Why a Book on Digital Development in Korea: Reason 1

Here goes.  The idea occurred to me some time ago and I've decided to act on it.  In a series of posts over the next 4-6 months, I'm going to share with readers of this blog some of the reasons why I teamed up recently with Dr. OH, Myung to write our forthcoming book, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society Routledge, March 2011.  Let me be clear from the beginning that these posts reflect my own perspective, not necessarily that of my co-author, who has a long and distinguished career in Korea's ICT sector, and has written or spoken publicly on many of these issues.
One of the first reasons for undertaking this book project was quite simple.  There appeared to be no other scholarly book in existence that examined South Korea's ICT development over the past three decades.  Back in the 1990s I had spent more than two years researching and writing The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1995)  Well over a decade had passed since that book was written, years which I spent as an administrator with the Fulbright Commission in Seoul, formally known as the Korean American Educational Commission, with responsibilities for our academic testing (mainly TOEFL) and technology (the web was becoming the principal channel for study abroad advising).  My personal experience of Korea's burgeoning networks and electronics sector convinced me that an update of my book was in order.  So, I contacted editors at Oxford University Press in New York, London and Hong Kong with my idea.  After some weeks of e-mail consultation, they declined to even receive a proposal for a new book, citing the lack of a market for such in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries.  Whether or not there is/was such a market is a topic for another post.
To some extent it is true that the world took note of South Korea's digital development, especially when it emerged with the arrival of the new millenium as the world leader in broadband internet penetration as shown by leading international measures.  It is also true that the ITU published a short monograph entitled Broadband Korea:  Internet Case Study in 2003, the OECD has published voluminous statistics, and the World Bank has paid attention to the Korean experience through its project and series of publications on Korea As a Knowledge Economy.   Ahonen and O'Reilly's book, Digital Korea, which appeared in 2007 is an industry-oriented survey of the Korean experience.
In addition to these efforts, there was a measureable increase in the number of articles appearing in scholarly journals about the Korean experience.  However, given the magnitude of Korea's ICT-fueled development, one might have expected a dozen doctoral dissertations and at least half that many books to appear over the past decade and a half.   The story of why such research was not undertaken and published in English is a complex one involving lack of Korean language and area expertise on the part of Western scholars, coupled with a lack of incentive for leading Korean scholars to publish in English for a world academic audience.
However, I stand by my argument.  One of the first reasons for co-authoring Digital Development in Korea, was that there were no other books available that offered a similar treatment of this important topic!

Network-centric digital development in Korea: An Update

With the PyeongChang Winter Olympics set to open in just over a month (note the bobsled in the accompanying graphic!) it is highly appropriate that my first post of 2018 deals with Korea's continued network-centric approach to digital development.
The network centric approach is nothing new for South Korea having originated with the start of the digital era in Korea way back in 1980-81.  For those readers interested in more detail,my article entitled "Network Centric Digital Development in Korea: Origins, Growth and Prospects?" was published recently by Telecommunications Policy as part of a special edition for the 40th anniversary of the journal.  It should be downloadable free of charge for another week or two at this link, courtesy of the journal.
The emphasis on building fast, state of the art networks as a core element of Korea's ICT sector policy shows no signs of abating any time soon. As reported by The Korea Bizwire and other local press, the Korean government and industry are planning major investments in 5G network infrastructure in 2018, on the order of $9 billion.  This should come a no surprise given the following realities.

• KT, the official communications provider for the PyeongChang Olympics has promised, from the start, to provide a "5G Olympics," as discussed in this post.   The broader political, economic and technological significance of the Olympics to Korea was a subject of many posts over recent years.
• Korea's commitment to building 5G infrastructure coincides with a similar government policy to build the world's first nationwide public safety LTE networks, a topic also discussed in several earlier posts.  Consequently, it was no coincidence that Korea chose to build the first phase of its public safety networks in PyeongChang, to meet both the networking demands of the Olympic games and the requirements of PS-LTE networks while taking advantage of the Olympics as a showcase for the world to see Korea's network technology in action.
• The ITU is scheduled to make a final decision on global standards for 5G networks in 2020.  Korean companies have been active with international partners and standards organizations.  As noted in The Korea Times last September have "bet big on 5G global standards."

Journal of Communication publishes review of Digital Development in Korea

The Journal of Communication has just published a review of my 2011 book (paperback edition published in 2013) with Dr. Myung Oh, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society.  The review is written by Professor Sung-Young Kim of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who himself is conducting important research on the growth and development of Korea's ICT sector.  The following paragraph is an excerpt from the review:

"To those interested in the field of Communication, Oh and Larson offer an in-depth discussion of how governmental actors sought to bring into reality an information society and in many ways to lead the world in such a project. Beyond studies of Communication, this study will be of interest to writers in comparative political economy especially in relation to industry policy in Korea. The authors also offer clear lessons for policy practitioners in developing countries who seek to follow in Korea’s footsteps in building a domestic presence in the ICT sector. Officials in strategically oriented governments at a similar advanced level of industrial development should also be interested in this study’s focus on the institutions useful for technological upgrading."

Second edition of Digital Development in Korea forthcoming

I'm pleased to let readers of this blog know that the second edition of my book with Dr. Oh Myung (I am the second author) will be published this summer, with a new subtitle.  The full  title is Digital Development in Korea:  Lessons for a Sustainable World. 
Digital development in Korea, with its world-leading networks, is a moving target!  Dr. Oh and I had thought a second edition would be needed after about five years, but other important matters required attention.  Nevertheless, this new book benefited greatly from my work at SUNY Korea over the past five years.  Also, it goes without saying that Dr. Oh's authorship of this volume makes it a unique and important account of what I would call the modern history of Korea's ICT sector.
Some of the key additions to the new book are as follows:

• A new chapter on sustainability and green growth, with emphasis on smart grids.
• Another new chapter on the relationship of ICT to the Olympics (Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games and Seoul 1988 Summer Games)
• Greater emphasis throughout on the concept of "network-centric digital development," including its origins, growth and prospects.
• More extensive and in-depth treatment of the "telecommunications revolution of the 1980s."

During January and February of this year, Dr. Oh and I worked intensively to finalize the manuscript for submission to Routledge.  Earlier this month (May) I reviewed and commented on a copy edited version of the manuscript.  The next step will be to review the page proofs.  Consequently, I have confidence that the July 31 availability date for the printed book is accurate.  See this Routledge page for information.

Digital development and the "telecommunications revolution" in Korea

 

I read with interest an article in The Korea Times today entitled  "SK, KT, LG Cutting Reliance on conventional telecom businesses.  When I began seriously researching the communications revolution in Korea it was called "The telecommunications revolution in Korea"  which became the title of my first book on the topic.  However, it is important to remember that when that book, The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea was published in 1995, no one was discussing either the third or fourth industrial revolution.   However, there was a general recognition that something called digital convergence was at the center of the revolution in telecommunications.  As is now more widely recognized, the digital network revolution that began in the mid twentieth century grew from three developments:  1)the invention of the transistor, 2) Claude Shannon's mathematical theory of communication which launched information theory and 3) the invention of electronic switching, a key enabling technology for the Internet.   These 20th century developments fueled exponential increases in the human ability to store, compute and communicate digital information.  

With 2020 hindsight it is clear that "the telecommunications revolution" that took hold in Korea during the 1980s was centered on the telecommunications industry but involved much more than that.  The growing power of digital computing and storage that have accompanied the rise of the Internet and digital communications are now leading Korea's three leading telecom companies to reposition themselves.  As noted in The Korea Times article, 

"The three major firms are working to reduce their strong telecom image. SKT is contemplating cutting "telecom" from its official company title, while KT has been calling itself an "AI company" or "digital platform company" in the hope of appealing more to business-to-business (B2B) clients.  

LG Uplus has long taken out the word "telecom" from its name and the company's initiatives in the non-telecom sector have shown strong growth in recent years.

SKT aims to become a global big-tech company with new ICT (information and communications technology) as its base. The company plans to increase its non-telecom businesses to over 35 percent of total sales this year."  

A concluding thought:  all of the non-telecom initiatives sought by KT, LG Uplus and SKT are anchored in important ways by digital communications, storage and computing.  A strong argument can be made that telecommunications was and is central to the digital and industrial revolution.

Why a Book on Digital Development in Korea: Reason 2--History

A second major reason for co-authoring my forthcoming book with Dr. OH, Myung (Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society) was the need for historical perspective on Korea's accomplishments.  This is the second post in my informal series on the reasons for the book.
If you're like me, you've read many industry or press reports that make it sound as though the information revolution occurred just within the past few months or perhaps years.  For example, many published reports about Korea's broadband infrastructure access and use begin the story in the mid-1990s or later.
The developments during South Korea's so-called "1980s telecommunications revolution" need to be included in the story to comprehend today's evolving information society here.   As of 1980, the nation suffered from a massive backlog in telephone service, its basic telephone network had only a few imported digital switches, and efforts to enter the semiconductor industry could be described as somewhat hit-and-miss.  The development of Korea's networks and its electronics sector during the 1980s was truly revolutionary.  It also laid the foundation and set precedents for developments in the 1990s and beyond, illustrating what economists refer to as the "on the shoulders of giants" characteristic of information.  That is, information is both an input and and output of its own production process.  As explained by Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of Networks, in order to write today's academic or news article, I need access to yesterday's articles and reports.  So it is with building advanced digital networks.  Also, the technology is continually changing, so that a long-term project to build a certain network over fifteen years might be shorted to ten years owing to technological change.

"Haves" and "Have-Nots" in Korea's Smartphone Era

Right up until 1980, basic telephone service in South Korea was considered a luxury and the lack of adequate telephone networks had created a major social crisis in the country.  However, beginning in 1980, the country instituted changes designed to build modern networks.   From the very beginning, these networks were considered incomplete until they were equally available to all citizens nationwide, reaching the most remote farming and fishing villages in the nation.   This emphasis on universal service, from the start of construction on Korea's digital networks, is described in detail by Dr. OH, Myung and me in our new book, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society (Routledge, March 2011).
South Korea's experience with the utter lack of phone service during the 1970s may explain partly why it worked so hard for so long and invested so much to build the worlds most extensive and fastest digital networks.   This meant that, while the debate about "network neutrality" flourished in the U.S. and Europe, not much was heard here in South Korea.  Until the end of 2009, when the Apple iPhone finally arrived, there was an excess of network capacity and major industry players were concerned about how to increase use of data services!
This background explains why I read with great interest the Joongang Daily's article entitled "Haves and have-nots in the Smart Phone Era."  As shown in the accompanying graphic, (click to see full size version) ownership of smartphones in Korea currently has a great deal to do with level of education, financial status and residence location.  This information is based on a 2010 survey, but it is sure to cause concern among senior policymakers here in South Korea.  However, the problem may soon be ameliorated by the rapidly decreasing cost and increasing power of the so-called smart phones.  In the near future, it may be that "haves" and "have-nots" will be distinguished by the cost of the mobile broadband services they can afford, rather than simply smart phone ownership. 

"South Korea's Smart Phone Love Affair Lures Foreign Suitors": More to the Story

I was reading the paper edition of the International Herald Tribune on an Air Canada flight to Vancouver B.C. yesterday when I ran across the Reuters story "South Korea's Smart Phone Love Affair Lures Foreign Suitors."  As mainstream international journalism goes, it was quite a good report, but it suffers from the same weaknesses that characterize most such reporting about Korea, and about its remarkable ICT sector in particular.  They include a lack of historical perspective and a shortage of data or evidence-based analysis.
First, the Reuters analysis notes that the number of smartphone subscribers in South Korea has exploded more than ten-fold to top 10 million in just 18 months, now accounting for around a fifth of the population. However, the analysis fails to note the most obvious reason for this rapid growth, the fact that development of the smartphone market in South Korea was delayed for about two and one half years by strategic corporate decisions and legal requirements. Indeed, the two and a half years preceding entry of Apple's iPhone into the South Korean market at the end of 2009 provide an extremely informative picture of how government, the major mobile service providers and Korea's handset manufacturers, led by Samsung and LG, approached the situation. The Reuters analysis, while not inaccurate per se, simply fails to provide some of this essential historical perspective.
Second,quoting a Seoul-based industry source, the report notes that smart phones have become a “Trojan horse into the Korean market” for the likes of Google and Facebook, which had a head start on local firms in optimising their offerings for smart phones. This is an insightful point, but again, the Reuters article does not go on to address the question of why the Trojan horse metaphor should apply to Korea in 2010 and 2011. The article mentions the dominance of companies like Daum, Naver and SK Communications in the South Korean market and the PC-based approach in Korea, but stops short of explaining the main reasons for this. These include both the role of language in shaping patterns of internet use and South Korea's half-decade or more lead on the U.S. and other western countries in building its fiber-based information superhighways. These two factors are keys to the dominance of Naver in search and the market leadership of Cyworld in social networking, although simple one to one comparisons of Naver to Google or Cyworld to Facebook and other social networking services are not realistic.
There is much more to all of this than can be conveyed in a blog post.  However, I could not let the interesting Reuters news analysis pass without some comment, since it touches directly on issues treated at some length in my new book, co-authored with Dr. Myung Oh, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society (Routledge, March 2011).  Those of you interested in delving further into the issues touched upon here will want to read portions that book.