24.38 Million Netizens…. Top in Running Time

According to `White Paper Concerning Korean Internet 2002` released by National Computerization Agency, the coefficient of Internet utilization has increased by 11.9 percent to 56.6 percent, ranking 4th-7th in the rate over the world.

Male users of the Internet (13.54 million) out-numbered the female users (2.70 million) and the coefficient of Internet utilization of men (63 percent) also exceeded that of women (50.2 percent). However, by the increase of coefficient of female Internet utilization from 49.1 percent last year, the gender gap is narrowing down.

In terms of age distribution, the age of 7-19 was the majority of the Internet users (84.3 million, 93.3 percent coefficient of utilization), followed by 20s (70.8 million, 84.6 percent).

Kyonggi Province (64.5 percent) ranked at the top for the Internet utilization by regions, followed by Ulsan (63.9 percent), Seoul (63.4 percent), Daejeon (61.8 percent), and Incheon (61.2 percent).

The most frequent users of Internet were students (95 percent) and professionals and managers (83.9 percent) and white colors (83.3 percent) were also revealed as frequent Internet users.

According to income levels, 70.4 percent of over 2.5 million won incomers are using Internet while 61 percent of 1.5-2.5 million won incomers and 36.8 percent of up to 1.5 million won incomers were using Internet.

In addition, the number of domain names (.kr), which is a criterion to evaluate the computerization of a country, has reduced to 457,450 from 516,183 early last year. However, the number of Internet hosts has increased to 500,000 from 340,000 in 1998. National Computerization Agency will distribute the White Paper for free to the government and public organizations and also is planning to sell it for 22,000 won for volume through bookstores.

Tae-Han Kim freewill@donga.com