Ministry of Science and ICT Holds Remote Video Meeting with Telecommuting and Remote Work Solution Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Seol Gina Jo] On the 16th, the Ministry of Science and ICT held a remote video meeting at the Sejong Government Complex with companies providing telecommuting and remote work solutions (software) and companies implementing telecommuting using related solutions.

This meeting was organized to share the status of software companies providing and utilizing telecommuting and remote work solutions and to listen to difficulties, amid growing interest in telecommuting and remote work due to the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

Attendees included companies such as NBP Co., Ltd. (CTO Ki-eun Park), RSUPPORT (CEO Hyungsoo Seo), Douzone Bizon (CEO of Platform Business Division Hochul Song), Toss Lab (CEO Daehyun Kim), Hidden Bridge (CEO Hwansik Namgung), DoubleMe (CEO Heegwan Kim), SK Telecom (Vice President Sanggyu Shin), as well as the Chairman of the Software Industry Association (Honggu Lee) and Software & Cloud PM of the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (Hyungcheol Kim).

As of the end of 2018, there were about 80 companies providing telecommuting solutions, and the number of businesses that introduced remote work was about 120,000, accounting for 3% of all companies.

Currently, domestic software companies are providing their services free of charge or at a discount for a certain period to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that find it difficult to quickly establish telecommuting systems. The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Employment and Labor are also supporting SMEs with cloud service usage fees (2.5 billion KRW), smart work pilot project support (300 million KRW), and infrastructure construction costs and indirect labor costs for telecommuting and remote work for small and medium-sized enterprises this year.

Minister Ki-young Choi said at the meeting, “I sincerely thank the companies that actively prepared support measures such as providing their telecommuting solutions free of charge or at a discount during this national crisis.” He added, “Through joint efforts by the government and the private sector, I hope the difficulties of SMEs in telecommuting will be reduced, and that many excellent domestic solutions will be utilized, leading to growth in the domestic software market and expansion of exports.”