Rep. Hong Lashes out at Telecom
Operators'Pricing and Marketing Policies

GNP member of the Assembly Science, Technology, Information and Telecommunications Committee recognized for conducting active parliamentary audit

Korean mobile telecom operators may have inflated overseas roaming service charges, a lawmaker claimed. Rep. Hong Chang-sun, a member of the National Assembly Science, Technology, Information and Telecommunications Committee, said during a parliamentary inspection of the government made on Oct. 13 that overseas roaming charges imposed by Korean telecom operators showed a up to five-fold difference, arousing suspicion that they might have inflated the charges.
Rep. Hong, of the ruling Uri Party, said, "An examination into overseas roaming charges taxed by telecom operators has showed a big difference, arousing questions over whether they might have charged the charges properly."The Ministry of Information and Communication should make more efforts to develop better services in the interests of a rising number of overseas travelers, and to this end, overseas roaming service charges have to be lowered, Rep. Hong said.
Hong said telecom companies find it more difficult to avoid criticism stemming from overcharging and the MIC will have to deal with the suspicion.
In the meantime, a report submitted to Rep. Hong by the MIC for a parliamentary interpellation, showed that the three mobile telecom operators have cut down on membership benefits and related marketing costs by as much as over 40 percent.
The report, made available on Oct. 27, indicated that SK Telecom reduced the membership management cost per customer from 5,261 won in the first quarter of last year to 3,128 won, representing a whopping more than 40 percent plunge. KTF saw the cost dropping by 32 percent to 1,950 won from 2,867 won, while LG Telecom reduced the cost by 12 percent to 2,024 won from 2,296 won during the same period.
On the other hand, the three mobile telecom operators were found to have spent more marketing costs, causing doubt that they might have reduced benefits to membership clients.
SK Telecom poured 1,039.7 billion won in marketing costs during the first half of this year, a remarkable 18.3 percent from 878.2 billion won during the same period of last year, while KTF raised its marketing costs by 32.1 percent to 598.3 billion won. LG Telecom also witnessed its marketing costs climbing as much as 22.4 percent to 357.5 billion won during the same period.
Rep. Hong claimed, "The three mobile telecom operators have spent more marking costs, but cut down on membership management costs, causing suspicion that they pay more attention on attracting more clients, but not on managing clients after recruiting them." nw

Korean Scientists'Thesis Level
Stays Stagnant for 10 Yrs

Registers a remarkable qualitative growth, however

Korea has achieved remarkable quantitative growth in the past 10 years, but stayed stagnant in terms of quality.
A report submitted by the Ministry of Science and Technology during a parliamentary interpellation of the government, showed that Korea witnessed the number of SCI (Scientific Citation Index)-level theses surging from 5379 in 1995 to 202,048, representing a 4.3-fold jump.
SCI refers to database of scientists'thesis indexes, compiled by the U.S. Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
Korean scientists'percentage of SCI-level theses rose from 0.68 percent to 2.02 percent during the period. Korea jumped from 23rd place to 14th place in the ranking of countries. It means that Korea's announcement of scientific theses has advanced to a level, equivalent to Korea's 11th place in the world in terms of the size of economy.
However, Korean scientists have made no progress in term of thesis quality during the period - measuring theses quotations.
The report showed that the frequency of quoting Korean theses for references stood at a mere 3.04 occasions, lagging behind a global average of 4.51 occasions. Korea ranked around 30th place during the 10-year period - an average of 34th place during the period between 1995 and 1999 and an average of 30th during the period between 2001 and 2005.
Rep. Hong Chang-seon, of the ruling Uri Party, said, "The reason for the lagging development of scientific theses that Korean scientists tend to favor writing several easy theses rather than to pursue the value of the contents of theses." nw