Digital Development in Korea

Lessons for a Sustainable World

Myung Oh, James F. Larson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367076917
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429663970
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Médias numériques

Digital Development in Korea explores the central role of digital information and communication technology in South Korea. Analyzing the role of ICT in green growth and sustainability, this new edition also demonstrates how concerns over public safety and the Olympic Games are shaping next generation digital networks.

Presenting a network-centric perspective to contextualize digital development politically, economically and socially, as well as in relation to globalization, urbanization and sustainability, this book builds on fi rsthand experience to explain the formulation and implementation of key policy decisions. It describes the revolutionary changes of the 1980s, including privatization and color television and the thorough restructuring that created a telecommunications sector. It then goes on to explore the roles of government leadership, international development and education in affecting the diffusion of broadband mobile communication, before weighing up the positive and negative aspects of Korea's vibrant new digital media.

Seeking to identify aspects of the Korean experience from which developing countries around the world could benefi t, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers interested in communications technologies, Korean studies and developmental studies.

1 Digital development as Korea’s destiny

Placing the “Miracle on the Han” in context

Korea is a mountainous peninsula, with mountains occupying over 70 percent of the land area. The mountain ridges and the rivers that flow through adjacent valleys form a dense network, clearly visible from space that has shaped Korean culture and patterns of human communication from time immemorial. As long ago as the Chosun Dynasty, smoke and fire beacons were used to speed communication throughout the nation’s mountainous terrain. Mountains are not just an indelible part of Korea’s physical world, but of her mentality and consciousness as well. The influence of mountains is deeply embedded in the emotions, knowledge, beliefs and values of Korea.¹ For example, mountain ridges play a central role in one of Korea’s treasured myths as expressed in the “Arirang” folk song.

Today a new, denser set of advanced, digital communication networks weaves its way throughout the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. Less visible to the human eye, these fiber optic, mobile and satellite networks have propelled South Korea from a follower in electronics and telecommunications to a world leader in the field. As a 2003 report by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) put it, “Korea is the leading example of a country rising from a low level of ICT access to one of the highest in the world.”² An extensive study by the World Bank of Korea’s emergence as a knowledge economy came to essentially the same conclusion.³ After the turn of the millennium Korea solidified its position as an ICT leader. As shown in Table 1.1, Korea maintained its position at or near the top of world rankings on the ITU’s ICT development index (IDI), which is composed of sub-indices measuring access, use and skills.⁴ It ranked number one in five of the seven years for which the ITU reported data from 2010 through 2017.⁵

The Republic of Korea’s development story, rising as it did from the ashes of the Korean War to its present status as one of the world’s most economically advanced nations, is the source of its appellation the “Miracle on the Han.” Furthermore, the electronics industries became the main driver of Korea’s economic growth beginning in the late 1980s and Korea’s burgeoning ICT sector was the main engine of economic growth in the decades since. During the last half of the 20th century Korea alone, among developing nations, rose from the status of an aid recipient to that of an aid donor. In 2010 it officially became a member of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).⁶ No other country in the world has achieved such success against such odds.

Table 1.1ICT Development Index (IDI) for top-ranked nations, 2010–2017

While miracles by their very nature defy explanations, the “Miracle on the Han” can be better understood if placed in a sharper and clearer context. The iconic photograph in Figure 1.1 of the Korean Peninsula at night symbolically suggests the importance of such context. Taken from the International Space Station in January of 2014,⁷ it shows at a glance the perspective added by distance. Several elements of the photograph stand out. First, there is the stark contrast between the darkness in North Korea and the light throughout most of South Korea, reflecting the South’s rapid urbanization and socioeconomic development, which was not shared by the North. Second, the photograph shows the concentration of light and population in South Korea’s major urban areas, led by the national capital metropolitan area around Seoul, and including Busan, Daegu, Daejon and other major cities. Third, the demilitarized zone, which curves along the 38th parallel, is clearly delineated by lighting along its southern border. This military division represents the cease-fire agreement rather than an official end to the Korean War. The one small dot of light north of the DMZ beyond the northern edge of the Seoul metropolitan area is Kaesong, site of the industrial complex jointly operated by North and South Korea. Finally, Korea’s mountain valleys mentioned at the outset are shown in this photograph as lines of light along transportation routes that still to this day follow along rivers and streams, connecting cities and villages. Some of the most mountainous areas in the northeastern Gangwon province and further down the east coast stand out from the big urban areas. In short, even this snapshot from space suggests the sort of context needed to fully understand Korea’s miraculously rapid socioeconomic development over recent decades.

The primary focus of this book is on the role of digital communication networks and related technologies in South Korea’s development since 1980. Given Korea’s mountainous terrain, its relative lack of natural resources and the country’s utter devastation in the wake of the Korean War, it was an unlikely candidate to become a leader in digital technologies. As of 1980 Korea was still a poor developing country, unable to provide even basic, plain old telephone service (POTS) to most of its citizens. In such circumstances, digital development represented a course that could be pursued through education and sustained human effort. In retrospect, it seems that digital development was the nation’s destiny.

Figure 1.1The Koreas at night

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Within Korea, especially among the technocrats and engineers who planned and built the nation’s networks, the introduction of digital networks came to be called the “1980s telecommunications revolution.” Indeed, Dr. Oh Myung is widely recognized as the principal architect and godfather of that revolution. However, the story of Korea’s digital development is still only vaguely understood by many international observers, recalling Isaacs’ observation in 1958 that “Vagueness about Asia has been until now the natural condition even of the educated American.”⁸ Isaacs was explicitly concerned with the relationship of image holding to policymaking and based his findings on panel interviews with nationally prominent representatives from academia, the media, government and business.

In today’s digital media environment, vagueness and misperceptions of Korea persist and, as in Isaacs’ era, they can only detract from sound and effective policymaking. One major reason for such vagueness is the lack of historical, cultural, political or economic context. The historical or temporal relationship of digital innovation in Korea to that taking place in companies and countries around the world assumes importance for two reasons. First, Korea reaped advantages because it introduced digital networks approximately at the same time they were first being tested and installed in other parts of the world. Second, one must consider the cumulative nature of the technologies that go into the construction of advanced digital networks. Existing knowledge and expertise is needed to build the next generation of networks, illustrating what economists call the “on the shoulders of giants” effect.

In cultural terms, there is the sheer difficulty for non-Koreans of mastering Korea’s language and culture. The Foreign Service Institute in the U.S. Department of State ranks Korean along with Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese) and Japanese as an exceptionally difficult and time consuming language for native English speakers to learn.⁹ Consequently, some published studies show a tendency to conflate characteristics of Korea with those of its larger neighbors, China and Japan.

To illustrate the problem, consider two glaring errors in the otherwise excellent 2003 study conducted by experts for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In the opening chapter the authors erroneously claim that the Korean alphabet, hangul, weighed against the country’s ICT development because it used a pictographic font that is not ideally suited to computerization.¹⁰ Exactly the opposite is true as hangul consists of consonants and vowels, not pictographs, and is ideally suited to computerization and various types of keyboard input. Hangul not only allowed the rapid achievement of near-universal literacy in Korea during the latter half of the 20th century, but it was also a significant factor driving ICT literacy.¹¹

The ITU study also contains another major error most likely deriving from a lag in international reporting of data. It presents a bar graph depicting the size of the waiting list for telephone service by year from 1982 through 1992.¹² Unfortunately, the graph indicates that the backlog (waiting list) in provision of telephone service persisted through 1988, when in fact it had been eliminated almost two years earlier, with completion of the nationwide public switched telephone network in June of 1987.¹³

Another example of misperceptions can be found in Fransman’s book about the new ICT ecosystem.¹⁴ In it he stresses the importance of each country prioritizing its goals and objectives and then benchmarking performance against the global leaders and a group of comparable countries. Using the example of broadband he suggests that international benchmarking “reveals that Japan is significantly ahead of the rest of the world.”¹⁵ Unfortunately, the empirical evidence contradicts his argument that Japan has the fastest internet download speeds in the world. As illustrated by Figure 1.2 for over a decade since 2007 Korea’s broadband networks have consistently offered the fastest average download times in the world, exceeding those of Japan, Hong Kong and the U.S.

Based on data collected in the first quarter of 2014, the OECD Broadband Portal reported that measurements by M-Lab and Ookla also showed Korea with a significant lead in download speeds over Japan.¹⁶

A major purpose of this book is to help policymakers, industry leaders, academics and citizens better contextualize South Korea’s network-centric, ICT-driven development. It focuses on the origins of the nation’s digital networks, their expansion in recent decades, their contribution to socioeconomic development and prospects for next generation networks. A main concern throughout is with policy issues bearing directly on digitization of networks, network architecture and network technologies, along with the historical, cultural, political and economic context in which these policies were considered, drafted and implemented.¹⁷ This book addresses the following questions:

Figure 1.2Average internet connection speed in selected countries, 2007–2017

Source: Akamai State of the Internet Reports

• How could a resource-poor nation whose industrial development in the 1960s and 1970s focused on heavy manufacturing industries make the transition to digital network-driven development in the 1980s?
• How and why did the ICT sector emerge as the main engine of Korean development, and what policies were implemented to accomplish this?
• What was the nature of government-led telecommunications policy, including the changing nature of the gover...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface to the second edition
• Preface to the first edition
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Digital development as Korea’s destiny: placing the “Miracle on the Han” in context
• 2 The origins of network-centric digital development in Korea
• 3 Building the “information superhighways”: government leadership in the broadband network era
• 4 Korea’s smart cities and urban information culture
• 5 Education, research and development for the hyperconnected era
• 6 The global rise of Korea’s electronics industry: international trade and exports
• 7 Energy and ICT: transition to green growth and sustainable development
• 8 The Olympics and digital development
• 9 Next generation networks: the convergence of 5G and public safety LTE networks
• 10 Korea’s place in cyberspace: lessons for a sustainable world
• Index