S.Korea taps ex-NASA exec John Lee as space agency R&D head

South Korea named John Lee, a former senior executive of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as the head of missions such as research and development of the Asian country’s planned space agency to become one of the global space powerhouses.

The South Korean Presidential Office is set to announce as early as this week the appointment of key officials of the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) set to open in May, according to government sources on Tuesday.

The government is likely to nominate Yoon Young Bin, a professor at Seoul National University’s Aerospace Engineering department, who majored in combustion, propulsion and rocket engines, as KASA’s head, according to the sources.

Roh Kyung-won, chief of the Ministry of Science and ICT’s R&D policy division, is expected to be named KASA’s deputy head.

SPACE EXPERT

Lee, a space expert with 30 years of experience in the field, worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center, a major NASA space research lab, as a senior executive until 2021.

With his new position, he is poised to become the highest-salaried South Korean government official, excluding President Yoon Suk Yeol. The government plans to pay him 250 million won ($182,588) a year, similar to the president’s annual salary.

Yoon told his staff to offer handsome salaries and other benefits to attract global space talent.

Lee is a Korean American with US citizenship. Outside the top spot, South Korea allows the KASA to recruit foreigners and people holding multiple citizenships for the agency. 

KASA employees tapped from the private sector are exempt from a blind trust, a trust established by the owner, or trustor, giving another party, or the trustee, full control of the trust.

A blind trust, which South Korea introduced to prevent government officials’ conflict of interest, is one of the hurdles in recruiting private experts.

Yoon pledged to establish KASA to foster the country’s space industry as a new growth engine.

Write to Gil-Sung Yang at vertigo@hankyung.com
 

Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.