hankyoreh

By Park Hyun-chul and Park Ah-reum, staff reporters

A death row prisoner who invented technology for renewable energy is donating his patent to the community.

Park, 49, an inmate at Daegu Prison, recently sent a letter to the Hankyoreh stating, “I have obtained a domestic technology patent with some difficulty, and there is about one month left to apply for an international patent.”

“I’d like for some interested company, or what have you, to transfer the technology and obtain international rights [in its name] so that it can help industry, society, and the economy,” Park added.

Park applied for the patent on Oct. 28 of last year and had it registered in August of this year. The technology is for a pneumatic generator/power system using the weight of a vehicle. It is installed on a highway, where passing cars trigger a generator with compressed air to make electricity.

Lee Shi-bok, a mechanical engineering professor at Pusan National University (PNU), weighed in on the patent’s technological value. “Mr. Park’s patent is for a kind of ‘energy harvest’ that collects and uses wasted energy,” Lee explained. “It’s a topic that’s been the subject of broad-ranging research all over the world.”

Noting that the technology involves using as a power source the energy that is wasted when cars pass through a tollgate or wait for a light and have to slow down, Lee said, “Even if it isn’t developed into a product straight away, it could be a bridge to inventing new technology.”

Park has been on death row for over 16 years following a homicide conviction. In his letter, he indicated that he would donate the patent rights free of charge to a company interested in applying it.

“As a felon, I am lacking as a citizen, and I speak very cautiously,” he wrote. “But I would like a guarantee for national rights for this technology, whose power production efficiency relative to investment is four times higher than solar or wind energy.”

Individuals are allowed to apply for an international patent within one year of their domestic patent application. With the deadline coming up on Oct. 28, Park hopes that the company that receives the domestic patent rights applies for the international patent.

He wrote that the technology was “useless in my hands, no matter how good it is.”

“I would like to ask that a company with related technology examine its commercial potential and perfect it by addressing any inadequacies,” he added.

Park’s formal education ended with elementary school, but he studied a middle and high school curriculum during his sixteen years in prison for murder. He went on to receive a high school equivalency diploma and a bachelor’s degree. Highly interested in science and technology, he has registered patents for four inventions since 2009, including a vertical-axis windmill for wind power generation, an energy-efficient integrated potable water production system, and a method for producing compression-molded charcoal fuel using food waste.

PNU archaeology professor Shin Kyung-cheol, who has been helping Park, said the prisoner “grew up in an unfortunate environment and committed two unpremeditated murders in his teens, but he is extremely curious and exceptionally intelligent.”

Shin added that Park prepared for his equivalency exam and invention patents by deliberately taking a room to himself to study.

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