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As part of its efforts to activate the Internet telephone market, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has decided to introduce the 070 Internet telephone for the first time among government agencies. The ministry's decision is expected to bring about am epoch-making turning point for the Internet telephony market in Korea, which has been in a hiatus. MIC will soon map out a detailed plan to adopt the 070 services within the ministry and get a final approval from the minister in September.

Korea Power Engineering Co. (KOPEC) concluded a contract with Bechtel to provide the U.S. company with engineering services for design of a power plant in Maryland on Aug. 3. Under the contract, KOPEC will dispatch its technicians to the headquarters of Bechtel and they will participate in the design work of a nuclear power plant and relevant facilities to be built in the United States. As an initial step, KOPEC dispatched 26 technicians on July 28 and sent 20 to 30 specialists additionally before the end of this year. At present, U.S.

KOTRA Taipei Korea's challenged by Taiwan IT industry's adaptability Taiwan's IT market scale is forecast to grow by 3.8% annually over the period 2003~2008, with a scale rising from $18.3 billion in 2004 through $20.49 billion on the forthcoming 2008. As of 2004, the relative importance of Taiwan in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the world IT market, is 5.6% and 0.7% respectively.

On July 26, LG Telecom appointed Jung Il-jae, formerly executive vice president at LG Corp., as the new CEO to succeed Nam Yong who had to resign as the company failed to meet conditions set out by the government to start the 3-G mobile telephony service IMT2000. The 47-year-old Jung, who joined the LG Economic Research Institute in 1990, moved to LG Corp. in 2003 and took charge of supervising LG Group's telecom business.