People use the expression "global standard" when talking about worldwide benchmarks. A standard means a "norm." A standard is a promise that spans the economy, industry, and technology. Technological advances can create the need for a "standard," but a single standard can also drive a leap of revolutionary scale. The Korean Agency for Technology and Standards and ChosunBiz selected the "top 10 standards that changed the world" and the "top 10 standards that changed Koreans' lives and the economy" based on a survey of experts from industry, academia, research, and media, and reexamine the role of standards. [Editor's note]
In May 1982, two computers installed at the Korea Institute of Electronics Technology (KIET) in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, and at Seoul National University were assigned unique internet addresses and exchanged data. On this day, Korea became the second country in the world after the United States to succeed in an internet connection.
In 1986, DACOM (now LG Uplus) launched the PC communication service "Cheollian." PC communication, with chat and electronic mailboxes, was the forerunner of online communities where users shared information and communicated with the world. In 1988, as the four major PC communication services—Hitel, NowNuri, and Unitel among them—appeared, the services entered a heyday, with subscribers surpassing 3.5 million.
Around this time, website developers faced a dilemma. Web browsers then were split between Microsoft (MS) Internet Explorer and Netscape. Because the web languages applied to each browser differed, developers had to build two versions of the same homepage for the same customer.
In this situation, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international body that develops web standards, was founded in 1994. W3C standardized HTML, the language that defines the structure of webpages. Around the same time, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international internet standards body, standardized HTTP, the connection protocol, and URL, the addressing system.
As a result, anyone could create webpages using the same rules and language. A new era opened in which people could access websites and read information in the same way from any country and on any device. Thanks to these standards, global IT companies such as Google, Amazon, and Naver were able to grow. In addition, information-vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities and older adults, could use services in the same web environment as others.