[Gangnam Perspective] Oenaro-do Has Nothing to Say

There are several routes from Yeosu Airport to Oenaro-do in Goheung, South Jeolla. I traveled past the islands south of Yeosu and crossed Palyeong Bridge. A huge sign by the road caught my eye: “The Road to Space.” It marked a 47-kilometer journey to the Naro Space Center on Oenaro-do. On the 8th, the day after Nuri (KSLV-II) completed its fifth launch, I was on that road.
The beginnings of South Korea’s space program were modest, as were those of many other industries. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) opened in October 1989 as an affiliate of the Korea Institute of Machinery in Daedeok, Daejeon. Some 30 PhDs gathered in a makeshift room built by renovating an old dormitory. It was 20 years after the United States had sent people to the Moon, and the Soviet Union was operating a space station, yet the space budget was repeatedly pushed down the queue. On the day KARI was launched, the president encouraged the researchers, saying, “Before this century is out, a satellite built with our own hands will be launched by our own hands.” But it was another seven years, until 1996, before the institute became an independent organization.
A place worth remembering from before then is the “Room in Mabuk,” in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, in the mid-1990s. Technological minds gathered at Hyundai Precision’s research institute in Mabuk-ri. At the time, Kim Si-jung, minister of Science and Technology, asked Hyundai Precision to cooperate as he pushed for the development of a liquid-rocket engine. Chung Mong-koo, whose Galloper success story had shaken the auto industry, chose space as Hyundai Precision’s next challenge. Kim Dong-jin, head of the technical research institute and the man behind the Galloper success story, took the lead and brought in Russian rocket engineers. The KARI researchers who sat in that room went on to lead the development of Naro-1 (Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, KSLV-1).
State-led space development began to gain momentum in the 2000s. While corporate space programs paused for breath amid the fallout from the foreign-exchange crisis (the period under IMF supervision) and other factors, the government built a space center on Oenaro-do in Goheung, brought in Russian technology, and pursued Naro-1, a launch vehicle to be fired from Korean soil. Negotiations with Russia were never smooth. According to accounts from the time, the technology-protection agreement meant that the Russian-made first-stage engine could not even be touched or inspected. Developed in cooperation with Russia, Naro-1 failed on its first launch attempt in 2009 and its second in 2010. Researchers were summoned before the National Assembly and had to bow their heads. That memory remains traumatic to this day. Naro-1 finally succeeded on its third launch, but criticism and reproaches followed, saying it had not been developed independently. Han Young-min, head of KARI’s Space Launch Vehicle Research Institute, whom I met on Oenaro-do, said, “Naro-1 is bound to be a name that inspires both love and resentment.”
Nuri emerged at the end of those humiliating years. The Nuri project had been underway since 2010, before Naro-1’s success. It is true, too, that technology glimpsed over others’ shoulders while enduring Moscow temperatures 15 degrees below zero became the seed. The road to self-reliance was arduous. Just 2 grams of water inside a valve caused an engine to explode, and a problem with a connection on the third-stage helium tank turned the final push to enter space into vapor before their eyes.
A single launch vehicle has 370,000 components. The development team catalogued the parts they needed, drawing them out as they went. Armed with that list, they went on a long trek from company to company across the country. Meanwhile, Hyundai Rotem Company, heir to Mabuk, took advantage of the elevation drop on Bongnaesan Mountain in Goheung to build an ingenious test facility, while HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. completed the launch pad. Hanwha, which had been conducting hot-fire tests, brought Samsung Techwin into the fold and was reborn as the system-integration company for Nuri. The roughly 300 companies that came together this way became the foundation of South Korea’s space ecosystem today. The results, achieved after some 15 years of independent technology development, are well worth taking pride in. Creating demand for launches and providing the supporting infrastructure, serving as a catalyst, is the state’s responsibility. The next vision should be to become a space-transportation nation, going beyond being a country with independent launch capability.
Oenaro-do, once a frontier outpost but now a gateway to space. I looked down at the southern sea from in front of the launch pad. The outside world is noisy, politics is noisy day after day, but here there is not a sound. I think of those who must have swallowed their tears as they searched for fragments of engine debris scattered along the mountainside. The baton of technology will be passed on again. There will be more trips into space, and things will be sent there more cheaply. There is still much to do.
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