Strategic direction of technology innovation of Korean ICT industry

Abstract

Korean IT industry developed into a global industry from scratch in just two decades. In 2004, Korean government formulated IT 839 Strategy which includes 9 new growth engines. Although the policy has been expected to be successful, it is not yet confirm if these are the driving forces to help Korea stay ahead as a global leader in IT field. Thus this research aims to ascertain cumulativeness of technological capability by patent analysis to review the potential of the policy. Past literature review has clearly shown how Korea made a move from technology catch up to technology generator in ICT by means of importing, transferring and diffusing technologies by dynamic networking. Now Korea is beginning to act as a technology generator based on its technological accumulation. Our research provides in depth extension by analyzing the ten most important technologies under each strategic areas by Revealed Technological Advantage (RTA) Index of patents and citations as a methodology. Thus we check the strengths as well as weaknesses of Korea in the different sectors and further make a comparison with Japan, Europe and Taiwan. Furthermore, classification of technologies as integrated/hardware/system and modular/software/component is done to determine which strategy is seen dominant in the newly complexly converging industries and propose suitable strategies for each growth engine to help Korea stay ahead as a global IT powerhouse.