Foundation strongly reflects Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong's commitment to nurturing talent in basic science. It represents a determination to elevate the Ho-Am Prize to the level of a Nobel Prize as an international science award, thereby fostering basic science in South Korea, where conditions for basic science are relatively underdeveloped compared to advanced countries.

On the 4th, the Ho-Am Foundation explained that Vice Chairman Lee proposed expanding the Ho-Am Prize awards to increase support for the relatively weaker basic science fields compared to engineering or medicine, with the aim of strengthening the foundation of the industrial ecosystem and contributing to enhancing national competitiveness.

After receiving Vice Chairman Lee's proposal, the foundation broadly gathered opinions from numerous domestic and international academic experts, including past Ho-Am Prize laureates, Ho-Am Prize judges, Ho-Am Prize committee members, and Nobel laureates, and finalized the direction of the awards.

Vice Chairman Lee recently emphasized tireless challenges toward the future, such as announcing the vision of "System Semiconductors No. 1 in the World by 2030," and stressed "co-prosperity," meaning that for Samsung to become a 100-year company that creates the future, it must upgrade not only itself but also its surrounding environment.

At the Samsung Electronics executive meeting in January, Vice Chairman Lee also stated, "Sharing with our neighbors and society and growing together is our mission and the path to becoming a 100-year company."

Lee Jae-yong, Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics

The expansion and reorganization of the Ho-Am Prize can also be interpreted as an extension of Vice Chairman Lee's co-prosperity philosophy into the field of basic science. The academic community positively evaluates the subdivision and expansion of the Ho-Am Science Prize as contributing to the development of national basic science, which also aligns with trends in the international scientific community. The Swedish Nobel Prize is subdivided into scientific awards such as the Physics Prize, Chemistry Prize, and Physiology or Medicine Prize.

Samsung has already been steadily supporting basic science through future technology fostering projects and industry-academia cooperation. Through the Future Technology Fostering Project, Samsung directly supports innovative research in basic science fields such as physics and mathematics.

Since 2013, a total of 601 projects have received 771.3 billion KRW in funding. This year, Samsung plans to invest more than 100 billion KRW in industry-academia cooperation to nurture future technologies and talent at domestic universities.

To support technology development of partner companies, Samsung operates a support fund worth 3 trillion KRW and supports partner companies and the domestic semiconductor ecosystem through joint development of equipment and components with major partners, providing design platforms and prototype production support for domestic fabless companies, and supporting the use of advanced semiconductor equipment at domestic universities.

In line with Vice Chairman Lee's co-prosperity philosophy to support domestic startups' commercialization and overseas expansion, Samsung Electronics has operated the in-house venture support program C-Lab Inside since 2012 and the external venture support program C-Lab Outside since 2018.

An industry insider said, "The proposal to expand the Ho-Am Prize awards to give more consideration to the basic science field appears to reflect Vice Chairman Lee's usual thinking aligned with his co-prosperity philosophy," adding, "It well demonstrates one aspect of Vice Chairman Lee's management philosophy."

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