Korea Celebrates 30th Anniversary of Internet Access
It's been 30 years since Korea first gained Internet access. Korea was the second country in the world after United States, and the first in Asia to access to the Internet.
It was in May 1982 that Professor Chun Gil Nam (a current KAIST professor emeritus) connected two computers - a computer of Seoul National University's Department of Computer Engineering and a midrange computer of KIET (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade) in Gu-mi city in Kyungbuk province.
The exact date of the connection is unclear, there were no records kept during the time frame of the connection, probably because no one knew how important it would be both to Korea and the world. According to Professor Nam's memory, it was around the end of May, and the KCC (Korea Communication Commission) held the 30th year anniversary event on May 30th.
Commercial Internet service started in 1994, and in 2002, Korea reached 10M high speed internet connections. In 2006, Korea was the first country to initiate WiBro (Wireless Broadband Internet). That is just an illustration of how powerful Korea is now as it relates to the Internet.
Currently, Korea has 37M internet users (out of about 50M population), and the economic size of internet industry occupies about 8% of GDP.
Internet has become an essential tool in every field such as e-commerce, games, broadcasting, education, and society. Korea possesses giant portal sites like Naver and Daum.
Korea is similar to the United States and other countries, the Internet started with computers but it's advancing into mobile & wireless service due to smartphones. Just like the Unites States and other countries that rely heavily on the Internet, Korea has suffered from hacking, leak of private information, cyber violence, bank fraud, and etc. In other words, Korea has had to take the good with the bad as it relates to the Internet.
Information Technology professionals in Korea say that Korea needs to put more effort in developing new internet services, ecosystems, and policies to utilize the Internet even better than it is now. Plus, the IT professionals emphasize that Korea needs to have global internet companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook for Korea to become a true leading country as it relates to the Internet.
