Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2. Korea: FDI by source country (millions of U.S. Dollars) (Ministry of Commerce Industry and
Energy, 2004)
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
Japan
418
255
266
504
1749
2448
776
1403
541
2258
US
643
875
3190
2971
3739
2921
2885
4500
1240
4717
EU
475
1058
2409
2968
6262
4396
3064
1680
3062
3009
Total
1947
3203
6971
8852
15541
15217
11292
9103
6468
12785
EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF GOVERNMENT POLICIES
This phenomenon has been abetted by the
increasing prevalence of PC Baangs (PC rooms).
These are inexpensive internet cafes that, over
the past few years, have morphed mostly into
gaming rooms.
These Baangs, and gaming in general, are
becoming so popular that addiction to gaming
is currently considered one of the biggest social
problems facing Korea. The situation has grown
so acute that 10 South Koreans—mostly teenagers
and people in their twenties—died in 2005 from
game addiction-related causes; from sitting in a
single, cramped position for too long. To combat
this problem, the government launched a game
addiction hotline in 2006, after having opened
a treatment center in 2002. Numerous private
hospitals and psychiatric clinics have also opened
units to treat this addiction (Faiola, 2006).
In terms of the benefits of ICT, however, as
mentioned above, one of the government's key
objectives is to ensure that ICT will make a sig-
nificant difference in the daily lives of its citizens.
To this end, the government has implemented
numerous ICT-oriented public services, such as
e-Health, eTransport, eLearning, with positive
results (Davies, 2006, p.8). The government's
promotion of ICT development is also expected
to stimulate job creation.
Various theoretical approaches have been devel-
oped to try and measure the effect of telecommu-
nications and ICT on development (ITU, 2006;
OECD 2007, ENECA, 2007). Specifically, one
of the earliest efforts to explore the relationship
between telephone service and economic develop-
ment by Hardy, found that greatest impact of the
telephone was on information diffusion and or-
ganizational efficiency (Hardy, 1980; Thompson,
2007). Other studies suggest the possible effects
of telecommunications on economic develop-
ment (Saunders et al.,1983; Leff, 1984), but also
warn of the problems and some possibly nega-
tive aspects (Thompson, 2007). In a 2001 study,
Roller and Waverman (2001) estimated a structural
model that included telecommunications invest-
ment as an endogenous variable. They conclude
that for OECD countries, telecommunications
infrastructure growth has a positive effect on
economic growth, especially when a threshold
of universal telecommunications service was
achieved sometime during the 1970-1990 period.
However Jacobsen, in a 2003 study, re-estimated
the Roller and Waverman model for a larger set
of countries, including poor countries, and con-
cluded that the threshold effects were no longer
statistically significant, and that the estimated
growth rate impacts of telecommunications are
implausibly large (Thompson, 2007). Garbacz and
Thompson show for the United States that both
untargeted and targeted universal service policies
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