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Government & Business Community Aiming At Internet Sovereignty 2003/08/27 By Cho In-hye & Jung So-young The government and the business community are working to move away from U.S.-led Internet system. The government decided to carry out independent policies in the Asian region in the IPv6 area, the next-gen. Internet address system, which will be led by Korea, Japan and China other than the U.S. Domestic companies are also defecting from the current Internet address (domain) structure which is unilaterally administered by the U.S.-led ICANN, and begin to unveil independent alternative services. A government official said yesterday, "Until now, we have been the recipient of the U.S. system. However, it is necessary for us to be independent in the next-gen. market such as IPv6." "If Korea and Japan with relative superiority in technology cooperate, there is an ample chance to move ahead of the U.S. or Europe in the competition." For this purpose, IT ministers from Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo will meet at the Cheju Island on Sep. 8 and are expected to sign MOU committing three nations to cooperate in information exchange, R&D and standardization in order to facilitate the distribution of IPv6-related technologies and devices. The move is attributed to an inability to guarantee the Internet service`s dynamism with the U.S.-led Internet model alone with Korea`s Internet population reaching 28 million and the Internet usage unrivaled in the world. Independence movement is also taking place Internet address service exclusively controlled by ICANN. Mybyul.com will throw down the gauntlet to the Internet domain service market which is dominated by ICANN by developing an independent Internet protocol shedding existing `http` and holding a demonstrative event for .byul service at Plaza Hotel on Aug. 28. .byul service is using an original protocol, `byul`, as opposed to existing Internet sites using `http`. Not only English, multi-language, numbers but emoconti and various signs can be utilized. Kyobo Book Center and CJ already secured general upper domains such as `.책(Book)`, `.교보(Kyobo)` and `.cj`. Netpia is also declaring domain independence as a sovereign nation through Hangul Internet address service without going through ICANN`s management system. Netpia sold almost 200,000 Hangul Internet addresses in Korea alone, and is putting a brake on ICANN lead by emphasizing mother tongue domain for ninety non-English speaking countries including Taiwan and Thailand. State-run Korea Network Information Center (KRNIC), which established cooperation with ICANN, set up MINC, a mother tongue domain consortium, along with Japan and China endeavoring to expand independence. MINC is working to obtain full-fledged mother tongue domain service enabling Hangul.Hankook taking one step further from Hangul.kr.