Once we start looking around the Invest Korea site, we begin to get a feel for the government’s master plan: to promote the nation as a worthy investment for foreign manufacturers and business owners. According to the Ministry of Information and Communication’s Third Master Plan for Informatization Promotion April 2002, “Since the middle of the 1990s, the Korean government has established two master plans for the development of the information society, the first Master Plan for Informatization Promotion in 1996 and the CYBER KOREA 21 plan in 1999. Through these plans, the government has brought Korea one step closer to the realization of the information society with the construction of an advanced information infrastructure. Having garnered the interest of various leading countries, the success of the informatization policies is now paving the way for Korea to become a leading country of informatization in the 21st century. However, to firmly position itself as a truly advanced nation, Korea must first successfully cope with the oncoming challenges and various issues as follows:
 |
To reform legal and institutional systems and increase the capacity to utilize information technologies in all areas of society including the government, private companies and individuals in order to increase the positive effects of informatization |
|
|
To strengthen the ability to respond rapidly to changes in the social environment caused by the rapid developments of information technologies |
|
|
To stimulate national development through informatization efforts in order to resolve the national agenda such as strengthening our competitiveness in the global economy |
In order to complete these tasks, the Korean government established e-KOREA VISION 2006 as the blueprint for the direction Korea will take in the following five years in becoming a global leader in the 21st century." SOURCE
This process of developing informatization in turn breaks down the discrepancy between technological haves and have-nots, thus taking steps towards decreasing the digital divide. The e-Korea vision acknowledges that the “widening of the digital divide among countries poses as a serious international issue.” They see it in the following terms: The emergence of a new social conflict in the information society is attributable to the rapid changes in the industry structure and the demands of the labor market, leaving behind those who could not adapt to the changes. As the usage of information and communication technologies, in particular the Internet, has become a routine part of our lives, the digital divide may widen the gap between socio-economic levels and in terms of culture. Despite the rapid growth of the internet, a substantial number of information have-nots remain due to their social, geographical, physical circumstances. Not having easy access to the internet, those information have-nots do not have the opportunities for utilizing information necessary for their daily lives and work.
In that, Korea wishes that all citizens will become main actors of the information society as information ‘prosumers,’ in other words, information producers as well as information consumers. The Korean government will help to develop IT education programs for the public, tailored to different learning abilities and groups. Also, the Korean government will extend the concept of ‘universal service’ to broadband internet services to give more opportunities to the information have-nots.
However, some challenges still exist. For example, the courses in regular education are lacking the application of digital methods such as distance learning and high quality digital contents for educational purposes. Also, the systematic linkage between regular school education and job-training has not been fully developed. Moreover, the participation rate of adults to the lifelong education system is lower than that of advanced nations.