South Korea: The world’s most advanced ICT country

South Korea transformed itself from being one of the poorest and war-torn countries in the world to the Number One country in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), with companies like Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and Doosan, to name a few, to boot. Besides the economic and technological miracles, there is also another miracle: The ability of […]

South Korea transformed itself from being one of the poorest and war-torn countries in the world to the Number One country in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), with companies like Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and Doosan, to name a few, to boot. Besides the economic and technological miracles, there is also another miracle: The ability of South Korea to transition, within a period of barely 20 years, from a military dictatorship, to a stable, democratic system. In the words of Daniel Tudor in his recent book Korea – The Impossible Country: “As other Asian nations like Singapore, and now China, promote a mix of authoritarianism and capitalism, South Korea stands out in the region as an example of a country that values not just wealth but also the rule of law and rights for its citizens.” Obviously, this column is not about politics, so we’ll stay with the tech miracles that have transformed the South Korean people.
In this article, I will itemize the features of South Korea’s tech superiority. You should also be aware that, besides ICT, South Korea is one of the five largest producers of electrical and electronic products in the world, with China, Germany, Japan, and the United States being the others.
Broadband: South Korea has the most extensive fiber optics network in the world. This translates into the unparalleled broadband capabilities. For many years in a row, South Korea has led the world in providing the fastest broadband capabilities, beating the United States pants-down, as well edging out Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, while China does not even show up in the map for this metric. While many countries dream and plan to build information superhighway, South Korea was the first nation in the world to actually do so. In fact, it is widely believed that South Korea built its broadband networks several years before the other industrialized countries of the world. My experience in the United States and in South Korea will convince you. While I was haggling with AT&T in the U.S. over 1 or 2 gigabytes (GB) of data plan, with SK Telecom in South Korea a few weeks later, I had essentially what was 68 gigabytes (GB) of data plan that cost about the same as the amount that AT&T was charging me! Obviously, I was awed by this experience, realizing how advanced South Korea has been.
Social Networking: South Korea pioneered the field of social networking and, according to Myung Oh and James F. Larson in their recent book – Digital Development in Korea: “… this phenomenon swept through the nation’s internet about four years before it reached the United States. Nothing illustrates South Korean’s comfort with cyberspace and its new media environment better than Cyworld, launched in 1999. This is the nation’s equivalent of Facebook, which came along four years later in the United States.”
3G, 4G, and 5G: South Korea was one of the first countries to adopt the third and fourth generation (3G, 4G) technologies. According to the Korean Herald newspaper of a few days ago, the government of South Korea has committed to making the country become the first nation globally to introduce the ultrafast 5G network service. The paper states that the pilot service will start in 2018, working with the country’s telecom operators to develop the infrastructure. Under the new government plan, the largest portion of a stipulated allocation “will be poured into developing wearable smart devices and related services, while other key areas include Internet of Things technology, intelligent robots, the fifth-generation mobile network, smart cars and intelligent semiconductors.”
Telecom: WiBro, a wireless broadband and a variant of Mobile WiMAX technology was developed in South Korea and accepted as an international standard. Moreover, the widely known CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), which is a method of digital wireless transmission, was first commercialized at the network level by South Korea.
Penetration: According to Oh and Larson, South Korea was the first country to achieve near-universal use of broadband-capable phones. Be mindful of the fact that the South Korean company Samsung is the largest manufacturer of semiconductors in the world, and companies like Apple use Samsung’s chips. (Semiconductors are the basis of integrated circuits in computer chips.)
U-Korea: South Korea’s ambition of pioneering the “Ubiquitous Network Society” or U-Korea, by leveraging the world’s best fiber optic infrastructure, is quite fascinating by all imaginations, and successes have been recorded. This aspect of Korean tech portfolio is discussed in Oh and Larson. The New Songdo city is an example of South Korea’s U-City. This is the world’s first futuristic city, reclaimed from the sea, and into which ambient intelligence has been built into the houses, streets, and office buildings. Songdo will offer a chance to study the large-scale use of radio frequency identification (RFID), smart cards, and sensor-based devices even as other developed countries fall behind in this type of capability. The city also has the huge ambition of becoming a global educational and research hub for the 21st century. The global campus initiative is working: my school, the State University of New York, became the first tenant of the global campus four years ago. In fact, I am presently in Korea from New York to be the inaugural Chair (Head) of the Mechanical Engineering department in the global campus. Three other universities (from Europe and United States) have also joined. As pointed out by Oh and Larson, an important feature of intelligent cities is the ability to make the buildings “green aware.” South Korea has this in its U-cities.