The ministry of Culture and Tourism has decided that it would come up with 'eBook Korea Vision' to make the country the world's leading content provider, and would implement relevant business gradually by 2012.

The ministry divides its plan into three stages of short-term, mid-term and long-term. It would establish e-book industry infrastructure in the short-term of 2003 to 2004, provide an optimum environment for business in mid-term (2007), and build the image of the world's leading e-book country in long-term (2012).

For that purpose, the ministry plans to streamline rules and regulation and exempt VAT for e-book. In addition, it also develops technology for e-book, build profit model for e-book, enhance recognition and training for e-book, lay the foundation for e-book publication industry and facilitate e-book distribution.

For the technology development for e-book, the ministry plans to update Korean e-book document standard (KS X 6100), develop editor and viewer, and prevent overlapping development in content. That is based on complaints that different technologies in editor and viewer provided by e-book content providers make content incompatible and difficult to use.

The ministry also plans to help to create high-quality content through business of supporting e-book publication, multimedia e-book, and e-book on Korean traditional culture.

In particular, the ministry plans to facilitate the e-book market boom through the operation of electronic publication development forum and various ways such as e-book spread campaign, e-book competition contest, designation of monthly e-book, and Korea eBook Fair.

The ministry also plans to manage provide 'eBook Korea' to provide comprehensive information search, sales information, and news on e-cook to increase usage convenience and plans to work together with emerging publication type of POD(Point On Demand) to diversify ways of providing content and increasing added values of content.

According to the ministry source e-book will be essentially spread in the next-generation ubiquitous computing paradigm. "In order to build the world's leading e-book provider, the government thinks it desirable to build infrastructure and come up with systematic development strategies."