ABSTRACT
For many researchers, South Korea has been an important case worthy of close examination from academics and practitioners alike, as the country has been regarded as one of the leaders in the field of e-government. Korea has firmly maintained top ranking at many highly recognized e-government evaluation studies, 1 and since the development and launch of e-government in early 2000, Korea has provided some of the most advanced online government services and e-democracy-type applications that allow citizens to perform various online transactions with the government and view and participate in government affairs. Korean e-government has been a frequent subject of e-government research, and it has been taught at public administration programs in Korea, for domestic as well as international students and government officials, as the model has been heavily benchmarked and exported to countries developing their own e-government systems. From a development point of view, Korean e-government is interesting in that it was developed in a top-down fashion as a top policy agenda for Korea’s eighth President Kim Dae-jung and had a relatively short development period of two years. In other words, it had a clear beginning, and there were distinctive development steps that created what is Korean e-government today.
