On the Shoulders of Giants: The 1980s Telecommunications Revolution in Korea

While the 1970s ended with political crisis and problems in South Korea’s ICT sector, the 1980s were an epochal decade. 1 The revolutionary character of the changes that took place in that decade and their relationship to today’s developments are still not adequately acknowledged and understood, especially by many outside of South Korea and even by some younger Koreans. Our focus in this chapter is on the giant strides taken in the 1980s that laid the foundation for subsequent digital development in Korea.