South Korea is putting top priority on drawing foreign research centers by deciding to establish a pan-governmental team geared toward that purpose. At a science-related ministers' meeting April 1, officials decided to set up a team, which will support the initiative of attracting foreign research and development (R&D) centers to Korea. Some ministries have thus far tried to attract offshore R&D labs but such efforts sometimes lacked efficiency without a central agency to oversee and fine tune the whole procedure. The envisioned R&D team, which retains the ultimate goal of making the nation into the research hub of Northeast Asia, plans to convene its first meeting in May. In fact, Korea has been working hard to convince high-profile global IT companies to relocate their research labs to Korea or build new ones as amply demonstrated by the Microsoft case. The U.S.-based firm, the world's largest software maker, opened a research center aimed at developing technologies for wireless devices in Seoul early last month. Microsoft announced it will invest up to $30 million over the next three years in the mobility research lab, making it one of the biggest research investments in Korea. It was no easy task, however, to draw such large-scale investment. To persuade reluctant Microsoft, President Roh Moo-hyun himself sent a letter to the company, asking that the research center be located in Korea. In forging ahead with the bold R&D hub project, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) took a central role. In particular, the MIC has drawn a total of seven research centers of global high-tech firms such as Intel, IBM and Hewlett Packard as well as Microsoft since last year. The ministry aims to bring about 40 more IT research centers by 2012, approximately five every year.