IT in S. Korea
Among all countries that I have visited, S. Korea is the most impressive and the most successful in improving its technology and education system. The drive to establish a knowledge society has been actively carried out by the government based upon a master plan concentrated on its information technology infrastructure. For many years, S. Korea have established a favorable business environments by lower cost using telecommunication infrastructure, good tax incentives, and financial supports. These activities have resulted in large number of small and medium-sized IT company with strong market position. The government also encourages the continuous development of technology which resulting in thousands research facilities that attracted significant amount of foreign investments and facilitated the development of the domestic IT industry.
Today, S. Korea has a super high-speed network throughout the entire country that linked all cities, towns and even small villages. Its broadband internet already reached 93% of household and is probably the world's best information infrastructure. Let me give you some facts: In S. Korea, every classroom in all primary, secondary schools and universities is connected to the super high-speed internet network and it is free for all teachers and students so they can make the best use of technology in education. Its e-Government implementation is so successful that 82% of government administration processing are now being conducted through this system. Information Technology has been actively used both in business and in government sectors, as well as in individual level. The total size of e-commerce has already surpassed $ 83 billion USD and expected to grow at the rate of 7% per year. High adoption rate in Mobile Internet and its application have encouraged better development of related technology. Today, S. Korea ranks in top manufacture in LCD and Mobile phone. With continuous efforts to develop new technology and to reach niche market abroad. As part of Korean government effort to develop IT industry, Privatization and Market Deregulation in Telecommunication market has encouraged fair market competition between companies resulting in lower price for telecommunication and better service and created favorable business environments for all businesses.
S. Korean people use the Internet for almost everything. From searching information, sending e-mailing, and texting to shopping, entertainments through multimedia and gaming. This require business that provide the services to continuously improve quality of contents, faster services and better customer experience. In addition, as the usage of mobile internet grows, the demand for the diversity of available contents and functions are growing and so is the demand for more IT workers. The total number of IT workers in S. Korea is about 300,000 people, most have high level of education (University level) with many skilled IT professionals. For several years, the IT focus has been in the hardware and communication areas, especially on IT infrastructure, the application of IT in business such as semiconductor, mobile phone, and LCD markets. Recently, government begins to pay more attention to software and its applications and the number of higher education programs in computer science, software engineering is also increasing.
Overall, most Korean believe that IT is the most important for a Knowledge-based society as it facilitates better economic growth than other areas so they have adapted IT technology more rapidly than any Asian countries. Despite these advantages, S. Korea still has some weaknesses: There is a continuous shortage of IT skilled workers, although government tries to facilitate the supply through several education improvement programs but the shortage is still growing. Because of the shortage, the wages for IT workers is getting higher every year so many companies have to outsource works to China, especially in the Northeastern area such as Dalian technology park where there are many Korean-speaking Chinese IT workers. However, due to recent financial crisis there is a widespread unemployment among graduated student so there are some opinions regarding keeping a limit on the number of work that can be sent oversea. From what I have seen, most outsourcing IT works to China are kept to non-core software works such as testing, programming, or web designing. Higher level skills such as architecture, design, management and most research are still be conducted in Korea because of favorable environments, well-developed infrastructure and high level of skilled workforce. Today, the Korean government has initiated several vocational education programs and re-training of workers for IT skills that are in high demand to keep IT works in the country.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
