Korea's miracle |  |
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At the end of three years of Korean war, South Korea is in a difficult situation: important human losses (400 000 casualties for the South and the double for the North), families separated by an impassable 4 kilometre-border, material and industrial destructions (40% of the equipment) complement the political instability which has been lasting since the end of the Second World War.
However, a governmental political stability is the first condition to put up the country on its feet again, a country whose low richness of the I.P.G. (Interior Product Gross) is equivalent to the one of Ghana in 1960. Led by the republican party, Korea will have to wait 1963 to take off economically and become one of the four Asian dragons. From the beginning of the sixties, exports have developed, the chaebols such as Hyundai or Samsung, have contributed to increase the production and the I.P.G. (multiplied by 12 between 1963 and 1995). The nineties see the expansion of heavy industry (automobile /aeronautics) and the acceleration of the world trade that even the oil crises and financial crises countered by an austere policy were not able to slow down. Finally, South Korea attended a true miracle which enabled it to stand today on the 3rd world rank in electronics and to develop at the same time the advanced technologies in micro mechanics and electronics (DRAM, mobiles) in which robotics takes part. Consequently, it seems interesting to know to what extent the development of advanced technologies has contributed to the economic and cultural expansion of the country. It is the topic which we will try to deal with by focusing ourselves more precisely on robotics and the creation of the first Korean humanoid robot: the HUBO robot |