KOREA FOCUS

A foreign friend of mine, on a visit to Korea, once said, “Koreans are like bibimbap.” Apparently our taste for a dish like bibimbap, consisting of rice mixed with various ingredients, is as intriguing to others as our propensity to put a camera, MP3 and other functions into a mobile phone. This “bibimbap culture,” the practice of mixing different things together to create something new and pleasing, is nothing out of the ordinary for Koreans.

 

Convergence, a big issue in information technology today, is very much like the bibimbap culture. The process of bringing together human beings and objects, and going beyond the physical fusion of industry and technology to create new value and a product completely different to what already exists is not unlike the process of making bibimbap. The age of convergence, where the boundaries between industries are blurred, is the age of the creation of new things. The medium enabling boundaries to fall is information technology (IT), the so-called “DNA of industry convergence.” The meeting of IT and cars, the communication between IT and architecture, the harmony of IT and the environment — these new trends translate into competitiveness and economic power.

 

Already many Korean telecommunication companies are preparing to launch mobile telematics service with automakers. The time is coming when we will be able to control our cars remotely with mobile phones. Global positioning system (GPS) technology and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology are already used to increase the efficiency of shipbuilding. In our children`s generation the ubiquitous city (U-city) will be taken to a higher level of ubiquitous eco-city featuring high energy efficiency, thanks to a strong IT infrastructure.

 

The government has now presented a vision statement, “Future Strategies for IT Korea,” under which five core fields of information technology, such as IT convergence and software, have been selected as strategic industries to be promoted for national development. Over the next five years the private and public sectors will work together to amass 190 trillion won for concentrated investment in the five select industries. When investment is poured into industries such as automobiles, shipbuilding, medical equipment, and construction, where the ripple effect of convergence is likely to be strong, it will not only create jobs, it will increase our potential economic growth rate by 0.5 percentage points.

 

[ JoongAng Ilbo, September 23, 2009 ]