Korean Internet population exceeds 20 mil.

Korea`s Internet population now exceeds 20 million, a government tally showed Monday.

According to the 2001 white paper on the Internet in Korea, published by the Ministry of Information and Communication and the National Computerization Agency (NCA), the number of Koreans using the Internet through wired and wireless devices reached 19.04 million as of the end of last year. The NCA, which compiles and evaluates statistics, said that the number of Internet users increased by 400,000 to 800,000 a month since last September and estimated the population to hit 21 million by the end of this month. The Korean Internet population breached the 20-million barrier only 15 months after it reached 10.86 million at the end of 1999.

According to the white paper, the number of Korean domains (with the .kr suffix) stood at 511,003 as of the end of last year, or 1.076 per 100 people. This figure placed Korea 11th in the world. By comparison, the number was only 0.790 in Australia and 0.171 in Japan.

The value of e-commerce in Korea, which includes Internet shopping, was estimated at 7.642 trillion won last year. High-speed Internet subscribers numbered 4,017,492, including users of ADSL and cable modems. The number of wireless subscribers came to 15,770,000.

Meanwhile, some experts warned against making simple comparisons among countries as each country uses a different standard to calculate its Internet population. For instance, Korea includes those aged 7 and over among the population using the Internet while the United States and Japan sets the criteria at those 15 or 16 years old and over. Using their own standards, U.S. and European private surveying agencies such as eTForecasts and Euro-Marketing Associates estimated the Korean Internet population at 13 to 16 million at the end of last year.

Kim Tae-Han freewill@donga.com