A Follow-up Study on Smart Divide Issues in Korean Rural Area

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Digital divide commonly means the gap among diverse stakeholders, businesses, physical areas, and individual people in terms of opportunities, accessibilities, and usabilities (Acılar, 2011). Lee and Park (2011) and Barzilai-Nahon (2006) suggested that the digital divide issues should be considered as an important public issue because proper public response may enhance or reduce the information gaps by the digital divide. This study is a follow-up study of the study of Lee and Park. This study’s main aim is to clarify the changes of the digital divide in the rural areas during five years and to find out meaningful factors to reduce the gaps between the rural area and urban area. To achieve the research aim, this study analyzes the public data by ITSTAT and previous studies on the digital divide. Also this study follows the system thinking approach to model the causal relationships among diverse factors on the digital divide. With the results, this study suggests that the factors to measure the digital divide should be re-designed including smartphone penetration and accessibilities. Especially, current digital divide scoring factors should be considered in the way of social welfare.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Comparing digital divides in 2010 and in 2015
• 2.1 Summarizing the previous study on the digital divideissues of Korean rural area
• 2.2 Digital divides issues of Korean rural area in 2015
• 4 Conclusion & Discussion
• References