Essays on Technological Catching-up and Socio-Political Relations: The Cases of Korean ICT Systems

Abstract

Newly industrializing economies (NIEs) including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore successfully caught-up the leaders in high-technology sectors and have become global leaders. Korea is one of the most successful catching-up economies, and has attracted enormous research interests from scholars. However, recent industrial development and technology policy in Korea requires further examination on technological catching-up. While traditional technology policy and strategies leaning on imitation of given foreign technologies have become difficult to implement in the current environment, and the literature on East Asian technological catching-up exposes limitations as they considers only partial aspects of catching-up phenomena. In relation with the issue above, this dissertation presents three essays that examine socio-political relations in the Korean ICT (Information and Communications Technology) systems industry. While socio-political relations are considered as one of important factors shaping technological innovation according to innovation literature in general or global context, they have rarely been studied in the context of latecomer countries. Therefore, it is expected that the essays of this dissertation may bring new insights to the catching-up literature and also provide implications for current challenges in Korean technology policy and strategy. The first essay concerns the matters of latecomers` technological catching-up and entering (and sustaining in) overseas markets in the CoPS sectors utilizing the cases of Korean telecommunications systems, T-DMB and DVR. Extending the existing body of catching-up literature, this essay classified the capabilities required for latecomers into technological capabilities, technology-generation capabilities, and market capabilities. Moreover, considering telecommunications (TDX and CDMA) systems and T-DMB as CoPS and DVR as an example of mass produced goods, a model for explaining different paths be...