Book

Institute for Future Strategy – Science and Technology Futures Cluster
“Grand Quest 10: The First Challenging Questions That Will Shake the World – Season 2”

Over the past half-century, Korea has astonished the world with its rapid industrialisation. Now, however, it stands at a pivotal moment where it must transform from a mere follower nation into a true advanced country—one that leads with its own sense of purpose and vision. The crises we now face may, in fact, represent the final growing pains of this transformation—an arduous but necessary passage toward becoming a nation capable of pioneering entirely new conceptual frameworks never before seen in the world. If Korea can successfully navigate this difficult transition, it can dispel the concerns of “Peak Korea” and rise as a genuine leader in science and technology.

What Korea’s industries and scientific communities most urgently need today are not ready-made answers, but rather the first challenging questions. Only through such questions can Korea once again take the lead in shaping a new global order in technology and industry. It is from this awareness that the “Grand Quest” project was born.

Grand Quest 10 recognises that Korea’s current follower model—centred on introduction, improvement, and localisation of technology—is no longer sustainable. It argues that now is the time to pose original and daring questions and, through trial and error, accumulate entirely new technological concepts. This volume embodies that insight in practice. It brings together twenty-one of Korea’s foremost scholars, who identify “ten revolutionary questions” that, if answered within the next decade, could transform the world. These ten key fields include anti-ageing technology, microbial cell factories, solar cell innovation, new virus prevention vaccines, neuromorphic architecture, angstrom-level semiconductor technology, post-silicon materials, spatial displays, in-brain reality, and artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Through these explorations, the book emphasises that creative accumulation—the process of proposing bold, original questions, refining them through repeated experimentation, and gradually scaling up from version one—is the true engine of conceptual innovation and technological leadership.

Keywords:
Korean industrialisation, technology leadership, first challenging questions, creative accumulation, future core science and technology, ten breakthrough innovation fields