Ex-KT vice president pledges to end software regulations

Song Hee-kyung, lawmaker of ruling Saenuri Party

By Lee Min-hyung

Song Hee-kyung, a newly elected lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, is moving to put an end to the nation’s decades-long regulation of the software industry.

Song, 52, is one of Korea’s few female IT experts, previously serving as the vice president of KT’s Internet of Things (IoT) business division.

She took various key posts at the nation’s second-largest mobile carrier, including heading the firm’s software development center and business-to-business (B2B) IT service unit.

In particular, she was the nation’s first female official promoted to a company’s vice presidency in the IT development industry.

In March, the ruling party nominated Song as a proportional representative for the April 13 general election, citing her specialty and willingness to contribute to the development of the domestic software industry.

Upon winning the election, she has pledged to devote her life to generating infrastructure for the nation’s slowly growing software industry.

Toward that end, she stressed the importance of eliminating unnecessary software-related regulations.

“The software industry will determine the fate of Korea’s fourth industrial revolution,” she said in a recent press release. “I believe the first step is to hear and gather opinions from various sectors over the current status of our software industry, before mapping out new policies. I will do my utmost to revise the nation’s legal system in a way that helps our software industry compete in the global market.”