Korea and India "marrying" human resources and new technology, including Wibro and DMB By Kim Tae-hyun, President of the IITA Boosted by President Roh Moo-Hyun's state visit to India in October 2004, the establishment of a comprehensive economic cooperation system between Korea and India is to be further strengthened by the visit of the Indian President Abdul Kalam to Korea this month. It is expected that the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) will come into effect within a year from now as a consequence of the upcoming summit and the final report on CEPA signed on January 6, 2005 by the representatives of the Korea-India Joint Study Group. CEPA is a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) covering not only goods trade but also service, investment, economic cooperation, etc. India, referred together with China to as "Chindia", has brought the attention of the world as a growth engine of the world economy. Considering the market size of India with a population of 1.1 billion, there is no doubt that the CEPA will have much greater impact on Korean economy than the FTAs agreed with Chile and Singapore. There is Information Technology (IT) as a main pillar in the economic cooperation between Korea and India to be strengthened further. The central axis of the two countries' economic cooperation has been rapidly changing from household appliances and steels to IT, especially terminals and systems. There are phrases, "Made in China" and "Service in India," which give prominence to the strength of India's software industry and IT service. As an institute established by the Korean government and implementing IT policies, IITA has also put various efforts to develop international cooperation with India. There are now eight Indian students pursuing their degrees at graduate schools and conducting IT R&D or policy research in Korea under the support of our two scholarship programs of Korean government scholarship program for international graduate students and IT policy program. Two of Indian officials among our scholarship students successfully completed their degree programs and already returned to India. Those students, passionately learning IT and IT policies in Korea for years, will surely be pro-Korean and become our messengers to promote international cooperation in IT. India has abundant and excellent IT human resources. Close collaboration with the resources will not only relieve Korea's manpower problems but also increase mutual cooperation in hightech sector. In that regard, IITA implemented a project called IT card which serves as a medium for collaboration between Korean IT enterprises and foreign IT specialists. The project has been so successful that there were 100 Indian IT specialists came to Korea to cooperate in IT R&D areas in 2004 and the number continuously increased to 130 specialists in 2005. In this year, we are to stimulate and encourage international joint researches by Korean IT enterprises and research institutes. India should be eyed as one of the key counterparts for the joint research in our promotion. It will be the win-win strategy and successful R&D model for hardware by Korea and software by Indian IT firms or institutes. In addition, promotion of joint research between the universities of Korea and India, e.g., Indian Institute of Technology and Korean universities is being pursued. Furthermore, as a main promotion agency for the IT839 strategy, IITA will seek to closely cooperate with India in new technology sectors such as Wireless Broadband (Wibro) and Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB). India will grow into one of the biggest suppliers and largest markets in the world. Collaboration with India in IT839 and other new technologies will definitely facilitate the world marketing of Korean enterprises. And also, regularly hosted ICT (Information and Communication Technology) forums will encourage the exchanges in IT sector between the two countries. India has the market size and growth potential as much as those of China. Korea's export to India increased to 4.39 billion USD last year from 1.38 billion in 2002. Moreover, IT export to India has remarkably increased to 1.42 billion USD from 0.38 billion during the same period. With the two countries' cooperation framework taking shape, the Korean IT industry will have more opportunities in the Indian market, and it will serve as a momentum to jointly make inroads into the countries adjacent to India, the Middle East and any third countries in the world eventually.