Mr Nam Kyung Min could either switch to engineering at Seoul National, the country's most respected university, or he could enrol at the medical college of a far lesser university. He chose to do medicine.

'I thought that being a doctor would guarantee me a more stable future,' says Mr Nam, now 25 and in his fourth year.

He took the entrance exam at Seoul National University (SNU) and scored well, but chose Koshin University instead.

Decisions such as Mr Nam's are becoming more common in Korea, a country whose astonishingly fast industrialisation in the 1960s and 1970s was built on science and engineering.

But the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which led companies to shed researchers and engineers to improve their balance sheets, caused many South Koreans to view medicine as a more stable and prestigious scientific career.

As a result, admissions to science and engineering schools have plummeted in the past decade.

The Korean Educational Department Institute says the number of students starting science or engineering courses has fallen 27 per cent in the last seven years; only 207,612 registered last year.

More than half the students studying life sciences at SNU are waiting to get on to medical or dental courses.

Competition to get into medical schools is so great that entrance requirements for the college of medicine at Wonkwang University, a small-town academy in the southern provinces (and for Koshin University, where Mr Nam chose to go) are higher than at the once-prestigious college of engineering at SNU.

Education surveys regularly cite 'difficulty getting a job' and 'poor social treatment' as the main reasons students decide against engineering and science.

The Ministry of Science and Technology estimates that Korea will be short of 4,500 doctors of science and engineering by 2014.

This lack of people with doctorates is creating a serious problem for South Korea. The country still relies heavily on these traditional specialities and China is snapping at its manufacturing heels.

Professor Kim Doh Yeon, dean of the engineering college at SNU, says he is concerned about the future competitiveness of Korean industry.

Although South Korea is 'quite competitive' in some industry sectors such as automobiles, semi-conductors and ship-building, he says: 'I have no doubt that such competitiveness is provided by the engineers.'

Korean blue-collar workers are no longer competitive in terms of salary, Prof Kim says.

'But the quality of engineers is much better than that of other countries and they are very hard workers - 12-hour days are still the norm for Korean engineers.'

Firms are concerned about China's ability to produce everything from consumer electronics to cars and ships.

Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor have voiced fears that they will not be able to compete with their low- cost but increasingly high- tech neighbour.

China is expected to overtake the US as the world's leading producer of science and engineering doctorates by 2010.

To try to counter the decline, the South Korean government has been offering more scholarships in those fields and has exempted many science and engineering postgraduate students from military service.

Prof Kim of SNU is cautiously optimistic that such initiatives can turn the tide.

'I think we have hit the bottom and it will get slightly better now. But the quality of students is still far below what it used to be 10 years ago.'

FINANCIAL TIMES