한국 사회에서 과학기술 민주화 논의의 전개

Abstract

Discussions on democratization of science & technology in Korea originated in the 1970s when the Science & Technology movement was initiated by the students. The activists of the S&T Movement tried to mobilize engineers and science students to participate in the students movement against the military regime with regards to scientific issues. For negative effects from the technical development led or promoted by the military regime, issues of environmental pollution and alienation of labour were raised. During the 1980s, appeared were the social groups which were engaged specially in the labour movement of scientists and engineers. They thought that social problems caused by abuse of science and technology could be solved by the labour movement of scientists and engineers. While the 1970s and 1980s the S&T Movement made our society to focus on the social issues related to science. But problems such as uncertainty of science and technology or the reliability of expert system were not issued, although our society was confronted with such problems. In the late 1990s, the discussions on democratization of science and technology attracted the attention of the public. The participation of lay citizen in the technical risk assessments was legitimated, and the government accepted the citizen jury which is based on lay knowledge. Nowadays, it seems that our science and technology system is democratized to a certain extent.