Digital Divide & Cyber Korea 21 Initiative

By Yang Seung-taik

Korea has its own share of forlorn memories. As recently as the early 1980s, Koreas penetration rate for fixed line telephones stood at a mere 7 percent. This was not surprising in a country that caught the last ride to industrialization and consequently did not have much of an infrastructure. Nevertheless, there was a common understanding formed among the Korean people that even though they were late in industrialization, they will not allow themselves to repeat the same mistake in informatization. With this fervent determination resounding in every corner of Korean society, the Korean government made an all-out effort to nurture the ICT sector and to digitize the nation. However, the technological innovation by itself would not have brought Korea the current success. What is equally important is the market demand that pulls the technology. This was the rationale of President Kim Dae-jung when he made the pledge at his inauguration speech in 1998, to make Korea the most computer literate nation in the world. And in order to fulfill this pledge, Korea initiated a computer and Internet training program targeting 25 percent of the total population, and distributed low price computers to allow more people to gain access to the Internet. This effort created not only the vital human infrastructure but also demand and market for ICT industry. And today, I can say with strong conviction that the effort had not been made in vein. Korea now has the most advanced wired and wireless information communication infrastructure in the world and has risen as the global leader in the ICT. Korea's fixed-line telephone penetration rate currently stands at over 50 percent. In 1996, Korea was successful in making the CDMA technology a commercially viable mobile communication system. And since then, 63 percent of the total population, which amounts to 30 million people, have subscribed to the mobile service. Korea became one of the leading countries in CDMA mobile communications. But Korea's aim was no longer to follow but to excel. Therefore, we wasted no time in moving on to the next generation mobile communication technology and this effort

was rewarded in full when Korea became the first country in the world to start the third generation mobile communication service. At present, one and half years after the launch of the service, there are over 7 million mobile Internet subscribers using the third-generation (3G) phone services. Over 50 percent of Koreans are now utilizing Internet in their everyday lives. And 8.5 million Korean households are connected to the broadband Internet at the minimum of 1 megabit per second. By the end of this year, the number of households is expected to increase even further to 10 million, which implies that 80 percent of the total households will be connected to the broadband network. In March 2002, the Korean government declared that the broadband Internet service would become a universal service for Korean people. These facts will permit Korea to be recognized as one of countries that have reached the highest level of informatization. The significance of Korea's success does not solely lie in the fact that it was achieved in such a short period of time, but what is rather more of a consequence is that it has provided Korea with an extremely fertile soil where the seeds of the knowledge-based industry could be sewn. In fact, Korea's ICT industry has been enjoying the fertility of the grounds for quite a while and thus, was able to emerge as the main pillar of the Korean economy, accounting for 13 percent of GDP and 30 percent of the total export volume. At this point, it may be of some importance to mention briefly how Korea came to achieve such success. In 1995, Korea enacted the Basic Law on Informatization Promotion, and in 1996 established the Informatization Promotion Fund. In 1997, Korea formed its first inter-ministerial Informatization Strategy Council chaired by the President himself. This allowed the different agencies and ministries to coordinate their respective informatization policies. The first success factor was a strong will and a clear vision of President Kim Dae-jung and the comprehensive informatization promotion plan that was devised to materialize the vision and the will of the president. Furthermore, in 1999, Korea implemented the Cyber Korea 21 Initiative. Thus Korea was equipped with the necessary laws, funding, organization and program. The second success factor is the Internet training program Korea has provided to eliminate the digital divide between the socio-economic classes and regions. Such training of the general population is extremely valuable as it creates the market demand. Therefore, the Korean government placed a great of emphasis on creating Internet-friendly classrooms at every level of school by connecting to the broadband

Internet service free of charge. On top of that, Korea offered Internet and computer literacy programs targeting 10 million Koreans including the housewives, military personnel, the physically challenged and even the inmates in prison and juvenile correction centers. This resulted in forming a wide base for informatization thereby generating a huge demand for ICT. The third factor that contributed to Korea's success is the introduction of competition in the telecommunication market. Competition is a must for a healthy and prosperous market economy. The sudden surge of demand for ICT meant an enormous profit for the telecommunication service providers. The promise of a huge profit was a big enough incentive for the service providers to enter the market thereby creating a fiercely competitive business environment. Due to this competitive market environment, the service providers had little choice but to maintain low telecommunication tariffs. And as low tariffs attracted an enormous number of subscribers and created still more demand, a virtuous cycle in the broadband Internet service was created. The fourth factor and one of the most important, was the development of a human pool and core information and communication technologies. Korea made investment not only in technological development but also in human development to prepare for future ICT growth. As the government and the private sector became united under a common objective, Korea was able to develop and commercialize strategically important information and communication technologies. One of the most successful cases occurred in the 1980s, when Korea made what seemed at the time to be an astounding investment of $40 million to develop its indigenous electronic switching system (TDX-1). The success of this project signified that Korea became the 10th country in the world to successfully develop its own electronic switching system, but Korea found that there was much more to it than what was immediately visible. The success of the TDX-1 project had given the long-sought confidence to the Korean ICT sector. This confidence enabled the Korean industry and government to challenge many large-scale technology development projects. And based on the technological innovations and accumulated know-how, Korea was able to take on the world with such market-leading ICT products as CDMA, memory chips, TFT-LCD, broadband Internet and related equipments, satellite transmission equipments and digital TV. Human resources are vital in a nation like Korea where other natural resources are so extremely limited. The Korean ICT sector would not have amounted to what it is now

if Korea did not have an outstanding talent pool to draw upon. There must be millions of ways to support developing nations in their struggle for informatization but in doing so, we have to keep in mind that it is better to teach the hungry person how to catch the fish than just hand him the fish. I believe that this Korean experience should be very useful for the nations in the process of informatization. Korea is willing to share its hard earned know-how and experiences to the nations in need. Korea has already taken up the cause to bridge the digital divide. In November 2000, President Kim proposed the Special Initiative for Asian Cooperation to solve the digital divide issues and this has become a guideline in Korea's quest for the elimination of the digital divide. At the same time Korea is a founding member of the Development Gateway Foundation, which is initiated by the World Bank in an effort to close the Digital Divide. In addition, Korea has trained over 1,500 ICT talents of the developing nations since 1991 as a part of the effort to share Korean experience and bring up telecommunication experts in these nations. And since the beginning of the 1990s, Korea has sent 250 IT experts to 25 countries and has started dispatching young volunteers to over 20 nations beginning last year in order to teach Internet usage skills. At the same time, Korea helped to build regional information and telecommunication centers and supported various ICT training projects in the developing nations through Korea-Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Cooperation Fund and the Korea-Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP) Fund. However, bridging the digital divide is an overpowering task and cannot be carried out by one country alone. Therefore, I urge the advanced nations and entities, to involve themselves deeper in this endeavor. Source: http://search.hankooki.com/ 06/2002