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| .kr South Korea |
| Jong-Sung Hwang |
Overview Over the past ten years, Korea has emerged as a global leader in the journey towards a digital society. It is currently ranked highest in the development of information infrastructure, with the highest penetration rate of broadband Internet (OECD, 2001). As of November 2002, ten million households (or 69 percent of the total number of households) and all schools were connected to broadband Internet. Korea is also ahead of other countries in Internet use; Internet banking is used by about 14.5 million people and 63.5 percent of all stock trading online (as of July 2002). Finally, the IT industry of Korea leads the world market, especially in the areas of semiconductors, mobile phones and LCDs. The rapid development of IT in Korea has been closely related to the shift in the national development strategy from industrialisation to informatisation. Since the 1960s, Korea has emphasized industrialisation as the top priority national agenda and achieved remarkably rapid growth, expanding real GDP by 8.7 times during 1970 - 2001 (Korea Bank, 2002). However, with the current paradigm shift towards a knowledge-based economy, the greatest concern for Korea now is to enhance its competitiveness through productivity increase via informatisation of society as a whole. In fact, investment in IT has drastically increased to US$40 billion in 2001 from US$5.75 billion in 1990 (NCA, 2002b). The economic crisis in 1997 helped accelerate the transition to a knowledge-based economy. The government responded very aggressively to the crisis by expanding IT investment and promoting the use of IT. As a result, Internet use exploded in 1998. The number of Internet users was only 1.6 million in 1997, but it increased to 3.1 million in 1998, 10.8 million in 1999, 19 million in 2000, and reached up to 24.4 million (representing 56.6 percent of the population aged seven and above) by the end of 2001 (KRNIC, 2002). Broadband Internet also demonstrated a similar pattern of growth. The number of households connected to broadband Internet was only 10,000 in 1998, but it increased to 300,000 in 1999, 4 million in 2000, 7.8 million in 2001, and 9.2 million in June 2002 (or 64 percent of all households). Korea enjoys very favourable conditions in other ICT areas. In telecommunications, it entered a mature stage with 57 telephone lines and 61 mobile service subscribers per 100 persons in 2001. Currently, the number of PCs per 100 people is 25, which means Korea is ahead of Italy (19) and Spain (17). Moreover, with Internet cafés prevalent throughout the country, Korean people can access the Internet anywhere any time. The development of the information infrastructure has changed the way Koreans use IT. According to a survey by the Korea Network Information Centre (KRNIC), the proportion of people connecting to the Internet at home increased from 48.8 percent in 2000 to 61 percent in 2001 (NCA, 2002c). In terms of access type, the ratio of xDSL to leased line has reversed from 26:40 in 2000 to 50:28 in 2001. As high-speed Internet is entrenched in everyday life, Internet services have developed from simple information searches to multimedia services, including e-commerce, e-entertainment and e-learning. The digital divide is a major hurdle to overcome in Korea’s transition to a knowledge-based society. For several years, the government has made various efforts to reduce socioeconomic gaps in Internet access. It has provided financial support to telecommunications companies for construction of high-speed information networks in remote areas since 1999 and has developed and sponsored basic computer literacy programmes for 10 million people since 2000. As a result, the digital divide has been narrowed considerably in some typical areas, such as online gender balance. However, there still remains a significant gap with respect to age, income, region and occupation. Since the 1990s, Korea has made remarkable progress in the journey towards a knowledge-based information society. It has pioneered new IT services and markets such as xDSL, CDMA and Internet cafés while constantly trying to keep pace with fast-changing global trends. IT will be the main engine of growth for the Korean society of the future, as it has been for the past ten years. . . . . the complete text of this chapter is available for purchase and immediate download as a PDF file, please click here for more information. |
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