Content area
Abstract
This study analyzes the Korean path of telecommunications market liberalization. An analysis of the Korean mobile market liberalization reveals that international and technological changes had significant impacts on the decision to liberalize the telecom market and on state-industry relationships. Changes in the international market, prompted by the United States' telecom liberalization initiative and the GATT/WTO regime, and technological revolution in the telecom, forced the Korean government to embrace the rule of market liberalization. This required fundamental reforms in the domestic telecommunications system, so that the country could secure an international competitiveness that the old state monopoly would no longer provide.
As the assumption that the state had a major and direct role in telecommunications, thorough monopolistic control, was challenged, the state's mode of governing in telecommunications was revised to invite into the equation the private sector and foreign companies that employ market mechanisms. Hence, regulatory reform in the Korean telecom market produced so-called “governance” as a new governing strategy of the sector. However, the state-market arrangement in the Korean mobile telecom market took a distinct path and evolved from state monopoly toward what I called “centralized governance” and later toward “flexible governance,” rather than toward the “liberal governance” stance taken by the United States. The interaction of the different goals and interests of the government officials responding to the international and technological changes have been critical factors in the producing of variations and changes to the regulatory policies in the Korean market. The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) had always been the central organization that developed and enforced the goals and strategies that served the mutual interests of the state and business. As the dynamics of technology and telecom markets became increasingly complex and interrelated, the Korean government employed a more flexible means of managing market and technology development. In this sense, new governance in the telecom market was a necessary strategy to support business activities and the innovation of communication technologies in the digital era.
