'Little Daylight' Between U.S., South Korea on Internet Governance Interests
There’s “very little daylight” between the U.S. and South Korea on their goals for the U.N.’s upcoming 10-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society outcomes (WSIS+10), said U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy Daniel Sepulveda during a Brookings Institution event Monday. WSIS+10, set for Dec. 15-16, will assess the world’s progress on meeting the WSIS outcomes and determine how to close remaining gaps, Sepulveda said. “We both share a common commitment to the multistakeholder process, we both share a common commitment to a people-centered innovation society where we’re working to both deliver and drive the benefits of the information community as deep into the economy and society as possible,” Sepulveda said. “We’ll be working together so that we can bring our colleagues together along those lines.”
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The U.S.-South Korea partnership on Internet governance issues has been strong for years, with both nations’ delegations to the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference seen as contributing to that conference’s successful outcome (see 1411200025), said South Korean Ambassador to the U.S. Ahn Ho-Young. “We believe that the multistakeholder model has served us well and will do so in the days to come,” he said. The U.S. and South Korea were able to achieve their shared goals at the 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary that resulted in a shared consensus with other ITU member delegations that was noticeably absent from the contentious 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications, said South Korea Assistant Minister-Science, ICT and Future Planning Min Wonki, who chaired the 2014 conference.
The U.S. will seek a U.N. reaffirmation of the multistakeholder Internet governance model as part of WSIS+10, Sepulveda said. The U.S. also wants the U.N. to recommit to “bridging the digital divide” and a renewed commitment to “bridging the divide” over human rights issues and access for disenfranchised communities, he said. South Korea believes “we have to find ways to support developing countries and to bridge the broadband gap,” Min said. The U.N. also needs to include an information and communications technology component in its post-2015 agenda, he said.
The U.S. and South Korea will also be partners at other major Internet governance and international telecom forums in 2015 and beyond, including the Nov. 10-13 Internet Governance Forum, the Nov. 2-27 World Radiocommunication Conference and the June 21-23 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ministerial meeting on the digital economy, Sepulveda said. The U.S. and South Korea also align on their goals for the upcoming Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, Min said. The IANA transition signaled a “historic” shift in international opinion about Internet governance, with most stakeholders now focusing on how ICANN can smoothly transition oversight of the IANA functions away from NTIA, he said. Discussions about multilateral, government-driven Internet governance have all but ceased, Min said.