Information Technology Revolution in the Republic of Korea: Rise of the Knowledge-Based Society
Abstract
It took the Republic of Korea only two decades to revolutionize its telecommunications industry and change the lives of an entire generation of consumers. Prior to the 1980s, as the military governments pursued the export-led industrialization strategy, domestic service industry, including the telecommunications market, was by and large ignored: telecommunications facilities were worn out, there was a chronic imbalance between the supply and demand in telecommunications services sector resulting in notoriously poor quality of service and a constant backlog of households and organizations seeking to subscribe to a fixed-telephone line.1 However, the situation began to change radically in the early 1980s when public demand for improved quality of life and better communications services became overwhelming as a function of the overall economic growth, extraordinary and sustained investment in higher education, the governments strong initiatives (especially, the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games), and widening democratization movement. In response to the domestic consumer demand and international market pressures, the government decided to liberalize the telecom industry, by spinning off and privatizing the telecommunications businesses in the short and medium term and opening up the telecommunications sector to foreign competition in the long run. As part of its fifth five-year economic development plan that set forth the goal of increasing the number of fixed lines to six million and enhancing the communications infrastructure in remote areas, in January 1982, the Ministry of Communications spun off the Korean Telecommunication Authority, the precursor of Korea Telecom, and made it a fully government-funded public corporation with responsibility for all telecommunications businesses, except data communications.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- AD1032396
Entities
People
- Alexandre Y. Mansourov
Organizations
- Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies