Korea's "Green IT" Initiative

I've been invited to a forum presentation on "Green IT" this Friday morning, so thought I would do a little research by way of preparation. A recent article in the Korea IT Times proved most helpful. Green growth has been very much in the news in Korea for a long time, but especially since the inauguration of the Lee Myung Bak government.  On May 13 the Green Growth Commission completed an action plan for the Green New Deal to implement the low carbon, green growth policy.  The government plans to invest a total of 4.2 trillion won (US $3.31 billion) from this year until 2013.  Within this broad initiative, the government's Green IT Plan has two major emphases.  One is to develop green IT products and the other is to use IT to lower energy use and pollution.
The development of green IT products will initially focus on three leading products:  PCs, displays and servers.  With South Korea's world-leading levels of broadband internet use, its PC Bangs, massive multiplayer online games and the growing popularity of cloud computing,  it should hardly come as any surprise that internet data centers used by Korean consumers have a large carbon footprint.  Of course, this also means that this infrastructure offers significant opportunities for reduction of carbon consumption through greener IT products.
The second major emphasis, the use of IT to transform the nation into a lower carbon-usage society offers similar opportunities to help make Korea greener.   Telecommuting can reduce pollution as can the introduction of more intelligence into both public and private transportation systems.  In the forthcoming ubiquitous network society, the combination of a smart electric power grid with home networks offers great opportunities to reduce carbon consumption.  Smart systems to monitor the environment are also in the works.  Finally, let's not forget that Korea's success with Green IT is certain to create success in new export sectors since the problems of energy, global warming and many of the other problems facing the world are now planetary in scope.

Minerva: The Clash Between Korea's Online and Offline Cultures

Choe, Sang Hun had a very thoughtful column the other day in the New York Times.  It dealt with the case of Minerva, the online alias used by Park Dae-sung who attracted a cult-like following over a period of several months last year with his postings about the economy on one of Korea's popular web portals.  Minerva quickly became famous based on predictions like the fall of Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the Korean won.  When Mr. Park was arrested last January, it turned out that he was 31 and jobless, had attended a two-year college and had never even invested in the stock market.  One of his crimes, according to prosecutors, was to state that the Korean government had barred banks and major companies from buying American dollars in a desperate attempt to check the fall of the won.
As Choe, Sang Hun correctly notes, the case of Minerva highlights the contrast between Korea's offline Confucian culture in which seniority and heirarchy rule, and the anonymity of cyberspace which allows people to flout decorum.  Indeed, some officials see the internet as a hotbed of anti-government activity and slander.  Many who participated in the anti-beef import protests in the summer of 2008 which paralyzed the Lee Myung Bak government, were responding to online rumors rather than real events.
On April 20 Park was acquitted by the courts, but the manner in which he has been vilified helps to show the depth of the gulf between South Korea's offline and online cultures.  According to the column, In some of his 280 postings, Mr. Park lied about his age and background (once indicating he had worked on Wall Street), helping to create the myth about him. He apologized for using obscenities against President Lee, but he argued that the liberties he took in constructing his online identity were “part of the emerging Internet culture and should not be judged by offline norms.”"
The case of Minerva helps to illuminate the political and cultural stresses and strains that accompany rapid changes in a nation's media environment and its transition to an information society.  This column is one starting point for understanding some of these changes.

Green IT --South Koreas Photovoltaic (PV) Industry

SEMICON Korea earlier this year included a half-day session on the PV industry that provided some interesting details on this nation's ambitious plans. An industry web site noted that "With leaders in flat panel display technology such as Samsung and LG Philips, strong government support and research infrastructure, and with an established supply chain that is extensible to PV manufacturing, many observers believe Korea may emerge to challenge for worldwide leadership in solar energy." The specific goals include increases in the efficiency of cells, a decrease in their cost, and capturing 10 percent of world market share by 2012. For details see the full article.

Stickybot: The Global Nature of New Technology

Stickybot" is a quadruped robot capable of climbing smooth surfaces, such as glass, acrylic and whiteboard using directional adhesive.  What is more interesting for the purpose of this post is that Sangbae Kim, a Korean Ph.D. student at Stanford University, was the lead designer of this amazing little robot.  A graduate of Yonsei University, Sangbae has already completed an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and is working on his Ph.D with a special focus on bio-inspired robots.  If you doubt at all that this is inspirational work, please view the embedded video of "Stickybot" in action.  In the mid-1990s I taught for two years at the National University of Singapore and on more than one occasion I fell asleep after watching a tiny gecko crawl across the ceiling of my bedroom.  The biological similarities to real geckos that Kim Sangbae and his team have captured are truly amazing!  For those of you wishing to explore this in more depth, I recommend Mr. Kim's website.
All of this is very significant in light of my earlier posts about South Korea's goals for its robotics industry. Korea has declared its intent to focus on service robots, including networked robots.  It requires only a little imagination to think about what future versions of "Stickybot" and other biomimetic robots might offer in this regard.
Kim Sangbae has, appropriately, received many accolades for his work.  What I'd like to stress here are the following aspects of this story.

• It shows clearly that advanced technology development these days is inherently global or transnational. 
• Korea's future technology development and competitiveness will draw on students educated in Korea, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
• It seems that South Korea has a bright future in robotics.

I hope you all enjoy the video!  More on this topic in future posts.

Korea Aims for Top Three Nations in Robotics

The Korean government aims to develop its domestic robotics industry into one of the world’s top three by 2013, officials said in April 2009. According to an article in the Joongang Ilbo, the government plans to spend 1 trillion won on research and development in the robot sector over the next five years, which will likely allow Korea to take a 13.3 percent share of the worldwide robotics market, according to the Ministry of Knowledge and Economy’s report to President Lee Myung-bak. In terms of production, the Korean robot industry ranked fifth as of last year, followed by Japan, the United States, Germany and Italy, according to the ministry.
Korea’s global market share stands at 8.9 percent, with exports topping $180 million.
More state research investment would help raise the size of the domestic market, from the current 896 billion won to 4 trillion won in 2013, while the world market for robotics is expected to reach $30 billion by the same year.  Since 2002, the government has invested an average of 82.1 billion won annually in robots. Specifically, the government plans to develop robots that are capable of performing surgery, acting as security guards, farming, doing housework and navigating submarines and aircraft.