South Korea Has no Formalized Stance amid the Changing Internet World Order

As the current Internet world order is largely dominated by the U.S. internet giants, such as Google, Facebook and Apple, other major countries, including China, Russia and EU countries, are aggressively seeking a new Internet world order. Previously, the EU countries respected the private autonomy for the Internet order, but they recently imposed a heavy tax on Google and prevented personal information from crossing the border, actively stressing the sovereignty over information and intervening the Internet order.

China and Russia have advocated the government-led Internet order establishment in order to protect the national security, personal information and domestic industry from the start. Moreover, China and India support the idea of a private multilateral organization managing the Internet, while they insist that the Internet order needs the government-led management at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) level.

On the other hand, the U.S. is strongly opposed to government intervention, saying, “The Internet world order should be completely maintained by the private autonomy.”

According to industry sources on September 18, the U.S. government will start giving the control of internet addresses to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in October, allowing the private organization to run it with autonomy. The ICANN is a nonprofit organization that was established in 1988 to organize global IP addresses, and it has been so far overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The ICANN can finally assign both IP addresses and domain. In an extreme case, it has the right to change Korea’s Internet country code top-level domain (.kr). However, the U.S. government has decided to delegate the authority to a private organization.

An official from the industry said, “The U.S. government’s decision to abolish the control over the ICANN is to completely transfer its basic right of Internet governance to a private organization. It should be seen as the pre-emptive declaration of Internet governance based on the private autonomy in a bid to cover up the current situation when global major countries paradoxically show a strong will to intervene the Internet order.” 

In regard to the U.S. stance of supporting the private autonomy for Internet order, some Internet experts are criticizing the latest movement of the U.S., saying the country is using the high level of tactics to maintain the current Internet industry structure and protect domestic businesses.

In particular, global countries, which had been in confrontation each other over which entity should   manage IP addresses earlier, are now struggling for the supremacy in network neutrality, taxation of internet firms, like “Google tax”, and personal information protection and security.

The EU countries agree that numerous private interested parties should discuss to manage the IP address system but they are in confrontation over taxation on U.S. internet firms such as Google and Apple, fighting for the leadership.

A the moment when countries around the world are competing for the leadership in Internet order in various sectors, South Korea, which has the world’s best internet infrastructure and utilization, is still sitting on its hands and reiterating its neutral position. In this regard, some experts express concerns that South Korea can lag behind in the global Internet order.

This is because the South Korean government still doesn’t have a concrete stance on the issue of Google’s request to export the map data, taxation on global internet giants, including Google, Facebook and Apple, and measures to global firms’ leakage of Korean personal information, dealing them case by case. 

In this regard, experts said, “Considering the current trend that the Internet policy is becoming more connected with various issues, such as commerce and diplomacy, it is time for the Korean government to take a clear position to raise its voice in the competition over the Internet order. It should start discussing to establish its Internet government structure in order to compete for the Internet leadership and secure practical interests in diplomacy and commerce.”