Information Age Indices--Where Does Korea Stand?

This month another index has been announced, the purpose of which is to measure progress toward the information society. The development of this index, called the "Connectivity Scorecard," was funded by Nokia-Siemens Networks and its development was led by Professor Leonard Waverman of the London Business School. The developers took as two points of reference, the ITU's Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) and the Economist's E-readiness index. A basic premise of the new index is that the DOI and E-readiness indices stress only infrastructure and usage and slight "the skills and complementarities required to drive communications networks as an engine of growth. That is, it is “smart” usage which helps make Connectivity a driver of productivity gains and hence economic growth." (See The Connectivity Scorecard.) What caught my eye was the statement in this report that "Korea, a star performer on other indexes, finishes 10th largely because very high performance in infrastructure is not matched by correspondingly high scores on usage measures, especially by businesses." At first glance, this statement did not seem to mesh with my understanding of what is going on here in South Korea. To be blunt, it makes me wonder about the usage measures employed in The Connectivity Scorecard and whether they treat countries like Korea fairly, given that the majority of network activity here is carried out in the Korean language (한글 하고 아국마로). The development of international indices to measure the degree to which countries are networked, the extent to which these networks are used, and how that relates to economic, political and social development is no doubt important. However, it seems strange that South Korea would suddenly drop in the rankings with this new index. Rest assured that, as time permits, I will return to this topic and compare the major international indices in some detail.

Korea is Not the "Most Wired" Country in the World

One might be forgiven for believing that Korea is the most wired nation on earth. The most heavily networked nation, very possibly, but not the most wired. This is so for several obvious reasons.

• Merriam Webster online and most other dictionaries define wire as having a metallic component, like the copper phone wires that if counted or weighed would make the US the world's most "wired" country.
• Even if the newer fiber optic cables are counted as "wires" designation of the most wired nation in the world ignores the broad trend in recent years toward "cutting the cord," i.e. the introduction of mobile networks. South Korea is a world leader in mobile technology deployment and use.
• "most wired" is a vague term that makes a nice headline, but in fact is used by different sources in different ways to confuse matters. Anyone who doubts this should do a quick Google search on "most wired countries" (without the quotes). This will show that among the measures of being "wired" are: (1) the information society index, IDC's annual study which includes fifteen variables, (2) broadband users, use per capita, or hours of use per week, (3) polling data about use in the last month, (4) broadband access as in percentage of households connected, (5) the digital access index or digital opportunity index (DOI) and so forth.

Although the "wired" terminology has a comforting, anachronistic feel to it, we probably need to get beyond it to be clear about measures of broadband access or infrastructure versus usage. These two types of measures, along with others such as education, go into indices such as the Digital Opportunity Index. Such measures are going to be important to track various "digital divides" and progress in bridging them.

Hana Linux and Korean Reunification

The recent announcement coming out of a conference in China that North and South Korea would work together on Linux software has already generated a spate of hyperbolic commentary on the web. Training centers for Linux professionals will be developed at Yenben and Dandung in China, and at Pyongyang, Kaesong and Hoichun in North Korea, according to reports. To place this announcement in some sort of perspective, it is helpful to remember the following:

• Windows is still dominant in the South Korean market, despite some recent announcements. When the Ministry of Information and Communication announced in early 2006 that it would designate a "Linux City" and a "Linux University" only 1 percent of the nation's computers were running Linux (lower than the global median of 3 percent). Near the end of 2006 Kwangju was designated as an open-source city, in a project running from 2006-2010, which will bear watching.
• North Korea, despite having few connections to the internet and virtually no modern mobile telecommunication networks, reportedly has made some progress in software development. The government in the North may well view joint software development, including Linux, as a non-controversial way to start cooperation with colleagues from the South.
• Especially in the Korean context, announcement of a project and actual implementation can be two very different things.
• Will the jointly developed Linux be solely for the use of Koreans with only the Korean market in view, or will the developers envisage Korea's role in the global information economy?

South Korea has unquestionably made progress in the development of Linux, developing its own version called Buyeo, for use in Seoul schools. Also, the project to make Kwangju an open source city is underway. These developments all merit attention, as do joint South-North efforts on Linux. More to come on this topic.

Education, Age and Broadband Use in Korea

All the evidence suggests that young people in Korea, and those who are highly educated, are the most active participants in the information revolution, at least if you measure that by levels of broadband usage. The data for education are show in the figure above (just click on the figure to see a full-size image of it). It shows clearly that levels of internet usage increase with education. These data emphasize the potential, even in the most networked society on earth, for a digital divide between those who have little formal education and those that are highly educated. Age also has a strong relationship to internet usage, as shown in the figure below from the same OECD report. These two findings, that age and education are highly related to internet usage, are reproduced as other countries adapt to the internet era, and require elaboration based on other factors. However, they are clearly two major aspects of the information society, or the knowledge economy, evolving here.

Broadband Internet in South Korea

Broadband internet penetration, as measured by the OECD, the ITU and other organizations, indicates the number of internet subscriptions per 100 population. As indicated by the chart in my previous post, South Korea led the world by this measure for the first few years of the new century. It also led, and continues to lead, by another important measure--the percentage of households connected to broadband internet. As of September 2007, 90.1% of South Korean households had broadband connections, the highest percentage in the world. As shown in the chart above, other countries are catching up, led by several of the smaller nations of Scandinavia and Europe. South Korea's high household access to the internet is boosted by the extremely high concentration of its population in Seoul and a few other large cities. Beyond that, even in smaller towns a large portion of the population resides in the large apartment complexes that have, for some years now, all been wired for 100 Mbps internet connections. With such a high level of household connections to fast internet service, it stands to reason that usage levels will increase and that seems to be the case, as shown in the second graphic below. Over half of the South Korean population now uses the internet more than ten hours per week.