"5G Movie in a second": Korea intends to maintain its lead in speed

A few days ago, as reported in a Korean language news bulletin largely translated by AFP,  the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced the Korean government's intention to introduce a 5G wireless service fast enough to download a full length movie in one second. "We helped fuel national growth with 2G services in the 1990s, 3G in the 2000s and 4G around 2010. Now it is time to take preemptive action to develop 5G," the ministry said in a statement. "Countries in Europe, China and the US are making aggressive efforts to develop 5G technology ... and we believe there will be fierce competition in this market in a few years," it said. Under the roadmap, a trial 5G service will be rolled out in 2017 and a fully commercial service in December 2020. Priority will be given to developing key features for the new network, including Ultra-HD and hologram transmission as well as cutting-edge social networking services. The Korean language news release specifically mentions implementation of R&D projects in connection with the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics. A major goal of this project is to make Korea more competitive in the network infrastructure equipment market globally. According to the Future Ministry, Korea currently has only a 4.4 percent share of this market. AFP reported that "Chinese equipment makers including Huawei have expanded their presence in the global market from 12 percent in 2007 to 26 percent in 2012. Huawei announced in November that it was looking at a 5G commercial rollout by 2020, with a minimum investment of $600 million to develop the technology. Seoul intends to take up to a 20 percent stake in the world's telecom infrastructure equipment market by 2020, according to the ministry." This announcement by South Korea's leading ICT-sector ministry is hardly surprising given the nation's track record in recent decades. Many expect Korea to be a major player in development of the world's next generation network infrastructure. However, as noted in earlier posts, the real value to be created by next generation networks will be in the content, services and software that run on them.

Government restructuring and ICT-led innovation in Korea: Telecommunications Policy Article now in press

Those of you with access to the journal, Telecommunications Policy, can now access the full version of my article with Professor Park, Jaemin of Konkuk University entitled "From developmental to network state:  Government restructuring and ICT-led innovation in Korea."  It has gone online as an article "in press."  Elsevier has also published a short slide show which contains some highlights from the article and can be accessed here.   Readers who would like a PDF copy of the "in press" article should feel free to contact me via my online form here.
The article originated as a paper that we wrote for last year's Pacific Telecommunications Council annual conference, PTC '13 in January of 2013.  Subsequently we substantially revised the paper for submission and review by the journal.

Pacific Telecommunications Council annual conference--Day 2

We're into day two of PTC14, the annual conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu.  The overall conference theme this year is "New World, New Strategies."  Yesterday I made a presentation based on my paper with Dr. Hwang, Jong-Sung of the National Information Society Agency entitled "Citizens, Corporations and Government in Korea's Smart Cities."  It was part of a panel session on government policy.  There were a number of questions following the presentation, indicative of rather broad interest in Korea's experience relative to that of other countries in the region and around the world.   Today more interesting sessions and meetings with researchers, academics and industry representatives.

Super brands and Korea's national image

The U.K. based market research firm YouGov has published its list of most-admired global brands, based on a multicountry survey, and the results are shown in the graphic at the left.  These results prompt me to make several observations.
First, it is noteworthy that Samsung's ranking is based in part on massive advertising and marketing expenditures that far outpace other companies on the list.  As reported by Reuters Samsung Electronics in 2013 was expected to spend more than $14 billion on advertising and marketing, an amount that exceeded Iceland's GDP.
Second, as observed by YouGov BrandIndex CEO Ted Marzilli, “Technology and internet brands transcend national boundaries and provide products and services that impact people’s daily lives. Whether it is technologies made by Samsung, Apple and Sony, or the wealth of information and videos made instantly available by Google and YouTube, these companies shape modern life and connect people from around the world, making them some of the most powerful global super brands.”  In this regard it is worth noting that if YouTube, owned by Google, were combined with its parent company, Google would be the number one brand in the world.
Third, as I've noted before, many people in the U.S. and other major markets around the world do not identify Samsung as a "Korean" company.  Equally as important, Samsung's marketing communications do not emphasize its identity as a Korean company.
Those who consult this blog regularly will know that I am very interested in the relationship between corporate and brand image. (see numerous posts relating to this topic here)  Earlier this week the Chosun Ilbo reported that "North Korea is the first thing that comes to the mind of foreigners when they think about Korea." This was based on a 50-country survey by the Presidential Council on Nation Branding in cooperation with the Samsung Economic Research Institute. As I've discussed in earlier posts, this corresponds with patterns of global web search attention revealed by Google Trends.

The demise of Cyworld and the rise of Google in Korea

Two articles that appeared just days apart in the Joongang Daily this month illustrate the contradictory tendencies in South Korea's rapidly evolving information society and powerfully emphasize the manner in which culture and language shape information technology, not the other way around!  Ironically, the world's most digitally networked nation is also in some ways one of its most inwardly-focused countries, in Korean terms the proverbial "frog in a well."  In fact, this influence of culture and language is arguably the highest hurdle Korea faces in making the transition to a creative economy.
In 1995 Korea began building its information superhighways under the highly successful Korea Information Infrastructure (KII) project and the Korean social networking service Cyworld launched in 1999, a half decade before the invention of Facebook in the U.S.  It quickly became wildly popular with near universal use by younger Koreans.  However, efforts to export the business model to the U.S. and Europe failed.  This month, as reported by the Joongang Daily, Cyworld announced that it would end its global service on February 10.  The article attributed the failure mostly to Cyworld's slowness in moving onto mobile platforms. It might have also noted that Cyworld was originally designed in the Korean language with the intent to appeal to Korean cultural preferences, and it seemed somehow unable to break those bounds in the global market.
The fortunes of Google Korea are a different story entirely.  The title of a long article in the Joongang Daily, "Google Korea Searches for Answers," reveals its bias. (Note that this article contains some factual errors, such as suggesting that "Google operates in 50 countries..." The first half of the article documents Google's struggle to achieve market share in competition with local competitors Naver and Daum.  However, the concluding portion of the article actually documents Google's steadily increasing market share.   Unfortunately, it fails to even mention that Naver, Korea's leading web portal is almost exclusively a Korean language site, developed with local cultural preferences in mind, and does not even pretend to be a comprehensive internet "search" engine.
Readers of this blog will know that I've posted frequently on this topic over the years.  I do think that this interaction of language and culture with technology and the interplay of local with global networks deserves a great deal more scrutiny.