Differences in Perception of Korea and China on Promising Futuristic Technologies
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Par Soon-Changk 
Published: June 2018

People dream about achieving success in the future and wonder what the future society will be like, but it is not easy to predict the future of societies.
One of the major ways to forsee the future society is to examine the images people who live today have in mind about the future.
Technology, in particular, would be one of the important factors to impact human history and its development; therefore, collecting images that people have about future emerging technologies can be helpful in grasping what the future society would be like.
In order to predict what technology would emerge and become predominant, opinions of the public are important as well as those of experts. It is probably because if technology is not accepted and applied by the public, the technology would not prosper.
In order to investigate the awareness of the public about future emerging technologies, this study has been performed in two stages. The first stage is where future emerging technologies are selected and summarized through the data of related organizations and experts from many countries around the world. In the process, 24 technologies in 8 sectors were extracted.
In order to identify the awareness of the public, university students in business schools in Korea and China were selected. Through these students, expectations about future emerging technologies were measured and compared in terms of technical feasibility, economic feasibility, and contribution to quality of human life.
As a result, technologies that there are significant differences between Korea and China in all 3 aspects are ① Graphene, ② Nano Robot for Surgery, ③ Hydrogen energy.
It seems that graphene material shows high expected value due to the fact that graphene material is the material of semiconductor which Korea is the 1st maker in the world. Also, it is believed that the medical sector, which is bent in using nano robot technology, shows high expected value in a sense that Korea has advanced nano technology and medical technology as well as high interest in health due to the fact that Korea is now experiencing economic affluence and becoming an aging society. Lastly, there is high awareness on fuel cell because Korea has preserved excellent technology regarding fuel cell and has become highly interested in environmentally friendly technology via its use of hydrogen fuel cell.
Technologies that there are not significant differences between them in any aspects are ① High Temperature Superconductivity, ② Cloning Animals/Organ Transplant, ③ Solar Energy, ④ Nuclear Energy, ⑤ Flying Car.
For high-temperature superconductor, over four points in average in both Korea and China are shown from technological and economical aspects. Both countries show that high-temperature superconductor has sufficient technology feasibility and high economic feasibility. They also show relatively high awareness on the quality of human life with slightly less than four points.
For animal cloning/organ transplantation technology, both countries show sufficient feasibility in technology and high level of awareness in economic feasibility and quality of human life. It is probably because Korea has advanced in animal cloning technology, although organ plantation to human body has not brought any specific result.
For solar energy, both Korea and China have a high level of awareness in all 3 aspects. This shows possibility in technology and economical feasibility and contributes to human life. This can be interpreted that solar energy is expected to be among very important and necessary future technologies.
Nuclear energy is recognized highly in only technological feasibility in both countries. Its technology is possible; however, its contribution to human life does not show a high score due to anxiety against leakage of radioactivity and explosion.