The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) and Korea Agency for Digital Opportunities and Promotion (KADO) jointly held an inaugural meeting of the Digital Opportunity Forum at COEX InterContinental Hotel in Seoul on August 30 last year with some 200 experts from the IT industry from 65 countries in attendance.
It has a special meaning, as it was the world's first forum of experts from developing countries with a purpose to reduce global information gap.
KADO aims at upgrading this forum to the level of International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and make South Korea a leading country in the policy to reduce the global information gap.
At the inaugural meeting, KADO and the ITU jointly organized a symposium for persistent development and supply of digital opportunity index as part of the Digital Opportunity Platform (DOP) project.
Such IT supporting policy is very important for South Korea to differentiate it from China and Japan, exercise international leadership and expand official development assistance (ODA) for developing countries.
In addition, most developing countries are eagerly yearning for informatization and know well that the information gap is not only a knowledge gap but also competitiveness gap, which will lead to a wealth gap and health gap.
Korea knows very well how to escape from poverty and how to succeed in informatization so that it can map out a development strategy suitable for each developing country. If several developing countries succeed in informatization through Korea's help, the status of Korea will go up higher in global society.
ODA is the best diplomatic strategy to enhance the status and image of a country and strengthen global leadership.
Accordingly, Korea needs to further expand and invest in the present digital ODA as a future-oriented diplomatic strategy on a long-term basis.
In particular, Korea should establish an organization exclusively dealing with digital ODA and other supporting programs in such a way as to make the best use of Korea's merits and characteristics as an IT leader in the world.
Korea's IT supporting policy and digital ODA are much more precious than dollars, crude oil, natural gas and uranium as they can teach developing countries how to catch fish, not to give fish directly.
Emergence of network knowledge country Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in the US is a person asserting a positive vision for the future of Asia. Sachs, who also served as a special economic counselor for Kofi Annan, former UNSecretary General, is in charge of the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) project.
He recently said: "Around the middle of the 21st century, China and India will outpace the United States. As the center of global economy moves to Asia, the overwhelming control of the US will fade away. In the future, the growth of the global economy will be led by Asia. Korea has a bright economic prospect and stands at the center of global economic growth."
The target of MDG is to reduce the number of Africans who barely manage to live just with one dollar a day by half until 2015. Africa is now changing from the land of crisis to the land of opportunity as it achieved an economic growth of 4.8 percent over the last three years, surpassing the average economic growth rate of 2.6 percent for advanced countries.
He has asserted that if advanced countries contribute only 0.7 percent of gross national product or US$0.07 per an income of US$10, the poverty of 1.1 billion destitute people in the global village will be gone by 2025.
Digital civilization is the most important factor for globalization. Emergence of a new technology paradigm centering on today's IT affects all areas of human activities and creates a network linking knowledge of all sectors, including economy, politics and society. As a result, a global production network or global commodity chain has been accelerated and a networked state has emerged.
The conception of a network knowledge country can be embodied in the following way.
Firstly, the basic form of state structure will be characterized by its network and a country's activities are made on the globallevel network.
Secondly, knowledge will become very important among a country's power resources. In the process of achieving state goals, globalization and informatization are making knowledge emerge as a new power resource.
Of course, a network knowledge country is not the standard experience facing the global village today. It is also uncertain whether a true network knowledge country exists or not. However, it is almost certain that a network knowledge country is closely linked with a survival strategy to become a superpower in the 21st century.
To become a successful network knowledge country, Korea should solve such pending issues as complete decentralization of power, easing of various regulations, small administration, and bolstering of global awareness of local governments.
New imagination of territory, digital Hallyu To become a successful network knowledge country, we need to renew our definition of borders or territory. To lead the future order of Northeast Asia based on our core location in the region, we should have a new space conception which jumps the limitation of the territory of the Korean Peninsula.
We need to have a forward-looking attitude in which the space in which Korea can secure resources and distribute value is our actual territory. For instance, if Koreans build factories in China or Vietnam and Korea's local firms create wealth by securing an equity stake, the space and the enterprises are the territory of our life.
Digital diplomacy of Central Asia Let's consider several words, first. The capital of the Old Choseon is Asatr. Asatr is the combination of two words: "asa" which means morning, and "tar" which means mountain. In other words, Asatr is the "land of morning."
As we seen above, we can find homogeneity in words of Central Asia and the Korean Peninsula.
In addition, a lot number of Korean people were forced to move to Central Asia during the period from Sept 21, 1937 to November 15 under Stalin's forced deportation policy at that time.
According to 2001 statistics released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the number of Korean expatriates was 521,694 in CIS, 230,800 in Uzbekistan, 156,650 in Russia, 99,700 in Kazakhstan, 20,222 in Kyrgyzstan, 8,958 in the Ukraine, 2,500 in Turkmenistan and 1,550 in Tajikistan.
About 68 percent of all Korean expatriates are living in the five Central Asian countries, including Uzbekistan, and the remaining 32 percent live in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Therefore, about 500,000-600,000 Korean expatriates who have the same blood as ours are residing in Central Asia. Accordingly, Korea needs to carry out policies about Central Asia after considering these relations.
In conclusion, we need to change our view about Central Asia. In other words, we should recognize Central Asia as the center of world history, not as a fringe surrounding world history. Under such values, we need to reestablish relations between South Korea and Central Asia.
