South Korea (country telecoms regulation overview)

The Korean telecoms market landscape has been widely reshaped by digital convergence in recent years, blurring boundaries between broadcasting, telecoms, and even mass media. In line with the rapid evolution towards digital convergence, new players and newly merged players have changed the entire competitive climate.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), re-formed from the Ministry of Information and Communications, has concentrated its efforts on regulatory convergence and deregulation to promote competition. In particular, the KCC has completed its regulatory framework for the IPTV market, which showed rapid growth in 2009 with a subscriber base of 2.3 million as of December 2009. In terms of converged services, large players such as SK, KT, and LG have merged their subsidiaries and a variety of regulatory measures have been implemented for fair competition, pricing, interconnection, and portability.