Being equipped with the world's leading ICT infrastructures, Korea is the ideal test bed for new products and business models.

Korea has the world's highest broadband penetration rate and the overall second-best technological infrastructure in the world. Along with an extraordinarily wide diffusion of information technology, Korea is leading the commercialization of next generation services such as DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting), WiBro (Wireless Broadband), Internet telephony, telematics, home network, RFID-based services, terrestrial DTV and W-CDMA.

In addition to having the essential infrastructures, Korea is also one of the world's largest exporters of IT products, especially semiconductors, displays and mobile telecommunications equipment. Korea's IT exports are showing robust two-digit growth rates annually, and the IT industry's share in the overall national economy is growing. Naturally, Korean IT companies and human resources are among the world's best.

The high level of information technology take-up and fast commercialization of next generation services demonstrate Korea's value. Global ICT companies are increasingly regarding Korea as the ideal outpost to explore next generation core businesses and to verify market potential.

Intel, IBM, Siemens, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and HP have been opening R&D centers in Korea one after another in the last couple of years, aiming to develop their next generation ubiquitous technologies. These investments prove the clear value of Korea as an IT test bed.

These companies point to the following aspects of Korea:
(1) World's premier IT infrastructures;
(2) Large domestic IT consumer market;
(3) Tech-savvy consumers;
(4) Active technology environment; and
(5) Talented IT manpower.

Many IT parts and materials companies are also choosing Korea as their investment destination. For instance, S-LCD (LCD manufacturing), Magnachip (semiconductors) and Asahi Glass (LCD parts) have selected Korea to set up their overseas production bases since 2004.

Korea's e-commerce market grew 33.6 percent year on year in 2004, creating a KRW314 trillion market (US$304 billion). With the growth range being in the B2B, B2C and B2G areas, B2B took up the largest portion, accounting for 89 percent of the total e-commerce market. With such continuous growth in this area, the e-business solutions market such as B2Bi, SCM and CRM is also expected to maintain a strong growth trend.

The Korean government has leveraged information technology to innovate all processes of administrative activities, thereby delivering more efficient and productive administrative services to its customers and economic players ? Korea's people and its corporations. Thanks to these efforts, Korea is rated as having Asia's best basis for e-government as of 2004.

Koreans possess a strong zeal for education. According to the"OECD Fact Book 2005."Korea invested 8.2 percent of its GDP in education, the highest among the OECD member countries. The strong enthusiasm for education is reflected in the high quality of human resources.

Korea produces some 240,000 college graduates every year. The Ministry of Information and Communication plans to invest a total of KRW180.9 billion (US$174 million) in 2005 to enhance the quality of Korea's IT workforce. It aims to foster highly qualified human resources and improve the college educational environment. Thanks to such ongoing government efforts to nurture human resources, the FTE (Full Time Equivalent ? international researcher status assessment standard) researcher population is steadily growing in Korea.