BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei — President Kim Dae-jung Nov. 16 urged the leaders of the 21 Asia-Pacific rim countries to make concerted efforts to alleviate the worsening "digital divide" by creating new opportunities in this field at the dawn of a new century, winning their unanimous support.
This initiative, along with Kim’s other overtures, was fully reflected in the 13-page statement issued at the end of the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in this southeast Asian country, presidential spokesman Park Joon-young said.
Kim also called for due steps to protect Asian countries from attacks by speculative hedge funds and share information and know-how among APEC economies on structural reforms.
Under Kim’s initiative to turn the "digital divide" into a "digital opportunity," Korea will dispatch young volunteers to digitally disadvantaged countries in the Asia-Pacific region from next year.
From next year through 2005, about 120 young volunteers will be dispatched to such countries as Vietnam and Thailand to provide training on the use of the Internet.
From next year, about 300 personnel from 30 countries in the APEC area will be invited to Korea so they can receive training on the CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile phone technology, the Internet, e-commerce, and computer software programs.
Also from next year, Korea will finance the launch of graduate and doctoral courses at universities in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia so that the students from these countries will become experts on information technologies, according to Lee Ki-ho, senior presidential secretary for economic affairs.
Korea will dispatch experts in information technology to 20 countries for training locals in the APEC region.
Kim’s second major initiative was how to devise an international mechanism to shield APEC economies from speculative attack on currencies.
The president proposed a new international financial architecture to monitor cross-border movement of hot money.
Lee said that an international symposium will be held in Seoul, Nov. 30 when Asian countries could exchange views on how to develop a model for forecasting a currency crisis. In the forthcoming ASEAN plus 3 (Korea, China and Japan) summit in Singapore next week, President Kim will propose the establishment of an ASEAN-wide channel to monitor cross-border movement of hedge funds, the secretary said.


The third and last part of Kim’s initiative in this Brunei summit was the dialogue among APEC economies to share information and experience on structural reform. The president asked the APEC leaders to instruct their ministers to hold APEC-wide meetings and seminars on competition policy, financial reform, corporate governance, and labor reform.
Through sharing information and experience on economic reform, APEC could spur the move toward reform, he said.
At the summit, President Kim proposed the creation of an APEC fund to strengthen the social safety net in the region. Under his proposal, each APEC economy would contribute money to the fund and use it to provide food, medical service and job training programs, and relief services to the poor APEC economies and non-APEC members, including North Korea. Businessmen in this region are expected to make contributions to the fund, Lee said.