South Korea plans to inject 21.5 billion won into the digital contents industry this year to become one of the world's top five digital contents providers by 2010. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) said on Feb. 14 it has worked out a blueprint to promote the digital contents industry for 2005 and will carry out the plan starting this month. This year's spending will focus on Korean online gaming firms to make aggressive inroads into foreign markets. The MIC plans to provide financial support to more than 20 local digital contents developers and service providers seeking to advance into major foreign markets, including the U.S., Japan and Europe, while bolstering overall global competitiveness of the Korean digital contents industry. Currently, the U.S., Japan and Europe dominate more than 90 percent of the world digital contents market. About 8.7 billion won will be spent on creating a solid industrial base for the digital contents business, while 5.4 billion won will be used to assist overseas marketing campaigns of local digital contents venture startups. As most domestic digital contents firms have a relatively short history of six to seven years and lack overseas business experience, the MIC plans to assist them with foreign market analyses and drawing up marketing strategies. It will also provide legal and management counseling services for running businesses abroad. Moreover, the ministry will spend 3.18 billion won on developing state-of-the-art gaming software, platform and databases and 3 billion won for overseas sales networks of home-made digital contents. In particular, the MIC decided to establish online game test beds for Korean game publishers in Japan and Europe to beef up their global competitiveness. The ministry established online game test beds in the United States and Singapore last year. In addition, the government will support customization of digital content, including localization of the content according to foreign standards and translation of texts.