The Role of Government to Bridge Digital Gap between Urban and Rural Area in Korea

Authors

Junghoon Moon, Department of IT Business, Korean Advanced Institue of Science and TechnologyFollow
Jin Ki Kim, Department of Business Administration, Korea Aerospace UniversityFollow
Cheul Rhee, Department of e-Business, Ajou UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MIFAFF) in Korea has made an abundant effort to develop agricultural/rural informatization since the 1990’s. Initially, it focused on the development of three different types of infrastructure to bridge the gap between rural and urban areas: household personal computer (PC) penetration, Internet use, and broadband Internet connection accessibility. The 81% of broadband accessibility in 2002 increased to 100% in rural areas in 2007. In addition, from 1998 to 2002, a total of 241,356 farmers took diverse education programs provided by MIFAFF. As a big effort from MIFAFF, Food and Agro-product e-commerce of Farmers has also increased continuously; as of 2009, its transaction is estimated as 1.89 billion USD. Many projects on u-Farm have been launched for future intelligent farming. However, MIFAFF are now facing new challenges.

Recommended Citation

Moon, Junghoon; Kim, Jin Ki; and Rhee, Cheul, "The Role of Government to Bridge Digital Gap between Urban and Rural Area in Korea" (2009). ICEB 2009 Proceedings (Macau, SAR China). 57.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/iceb2009/57