Published April 25, 2001
The most advanced-wired country on Earth now is South Korea. Nineteen million South Koreans (40%) are online, a 612% increase from two years ago.
The government of South Korea, deciding to embrace the Internet Age, ambitiously laid a network of 22,000 kilometers of optical fiber interconnecting 144 cites and towns. The project finished last December, 2000, two years ahead of schedule.
Asia Global Crossing and telecom operator Dacom Corp. have formed a joint venture to increase connectivity between South Korea and the United States. Valued at $80M (100,000M won), the new Dacom Crossing will link to an existing undersea cable.
Just as the Seoul-Pusan Highway marked South Korea’s beginnings of industrialization in the 1970s, the completion of the backbone infrastructure, says President Kim Dae-Jung, represents his country’s economic future, powered by knowledge and information.
Internet activity is booming for South Korea e-trading, gaming and travel. The government’s goal is for 95% of all Korean households to have high-speed Internet access by 2005. Leased lines are available within a week of application. Free Internet access is available at rural post offices.
South Korea’s labor force is 18% college-educated; 60% of high school graduates enroll in colleges and universities. The government is striving to retain its high-tech professionals and attract top international engineering talent. An 840 acre high-tech park being constructed near Inchon is expected to be the Silicon Valley of Asia (completion in 2008).
Broadband and wireless Internet has been accepted by 57% of the people online there. By contrast, only 11% of U.S. households access the Internet via high speed cable or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). By 2004, South Korea’s Internet users could number 36 million (73% of the population) and mobile phone subscriptions double to 31 million, according to Merrill Lynch. Online stock transactions account for more than half of all trading volume on the Korea Stock Exchange.
The national domain name registration for South Korea (.kr) ranks 4th in the world after U.S., Canada, and U.K., and 2nd position for registration of “.com” after the U.S. Seoul registered the most Internet domain names among cities outside the U.S., as of January 2001. Seoul is followed by London, Istanbul, Madrid, Tokyo, Kyonggi, Toronto, Paris and Hong Kong.
Unlike the Americans’ first initiation to the Internet via poky telephone modems, South Korean consumers’ first Internet experience is broadband; they know no other. Media rich Web content is more than just a 30-second snippet of a pop song or video. Web viewing to the South Koreans is the entire movie, the entire video, the entire song, right now.
For the minority of dial-up modem users, all this content is too much, impossibly slow. They seek instead Web sites from Europe and America that are text-based with carefully scaled-down still pictures for faster transfer over modems.
Forty percent of the country’s population density is concentrated mainly in urban apartment buildings where mass high speed connections abound. Very intense competition among broadband service providers has driven costs down. Flat rate ADSL access in South Korea is only US$25 per month for 1.5 megabits per second, and premium ADSL access of 4.0 Mbps is a mere US$34 per month, affordable to most South Koreans.
“The Internet has an interactive function that cable TV doesn’t have,” says Lee Jae-sun of the Korean cable TV music channel m.net. “It’s the perfect interactive medium.” All three television stations, MBC, SBS and KBS, post their original programming on their Web sites for later viewing, for free. And there’s more: full motion streaming of domestic and foreign films, graphics-intensive adventure games, comic books of razor-sharp clarity and age-restricted adult content all online there.
More than half of the 2.5 billion youth below age 20 reside in Asia. South Korean students use their home computers for interactive remote learning, research, teleconferencing, and enjoying favorite television shows, videos and rock music. No waiting for the scheduled broadcast; it’s available whenever desired, on demand. And for those without a computer, up to 40 patrons at each of 26,000 Internet Cafes can enjoy a cup of coffee and a snack while breezing through limitless information and communication online.
“Regional governments must become local information catalysts,” urged Pyung Dae Sim, governor of Chungnam province. Officials disseminate public information online and natural disaster instructions. Technical Internet problems are solved via a 24-hour hotline, and volunteers offer Internet training at town halls.
In real terms of providing widespread affordable Internet to its urban and rural citizenry, South Korea is unparalleled in Asia.