A group of scholars Thursday urged that the new administration should establish a government branch that exclusively deals with issues related to the Information and Communications Technology sector.

In a press conference, a group of 25 different academic organizations involved in ICT said a government ministry that takes full charge of content, platforms, and broadcast and telecom should be set up at the earliest date.

“President-elect Park Geun-hye must revive the sectors of information, broadcast and telecommunications, which have been rather ignored in the past, by drafting a national future vision which focuses on ICT policies,” its officials said at the media event in downtown Seoul.

“The country must create a new growth engine and take the lead in the future through the field of ICT.”

The participating organizations included the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences and the Korean Institute of Information Technology.

The event took place after Park said during her election campaign on Dec. 10 that she will build a new government organization to handle ICT-related issues.

If the decision to establish the ministerial-level organization is made final, it would indicate that the current Korea Communications Commission will be demolished.

The KCC, which had existed as a separate ministry in the past, was constructed in 2008 as an organization directly under the president.

As part of the government’s efforts to slim down the number of ministries, the commission became responsible for regulating policies on broadcast and telecommunications services.

Industry insiders have pointed to the need of reviving the Information and Communications Ministry for a faster decision-making process and to have a bigger voice in the devising of national-scale projects.

However, it is yet uncertain what will happen to the KCC as the president-elect has not clarified her stance on the issue.

Park has stated on two separate occasions that the new administration will create an exclusive “governmental organization” on ICT as well as an exclusive “government ministry.”

“All of our key ICT indicators are dropping at this point. There were many well-doing small and mid-sized IT ventures five to 10 years ago, but they have now all closed down and disappeared,” said Park Jin-woo, president of the KICS.

“When the Information and Communications Ministry was shut down, it was correct to say IT needed to be dealt with in all other industries, but it is still the belief of experts that an exclusive branch needs to be in place for the development of human resources in IT and for the boom of the industry.”

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)