A Study on the Presence of the Information Management Division and its Effect on the Digital Divide among Different Regions of Korea

With the confirmation of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and as cheap foreign agricultural products are beginning to be freely distributed in Korea, the government has taken a greater interest in securing the competitiveness of domestic agriculture. Accordingly, the Korean government has presented plans to advance the interests of 'small but strong farmers' and secure their competitiveness in line with the agricultural conditions in Korea. The government also announced that it will focus on leading these efforts in rural areas. The main thrust of this plan to support 'small but strong farmers' focuses onutilizing advanced peripheral technologies such as IT and BT; however, there are only a few Information Management Division centers currentlyoperating across the nation, and these are mainly in the IT-related divisions of the Agricultural Research and Extension Services and Agricultural Technology Centers. Therefore, in this study, we used the responses from a survey of farmers to identify regional differences in informatization levels and the digital divide among 'small but strong farmers' according to the presence or absence of an Information Management Division center. As a result, we found that the 'small but strong farmers' in regions with an active Information Management Division center received more IT services and had a higher level of informatization. Thus, to increase the use of IT-related peripheral technology by these 'small but strong farmers', it is important to maintain or increase the number of Information Management Division centers.