Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mithridates]

A few days ago (Tuesday I think) I decided to go off to the Ministry of Science and Tech (������) because I had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask in person. I got into the building for visitors and talked to the girl there who told me that they were actually located it Pyeongchon two stations down. She phoned them and gave me the phone, whereupon I talked to the guy whe gave me directions to the place and said that it would be okay to visit. All is good.

I arrived there and went into the office where a few ajosshis were, but apparently nobody told them that I was coming and nobody knew who the guy was that answered the phone. We talked about space for a little bit but they weren't able to answer most of my questions (none of them were about national security either) and they didn't seem to know what they were doing either. I asked them about cooperation with other countries and they said they weren't really sure...well, there's a guy somewhere that knows some English but no Russian, Japanese or Chinese. So what sort of probes are you planning to build when the space agency is set up and the rocket launching pad is finished? Um, like satellites I guess. Not space probes. What kind of satellites? You know, just regular satellites.
Okay...what about promoting space to the average citizen here, do you have any methods of doing that? Well...there's a guy that answers questions from journalists (damn, I should be talking to that guy! But he's somewhere else). Okay...oh, there's a copy of a book on the actual laws enacted here to help start the space agency. Do you know where I could get a copy of this? Um, you don't need to look at that.

Got a few photocopied pages on the place in the south, but they were starting to look uncomfortable and no-one knew who had answered the phone before anyway so half of them still thought that I had just jumped in unannounced. That was about the end of that.

Should I be disappointed? I know they're just regular people and the guy on the phone didn't tell them that I was coming but when I think about how these are the people that are supposed to go on the news and get people all fired up about Korea's role in space development I really don't see it happening. They were pretty much just average dudes that you find anywhere in government.

[fidel]

[mithridates]

No, not accredited but I have written for newspapers here form about two years now. I also did confirm in advance that it was okay to visit.
I really wasn't expecting all that much but I was somewhat surprised that they didn't seem to be interested in space much at all.

Also, about the comment of yours about being a person of importance: I was thinking about that as well. Are government officials supposed to be accomodating to citizens or taxpayers, or is that expecting too much? Even though it may sound grandoise you and I do pay their salaries along with everyone else.

There also didn't seem to be anyone there whose job it was to answer questions from the public. But I did give them the benefit of the doubt as even though I confirmed it ahead of time the message didn't get passed to them so I suppose it was just an unfortunate error.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Did these guys even have science backgrounds? It's quite possible they were business admin majors (or even other majors) with no particular interest in the field. They just have an office job, in which all jobs are like any other. I worked for 4 years in a government research institute here. The office people had no particular interest/background in the field. They just shuffled papers.

[mithridates]

Yeah, I think that's probably what their background was in. When I first went in there we sat down and they brought me something to drink; while I waited with one of them for a more senior person to finish something he was doing I asked him if he saw the news that day about Pluto having three moons instead of one but he said he wasn't really interested in that sort of thing so I assume you're right.

Actually space development has always had this problem even in the States and elsewhere; people aren't picked for their rappor with the public and I remember hearing a press conference from the last shuttle flight - the woman there seemed to have the ability to make it sound drier than I could have ever imagined.

I suppose I wish that I were representing their space program and that's probably why I wrote this post. If I were their representative and could go around to all the media talking about space I know I could get the whole country fired up on the subject in less than a year. I know that whenever I get on the subject of space I could go on and on until my throat gets sore and still have more to say.