According to various statistics, South Korea leads the world in providing its citizens with access to information and communications technologies

Question

Discuss how South Korea could lead the world in technology and why the United States has taken a relatively slow start, particularly in spreading the broadband technology.

Answer 1

South Korea leads the world in broadband penetration with 68 connections per 100 households. According to one consultant, Koreans tend to be early adopters of technology and, more significantly, are fast followers. They are always conscious of the need not to get left behind by the Japanese and the young have a great desire to conform to the gadget-carrying norm of their peers. Several factors help explain broadband's relatively slow start in the United States. First of all, one-quarter of the U.S. population lives in rural areas; which means that broadband is more expensive to roll out than in densely populated nations, such as South Korea. Also, U.S. telecom companies were reluctant to invest in broadband lines because of concerns that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission would force them to lease the lines to rival service providers. South Korea's digital future includes much more than simply broadband connection. Policy makers are aggressively pursuing applications for radio frequency identification tags (RFID). The South Korean government is spending nearly $300 million to build an RFID research center which will be a part of an even more ambitious effort, i.e. the construction of a ubiquitous city on a 1,500-acre man-made island near the Incheon Free Economic Zone. Korea being a smaller country, such activities promoting technologies are possible rapidly.