KCC launches ITU committee
By Cho Mu-hyun
The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the nation’s telecom regulator, said Friday that it has nominated committee members of a preparatory committee for a globally renowned conference.
The committee also held its first meeting that day and reviewed the tentative backbone plan for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference 2014 in Busan, drafted by the recently formed ITU secretariat. The committee will supervise the secretariat.
Out of 16 members, the KCC nominated its chairman, Lee Kye-cheol, to head the committee, and others were chosen from high-level government officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Ministry of Strategy and Finance, and other lower-tier government agencies.
The move follows a presidential decree in June to form an organization to oversee the preparation for the conference.
The telecom regulator said it will choose more members from experts in diverse areas.
ITU Plenipotentiary Conferences are held every four years and discuss the current issues on radio signals, satellites, the Internet and global standards. It is the highest decision making body in the world on information technology issues.
Around 3,000 dignitaries that include ministers of information technology agencies, executives of global firms and heads of global organizations from 193 member countries will stay in Busan for three weeks starting Oct. 20, 2014.
Under the backbone plan discussed Friday, the vision for the conference is to present Korea as “a value-creating, human-centered smart power.”
The committee decided on five key goals it wants to achieve during preparations as well as the conference itself. Mainly, it wants to promote the country as a leader in diplomacy and polices on information and communications technology, not just infrastructure.
The other four are to export Korean information technology culture globally; make the conference a discussion ground for the world; increase marketing of the conference across the world, and an efficient management structure for the preparatory committee.
Lee has asked for cooperation from the industry, academia and researchers besides government agencies. Most important, he said, was the continual interest and support of the people.
The government agency expects the total economical benefit from hosting the conference will reach around 711.8 billion won. It said it will finalize the backbone plan and host between four to five continent-level global ITU conferences by 2014.