<p>As Korea continued to transform into a knowledge-based economy where information and knowledge are the key sources of economic growth, the Korean government had been pushing for informatization in a variety of efforts since the mid-1980s. However, Korea still remained a low achiever of informatization among the OECD countries even in the mid-and-late 1990s while other major countries were stepping up their informatization drives. The use of the Internet and PCs was still limited to certain groups of people, further widening the digital divide. With the economic growth rate falling and the unemployment rate rising, in the wake of the Asian currency crisis in the late 1990s, there was a rising need to boost productivity and demand through the informatization of the public. Under such circumstances, the earlier-than scheduled completion of the second phase of the broadband network construction laid the foundation for increasing the use of broadband network and revitalizing Internet services.</p>