Information flows on the Internet of Korea

The present study aims to offer a better understanding on the geographic implications of the Internet. It also intends to clarify whether any network of relationships among Korean cities has emerged as a result of the advancement of information technology, or if the contrary is true-that the Internet has reinforced Korea's urban hierarchy. The present study contends that one needs to consider the three components of the Internet altogether-the Internet domains, the backbone networks, and the flows on them in order to have an overall picture of how the Internet organizes the spatial structure of a nation. This paper first describes briefly the recent growth of the Internet in Korea in order to provide the reader with background information on the infrastructure and the use of information technology. The sections following report the analyses of geographical distribution of domains in Korea, the topology of the Internet backbones and the nodal accessibility of the network, and the geographical characteristics of flows on the Internet infrastructure. The data sets analyzed in this study were either compiled by the authors using query programs designed specifically for this study or collected with the help of the Korea Network Information Center, the National Computerization Agency, and several private Internet businesses. All of the data sets were collected at two times, July 2000 and July 2001, unless mentioned otherwise. The details of each data set will be described in the following sections.