"To achieve this, the ministry will invest a total of 1 trillion won ($1 billion) in a project to develop the next-generation core environment technology during the 10-year period from 2001 through 2010," said Lee in an interview with Korea IT Times.
At the same time, the ministry will actively push for the "Eco-STAR Project," which calls for production of pollution-free or low-pollution cars and introduction of an advanced water disposal system, he said.
"For the Eco-STAR Project, we will invest a total of 65 billion won ($67.7 million) during the 2004-2010 period," said Lee.
Environment technology (ET) has emerged as one of the most promising industries in the 21st century, along with information technology (IT) and biotechnology (BT).
The scale of the global environmental market is expected to expand from $543.4 billion in 2001 to 708.3 billion in 2010, according to a report released by the U.S. Environmental Business International in 2003.
Major advanced countries, including the United States, France, Germany and Japan, have selected environmental technology as a promising sector of the 21st century and are pushing for various projects to develop relevant technology from the dimension of each country.
The level of Korea's environmental technology is still lower than those of advanced countries as the nation's technology development history, which started in 1992 with the G-7 environmental technology development project, is relatively short compared with advanced countries.
By sector, Korea's ET level has nearly approached those of advanced countries in the post-disposal fields, including facilities to prevent air pollution, but falls far behind in the prior pollution preventive technology field.
"Accordingly, the ministry has selected ET as one of the nation's major six strategic technology sectors, along with IT, BT and nanotechnology (NT), and decided to persistently expand investment in the future-oriented sector," said the environment minister.
For the development of technology converging ET and IT, the ministry has built and operated the Tele-Monitoring System (TMS), which monitors air and water quality automatically through a remote control system. For the first time in the world, the ministry also introduced a remote supervisory system to check air pollution stemming from chimneys.
As of the end of 2005, the ministry attached the chimney remote supervisory system to 366 workplaces in three business sectors, which emit massive amounts of air pollutants. It plans to expand the application of the system to 694 workplaces in 39 business lines by the end of June 2007.
The ministry also plans to revamp laws and regulations related to the TMS in the water quality sector by July this year and attach the system to 969 workplaces by September 2008, on a step-by-step basis.
"Along with this, the ministry is seeking ways to let excellent technologies developed through the next-generation core projects grow into a state strategic industry," said the environment minister.
"Related to this, the government will designate excellent environment technologies as environment new technologies and certify the technology power as well as extend various supports, including incentives in case of offering a bid for public institutions, extension of long-term soft loans for industrialization, and supports for participation in international fairs and hosting of new technology exhibitions," he said.
International cooperation in the ET sector To actively foster the domestic environment industry as an export strategic industry of the 21st century, the ministry has dispatched private-government environment industry export cooperative teams to Southeast Asian countries, including China, since 2001.
To effectively attack the Chinese market, which enjoys a rapid growth ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, particularly, the ministry established the "Korea-China environment industrial center" in Beijing for operation. Along with this, it has been pushing ahead with various cooperative projects between Korea and China, including explanatory meetings for Korea's environment industry and technology.
In June 2005, the ministry also set up the "Korea-Vietnam environment industry cooperative center" in Hanoi, Vietnam to publicize Korea's excellent environment technology to Southeast Asian countries and use the center as a foothold to support exports of Korea's environment technology to the region. "Though sales diplomacy through summits and meetings of environment ministers, the government is also striving to build a foundation for advancement of the domestic environment technology into foreign markets," said Lee.
For instance, since July 2003 when the environment industry was selected as one of the top 10 cooperative projects between Korea and China at the summit meeting, the two countries have held meetings of environment ministers three times and propelled such cooperative projects as joint development of environment technology and operation of invitation training programs.
Meanwhile, Korea and Vietnam have held annual meetings of environment ministers to promote bilateral cooperation in the environment industry and technology.
Along with this, Korea has been pushing for joint studies for development of a total of 29 kinds of next-generation core environment technologies with four countries -China, the United States, Russia and Australia - at a combined cost of 10 billion won ($10.4 million).
"In the future, the government plans to actively publicize Korea's excellent environment technology through the Korea- China environment industrial center in Beijing and Korea- Vietnam environment industry cooperative center in Hanoi," Lee stressed.
Environment ministry's major targets for 2006 The ministry's environment policy for 2006 focused on significant improvement of environment quality though creation of visible results of the advanced environment policy it has propelled in the past years.
In particular, it has set the year 2006 as the "first year of environment health," which calls for implementation of environment health policies for protection of the people's health, especially children.
To this end, the ministry plans to enact a bill on improvement of environment health and establish the "environment health study center" at the National Institute of Environmental Research, as well as develop advanced techniques to appraise the impact of various development projects on health. "At the same time, we will strengthen environment-friendly national land environment management through improvement of a system considering the impact of development projects on environment," said Lee.
For smooth implementation of the strategic environment appraisal system, which started in June this year, the ministry will revise the enforcement decrees of the environment policy basic law and relevant regulations and guidelines.
Meanwhile, it will improve the environment influence appraisal system in a fair and effective way, while easing financial burden on enterprises, he said.
Introduction of advanced environment policies Noting that the environment ministry' s reform goal is to develop and propel advanced environment policies, Lee said that the ministry would systematically manage innovation activities about environment administration in the future. "First, we will introduce the 6Sigma management technique, which can upgrade the customers' satisfaction degree to 99.9 percent with exact analysis of data and statistics, to the environment administration. If we adopt this advanced system to the environment policy, we can achieve customer-oriented scientific administration," he said.
"Secondly, we will actively push for knowledge-based management and promote professionalism of environment administration to create, share and use new environment knowledge," said Lee.
"Thirdly and finally, we will pursue a management system based on results, under which government officials can receive fair appraisal and compensation according to their ability and business results," he said.
By actively pushing for such reform tasks related to environment administration, the ministry will achieve its vision of "beautiful environment, healthy future" this year, Minister Lee concluded.
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