IT Development in Korea : A Broadband Nirvana?

ISBN-13: 9780415587464 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 200 str.

Kwang-Suk Lee

Opis

This book investigates the contextual factors that led to Korean society becoming 'broadband heaven' -- the most wired nation in the world -- by scrutinizing the historical contexts surrounding the Korean Information Infrastructure (KII) project (1995--2005), which aimed to establish a nationwide high-speed backbone network, as well as its later evolution, which involved redesigning the public infrastructure. The book details the hidden mechanisms and the real elements of building the 'broadband heaven': the global constraints conditioning its telecom policies, the dense state--capital linkages, and the bureaucratic desire for social control. It draws on the state-in-society approach to analyze the deformations caused by the symbiosis between the state and big business in implementing the rosy vision of the broadband network.

Spis treści

Introduction: South Korea as Broadband Heaven?   1. The Political Economy of Networked Mobility: A Theoretical Overview   2. From a Physical Infrastructure to a Virtual Infrastructure in Modern Korea   3. Local Telecommunications Policy within the Digital Mode of Global Capitalism   4. The State–Business Symbiosis in Korea’s Broadband Infrastructure Plan   5. The Transformation of State Surveillance Practices toward a Grid of Control   Conclusion: Beyond a Developmental State Model

O autorze

Kwan-Suk Lee is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy and Information Technology at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul, South Korea; and Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia.