Thursday, April 4, 2002

South Korea Expands Fast Internet Connections to Make Higher Education More Widely Available By DAVID COHEN An ambitious plan by the South Korean government to roll out high-speed online connections to millions of new users among its citizens by year's end -- along with millions of others by 2005 -- is being hailed as a breakthrough in the country's efforts to bring higher education to a majority of the population by way of the Internet. South Korea is already one of East Asia's leaders in broadband technology, which is currently used by some 7.4 million subscribers. The country's leaders now say they hope to increase South Korea's high-speed Internet population to around 10 million homes by the end of this year, with an additional 3.5 million new users expected by 2005. The goal is to be achieved through creating near-universal access to broadband services made available at the same flat price to rural and urban dwellers alike, officials say. The new technology offers a delivery speed of 20 megabits per second, allowing users to access information up to 100 times faster than they might have with a conventional telephone-modem Internet connection. This year's projected numbers alone would represent some 70 percent of the East Asian republic's estimated 14.39 million homes, according to Yang Seung-taik, the minister of information and communication. Mr. Yang unveiled the figures last month as part of a raft of proposals for improving Internet usage generally, as well as increasing the number of South Koreans enrolled in online programs at the country's "cyberuniversities," whose creation has been a cornerstone of the educational policies of President Kim Dae Jung. The latest plan, which was finalized last week, calls for nearly $10-billion in new public spending, most of it aimed at creating new opportunities in the broadband area for South Korea's high-tech industries, but at the same time raising the country's overall "e-literacy" as a result of the greater Internet access it would make available to the country's 44.5 million inhabitants. Within five years, as many as 9 out of every 10 South Koreans will be using the Internet, officials say. That will make it possible for more than half of all adult residents to receive some form of online instruction, with a majority of these using the high-speed technology. "The implications for educators in South Korea right now are tremendous," says S.H. Kyong, a professor of telecommunications at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology's Graduate School of Management, in the capital, Seoul. Mr. Kyong is also a former minister of information and telecommunications in the South Korean government. In addition to bringing far greater numbers of South Korea's rural dwellers into a higher-education system heavily concentrated in the capital, the broadband capacity will have "a vivid impact" on the quality of what institutions of higher learning and their private-sector partners are able to put online for students domestically, as well as for Koreans studying from afar, predicts Mr. Kyong. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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