The mechanism of knowledge production in the basic science has been changed throughout the development process in Korea. During the 1970s, the focus resides in the support of individual scientists while it concentrated on the support of research organization, centered on center of excellence from the 1980s. The change in the sup-porting mechanism to basic science result in the transformation of knowledge production system in the university and impact on the behavior of individual scientists. This paper focuses on the co-evolution process between newly adopted supporting program for basic science and the knowledge production system via the case study of representative program of center of excellence supporting program in Korea.