Communicating Korea's Telecommunications Accomplishments

In the naming and renaming of government ministries recently, the Ministry of Information and Communication was eliminated and its functions dispersed in three directions. Some of its functions were place in a new ministry, initially given the English name of "Ministry of the Knowledge-based Economy," and quickly changed to "Ministry of Knowledge Economy." Other functions go to the new Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, while still others will go to the new Broadcasting and Communications Commission. So, as matters stand, the terms information and communication, along with their variants, no longer find their place in a Ministry name. The problem here is the public, instantly global message this sends. Put otherwise, it is the challenge of properly "branding" and communicating South Korea's considerable achievements in the field of communications, telecommunications and information society development. Internationally, two aspects of this problem are apparent:

• As Suh Seung-Mo, the chairman of Korea IT SME & Venture Business Association,put it in a January 9, 2008 article in ZDNetKorea, "while competing foreign countries have been establishing IT related government organizations, Korea is likely to go back against this international trend. If so, it will discredit the Korean image of IT superpower that we have built."
• The major international organizations in this field, notably the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have adopted the terminology of "information" and "communication" as well. A glance at the ITU website will see the priority given to the World Summit on the Information Society and to information and communications technology and terminology generally. The OECD website is also loaded with information that uses this terminology. Both organizations, along with other international bodies, are concerned with the digital divide, the internet economy, the growth of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the shaping of a global information society.

The risk Korea takes in eliminating a ministry that contained both "information" and "communication" in favor of the Knowledge Economy Ministry, is that it it may detract from the nation's efforts to help shape the ongoing international dialogue and detract from the branding of Korea's information society efforts, broadly speaking. Readers internationally will immediately wonder what the new Ministries do and what is the significance of their names. Finally, as readers of this blog will know, I have been making a case that developments in information and communications technology (ICT), represented by Moore's law, underpin the emerging "information age" or "information society." Just as communication is the fundamental human process, ICT is the fundamental source of development in such diverse fields as biology, nanotechnology, medical sciences, energy infrastructure and artificial intelligence, to name a few. The issue of fundamental or basic, versus applied research is important and will be addressed in future posts.

South Korea's International Patent Filings Continue Growth

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, 2007 saw a record number of international patent applications, a total of 156,100. South Korea ranked fourth in the world, behind the United States, Japan and Germany, as shown in the accompanying graphic (click to enlarge). Korea and China were the leading sources of patent filings in Northeast Asia and their rate of growth in patent applications from 2006 to 2007 was much higher than other countries around the world. “The growth in patent filings by a number of countries in north east Asia and their share of overall patenting activity is impressive and confirms shifting patterns of innovation around the world,” said Dr. Kamil Idris, Director General of WIPO. He further noted that “Strategic use of the patent system is a business imperative in today’s knowledge-driven economy. The success of the PCT is largely due to the sustained use of the system by some of the world’s foremost innovation-based companies.” The largest proportion of these applications published in 2007 related to the telecommunications (10.5%), information technology (10.1%) and pharmaceuticals (9.3%) sectors. The fastest growing technology areas are nuclear engineering (24.5% increase) and telecommunications (15.5%). The list of the world's top fifty organizations applying for patents included LG Electronics (13th) and Samsung Electronics (20th), LG Chemical (36th) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) (41st).

Some Thoughts on Growth Engines: Telecommunications and Shipbuilding

One of my Google alerts produced an item from the Electronic Times Newspaper 전자신문 that caught my eye. The headline was "Add IT to Shipbuilding." This prompts me to expand on a thought that has been recurring lately, as commentators note the need for Korea to find new growth engines to support future expansion of the economy. I would argue that electronics and information technology is THE fundamental growth engine, not only for South Korea but for all modern economies. In a broader sense, as Wilbur Schramm, a founding father of the field of communication research as a social science, once noted, "communication is the fundamental social process." On the technology side of communications, as a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times put it, "If innovation has a heart, it’s probably a semiconductor, beating to the pace of Moore’s Law." That article goes on to describe how, using nanotechnology, IBM has developed self-assembly techniques that may prolong the life of Moore's law (the prediction that the number of transistors that can be placed on a single chip approximately doubles every 18 months--see graph, courtesy of The Economist). The telecommunications revolution in South Korea, which began in the 1980s, will likely continue for the foreseeable future, driven primarily by developments in information technology. These IT developments will, in turn, provide the basis for advancements in many fields, including nanotechnology, biotechnology, space research, construction, transportation and yes, shipbuilding. The recent report on shipbuilding notes that Korea's world-leading status is threatened because it is sandwiched between China,competitive in price, and European shipbuilders, who lead in the construction of high-value added ships. The solution? Shin Jung-hoon, CEO of Cadwin System, a shipbuilding architecture software developer, said, “Although it is a hefty industry, the shipbuilding industry takes a while to adopt new software. (Korea) is even slower than China, Japan and even Vietnam in introducing new software.” The same article noted that the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) had signed an MOU with the Ulsan city government, the Ulsan University and Hyundai Heavy Industry to cooperate in the IT based development of shipbuilding business. In November of 2007, the inter-Korean prime ministers' meeting agreed to begin construction of a shipbuilding factory in Anbyeon in the first half of 2008 and to modernize a ship repair factory in Nampo as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, telecommunications was one of the three main agenda items that North and South Korea discussed to further these joint efforts. And so, the telecommunications revolution in Korea continues to unfold.

Korea Posts Large Digital Electronics Trade Surplus in 2007

The news is out. According to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE), Korea’s trade surplus in the digital electronics sector reached a record $57.1 billion in 2007, fueled by strong global demand for display panels and semiconductors. Total exports of digital electronics rose 8.9 percent year-on-year to $124.9 billion, while imports gained 10.1 percent to $67.8 billion. Exports of liquid-crystal display panels rose 36.4 percent over 2006. According to the Ministry Korea’s total exports rose 14.2% year-on-year to USD $371.8 billion in 2007. Digital electronics accounted for $124.9 billion or 33.6 percent South Korea's total exports. More evidence, if any were needed, that information and communication technology is the primary growth engine of Korea's economy today. This is especially true since exports of digital electronics do not factor in their influence on other leading export sectors such as automobiles, steel, general machinery or shipbuilding.

About This Blog's Author and My Interest in Korea

One of my pet peeves about web sites in general and blogs in particular is that some of them don't make it easy to find out who has authored the material, what organization supports the content and so forth. To avoid that problem with this blog, I've posted a prominent link to my personal website, http://www.jamesflarson.com/ However, it occurred to me that, even on that site, it requires a couple of clicks to get to the May 2000 article in the Korean edition of Newsweek. Yet that article is probably the most interesting biographical information to explain my interests. It was published in Korean and I've also posted an English translation. Use the following links.

• Global Citizen Feature--original Korean language article
• Global Citizen Feature--English translation

Some Thoughts on Telecommunications Service in Korea and the U.S.

In November of 2003 my wife and I purchased a small plot of land in a small town located in the mountains of Kangwon Province at an elevation of about 2,000 feet. Exactly how and why we did that is the subject of another post. It is situated alongside an expressway and we can drive there in just under two hours via either the expressway or a major national highway (providing that we avoid the massive exodus from Seoul and the same vehicle's return which now characterizes most weekends here). Our location in the mountains is considered rural, and although it bustles somewhat during ski season, it can be described as a quiet little town most of the year.

By February of 2004, despite some snow and frigid winter weather, we had placed a small container house on the property so that we could utilize it as a weekend getaway. The small house was cozy enough, but we wanted to install internet service. So, on a Thursday one week in February, my wife called Korea Telecom and made an appointment for them to come and install ADSL service on Saturday of that week. As it turned out, it was snowing rather heavily when we arrived at our place on Saturday and the young KT service representative actually asked my wife by phone whether we could postpone the installation of their Megapass ADSL service. However, she explained that we were only there on weekends and wanted it installed according to our agreement. As the photo to the left testifies, we did get the service connected that day! The experience says volumes, not only about service in Korea today, but about how the Korean experiences of the 1960s, 70s and especially the "revolution" of the 1980s helped shape the information society they are building today.

P.S. As I recall, when my family and I moved to Boulder Colorado, U.S.A. in 1994, we waited more than two weeks to have basic telephone service installed!