Assemblyman calls for balanced development to ensure global competitiveness through quality institutional foundation The government should seek balanced development of software and hardware industries this year to upgrade the competitiveness of the nation's IT industry, Lee Hae-bong, chairman of the Science Technology Information and Communication Committee of the National Assembly, said. Noting that the nation's IT policy has been focused on hardware, including semiconductors, handsets and LCD, Lee said, 'The government needs to actively foster the software industry, which has been relatively neglected, from now on for balanced development of the software and hardware industries.' In an interview with Korea IT Times, he said, 'With the advent of digital convergence era covering DMB, WiBro and IPTV, the convergence trend between communication and broadcasting has been accelerated these days. To effectively cope with such a change and offer services to maximize customers' satisfaction, we should create a proper institutional foundation. 'To secure international competitiveness of the IT industry, it is also very important to actively foster small and medium-sized IT venture companies producing parts and materials, a base of the IT industry,' said the veteran lawmaker. In order to help domestic IT industry secure global competitiveness and keep sustainable growth, the government should encourage balanced development of large and smaller companies through mutual survival, said Lee. On the pending issues of Korea's information and communication industry, he said that the IT industry, a hero to help the nation overcome the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, has played a locomotive role of the national economic growth. The IT industry is also the futuregrowth power engine of Korea, which will lead the national economy in the coming years, the seasoned lawmaker said. Thanks to the government's policy to foster the IT field strategically, Korea is now leading the global market in terms of memory semiconductors, mobile phones and LCD. Korea is also widely recognized as the top-tier informatization country in the world, securing the No. 1 position in the ITU digital opportunity index and the No. 5 in the UN electronics government index. 'However, to beat off latecomers among developing countries, including China and Taiwan, there are still many tasks for Korea to be solved, including offering of services satisfying consumers' demands, balanced development of large and smaller IT companies, and fostering of the software industry,' said Lee. 'Although many variables are expected to occur in the domestic information and communication market this year,' he continued to say, 'The overall economy is expected to recover gradually and the domestic IT industry is likely to be better off compared with last year, encouraged by the rapid development of the IT industry.' In line with this, the government needs to actively support a variety of marketing activities for expanding the domestic consumption market related to information and communication. To help domestic companies actively advance into overseas markets, the government also should make best efforts to enhance the status of Korea's IT industry in the global market and map out proper measures to bolster global competitiveness of Korean products, he said. He said that a number of Internet violation accidents and security-related accidents through many forms and channels are likely to occur this year. To prevent such accidents, the government and information protection companies are required to keep close channels and operate various prevention systems, Lee said. For sustained growth of the IT industry, enterprises should secure technology competitiveness and go all-out to develop into global-level companies. Enterprises need to promote their global competitiveness through technology and managerial reform and inject fresh vigor into the market through activation of facility investment, said the committee chairman. At the same time, they should exert allout efforts for exploring overseas markets and pursuing accompanying growth through mutual survival between large and smaller companies. To maintain global competitiveness, domestic enterprises should not ace into the inner market centered on their affiliates and push for a speedy management for development of products satisfying needs of the global market and customers, Lee said. In case of small and medium-sized enterprises, they should secure global competitiveness through strategic alliance, M&A, specialization of certain fields, or expansion of business scale. Large enterprises, for their part, they are required to actively support promising smaller venture companies, which are called the root of the IT industry, through proper payment for goods, joint research & development, managerial assistance and overseas joint marketing activities.