Growth and development of the academic societies and animal production in Korea, China and Asia over the last 50 years

The Korean Society of Animal Science (KSAS) was officially born on October 8, 1956 under the leadership of Professor Sang W. Yun of Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea a few years after the end of the Korean War. At that time, there were 0.9 million Korean native cattle, 1.3 million pigs and 8.9 million chickens in Korea. Per capita income for Korea (US$ 66) or China (US$ 59) was about 10% of Asian's average income (US$ 513) in 1956. Korea produced less than 0.2 million M/T of formula feed and consumed 6.1 kg/person/year of animal products. One could say that Korea was an example of an under-developed country in the world. Although the first issue of the Proceedings of the KSAS was published on October 28, 1958, regular quarterly journals of the KSAS were not published until March 1, 1969. Major activities other than publishing its journal were: holding an annual meeting and/or scientific forum at national or international level. The Asian-Australasian Association of Animal Production Societies (AAAP) was founded on September 1, 1980 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with founding members from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, NZ, Philippines and Thailand. Thirteen AAAP Animal Science Congresses have been held in its 28 year history. Hosting countries were Malaysia (1980), Philippines (1982), Korea (1985), NZ (1987), Taiwan (1990), Thailand (1992), Indonesia (1994), Japan (1996), Australia (2000), India (2002), Malaysia (2004), Korea (2006) and Vietnam(2008). In 1988, significant progress of the AAAP was made by creating an official English journal of the AAAP entitled "Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences (AJAS)" under the initiative of the KSAS. This journal is now published monthly and distributed to more than 50 countries in the AAAP region and the world. It should be mentioned that the KSAS was able to successfully host the 3rd AAAP Animal Science Congress in 1985 and the 12th in 2006, as well as the 8th WCAP in 1998. During the last 50 years of KSAS history, per capita income of Korea increased to US$ 17,690 (268 fold), formula feed production increased to 15 million M/T (97 fold) and consumption of animal products increased to 105 kg/person/year (17 fold). Cattle, pig and chicken numbers also increased to 2.5 million (2.8 fold), 9 million (7.4 fold) and 119 million (13 fold). This trend was also found for China and Asia, even if the rate of growth was slightly lower than that of Korea. It is expected that a similar rate of growth in