Kalam admits he ignored glitch before SLV launch

The debacle, Kalam said, made him nervous of addressing the scheduled press meet, the then mission head, Satish Dhawan, chose to face the questions. But, when the SLV III was successfully fired in July the next year, the mission head insisted that Kalam address the media—underlining, the president said, the way Dhawan shouldered responsibility for failure but let his team take credit for success.

The President was responding to a question at the Korean Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology at Daedeok Science City, 140 kms from Seoul. Kalam wrapped up his three-nation tour today by attending presentations by the Daedeok Innopolis and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and with a visit to Samsung complex.

Tagore lines & President

‘In the golden age of Asia, Korea was one of its lamp bearers, And that lamp is waiting to be lit again For the illumination of the East.’

The Speaker of the South Korean National Assembly chose to mark the first visit of an Indian President with this poem by Rabindranath Tagore, as President Abdul Kalam arrived to address a special session of the Assembly. Speaker Kim Wan Ki said that Tagore’s writing had ‘‘brought a ray of hope and courage in our life in difficult times’’. President Kalam picked up from Tagore, too: ‘‘Today, the world knows that the lamp has been lit by knowledge, hard work and sweat of the people of Korea.’’