- The June 29 issue of Korea Economic Daily -SK has made a decision to increase their current level of 1,200 research & development (R&D) personnel by 10% every year. Along with our continued commitment to growth in the R&D section, we will be establishing research centers for our Information & Telecommunications and Energy & Chemical divisions in China.This was the announcement made on June 28th by SK Chairman Son Kil-Seung at the SK Institute of Technology in Daeduk, South Korea. The announcement was made during a meeting with R&D executives regarding the SUPEX pursuit in the R&D sector. SUPEX or Super Excellence is the high level of service that SK strives to achieve. Chairman Son emphasized, ?We should substantially strengthen the R&D sector to cope with a constantly changing business environment.? Accordingly, SK will inject approximately 1 trillion won in bioscience alone by the year 2005. This will be accomplished through an increase in R&D investment, which currently sits at approximately 500 billion won per year. SK also decided to recruit R&D personnel with doctoral and master degrees by at least 10% each year. SK plans to diversify the R&D system, which is currently divided into the domestic research center and the US New Jersey research institute; SK plans to distribute the R&D system among Korea, China and US in line with SK?s global management environment. To do so, SK made a resolution to establish research centers for the Information & Telecommunications and the Energy & Chemicals divisions in addition to the SK bioscience Research Institute being under construction at the Changjiang Hi-Tech Zone in Shanghai. The SK bioscience Research Institute is scheduled to open this coming September by securing around 10 research personnel.To prepare for a system of diversified items with a small volume of production, SK will be promoting some specialized research centers such as Network R&D Center of SK Telecom, Water Environment and Environmental Materials R&D Centers of SK chemicals Meanwhile, Chairman Son plans to implement SUPEX Pursuit in the R&D Sector by quarters for the support of the R&D sector in the future. To do so, he is slated to review the current status of the R&D sector of SK?s major affiliates and discuss some supporting measures.