The foundation of KIST was projected as a reward for President Park's promise of the participation of Korean forces in the Vietnam War by U.S. President Johnson. The U.S. government not only initiated the foundation of KIST as above, but also has had the experts involve in the process of foundation and early management afterward. As a result a new institute was established adopting contract research system. The experts of Battelle Memorial Institute played a very important role in planning and decision making of establishing KIST. Eventually, not having any experience of founding the institute of applied science, Korea could establish KIST as the complex institute of science and technology to take up the regular research and development, which can not be found in other less developed countries. However, KIST had many problems from the beginning. At first, KIST had to face the difficulty in finance, for it adopted contract research system as the management form not considering the low development of Korean industry. Government's partial support to KIST has kept the stagnation of pure science and has resulted in the disregard of some of applied science parts excepted from the research department of KIST.