5466

Korea Times (13 September, 2004)
By Choi Kyong-ae
Staff Reporter



Korea has a long way to go to become the "world's leading information and technology (IT) superpower" as it is heavily dependent on foreign technologies and equipment, Ahn Cheol-soo, CEO of AhnLab Inc., said Thursday.

Through his company's Web site (www.ahnlab.com), he reiterated on Wednesday that Korea has helped multinational firms yield higher profitability, playing the role of springboard for them.

Korea, in fact, has imported much of the equipment in order to lay the high-speed Internet services network into every nook and corner nationwide since the mid 1990s when the Internet started to gain worldwide popularity, he added.

Korea brings in equipment mainly from Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and IBM in the United States, the world's IT superpower.

"Sadly, we have few companies capable of producing such high-end IT equipment. With the demand for faster and newer contents soaring, Korea seems to be falling behind the world's leading IT equipment manufacturers represented by the U.S.," Ahn said.

Hardware is not the only issue. Given much of the software for the Internet services available here is from abroad, the Korean market is reduced to being a giant cash cow for foreign IT firms, according to Ahn.

Microsoft is Korea's main supplier of the software programs such as Windows, Internet Explorer and OA.

He went on further to say that good online content comes from good offline content, but Korea has sat idly by processing offline content. In contrast, the world's IT leaders have successfully transferred well-organized offline content into online content since the mid 1990s.

Statistics show Korea has the world's highest subscriptions for Internet services. Some 14 out of 100 Koreans have subscribed, far higher than second-tier Canada's six. Their connection hours also marked the world's longest at 16 hours a month, followed by Canada with 11 hours and the U.S. with 10 hours.

"The bottom line is not quantity but quality. Koreans sit at desktops for many hours but they usually play games or chat, and view pornographic material. More interest in value-added materials is badly needed for balanced growth," Ahn stressed.

Saying it's not yet a time to celebrate, he said as a survival strategy, efforts should be made to catch up with advanced technologies and equipment.

"Over the past decade, Korea has achieved remarkable growth in the IT business. Skyrocketing growth in such a short period tends to have side effects. We have the potential to mend loopholes to claim the world's No. 1 spot both in quality and quantity," said a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Information and Communication.

AhnLab Inc., founded in 1995, is now ranked the 30th largest security solutions provider in the world and has set a goal of entering the world's top 10 by 2010.

The company mainly deals with anti-virus, firewall and intrusion detection system (IDS) software as security solutions programs.





godamon@koreatimes.co.kr