Information economy in Turkey and comparison of Turkey - South Korea

The information economy is an economic system where information is used as a factor of production, which makes social and economic life productive, and that can constantly renew itself according to the needs of the current times. Information and communication technologies have become commonly used concepts on the global agenda along with the globalization toward the end of 20th century. Extraordinary developments in these two phenomena as of 21st century resulted in the concept of 'information economy'. Information maintains its dominance as an important production factor since then. South Korea was introduced with the information economy in the 1960s, and it has now become one of the leading countries in this field. Information economy was introduced to Turkey in the late 1990s, much later than South Korea.South Korea has achieved its success in the field of information economy, in particular through science and technology policies and export-based industrialization policies that it has adopted. In addition, the government's active role in the economy, implementation of effective policies in the education system, directing the capital to the right areas and keeping R&D expenditures as high as possible are other factors leading to this success. South Korea outpaced Turkey since scientific and technological developments in Turkey occur at a slow pace. This study intends to compare the development level of the information economy between two countries, to present the reasons for differences and particularly, to reveal the underlying factors of the success of South Korea. Correlation analysis was selected as the study method. In this context, Turkey and South Korea are first subjected to a theoretical comparison, followed by a correlation analysis and a numerical comparison. As a result of the interpretation of analyses based on the economic logic, South Korea has made investments in important areas such as technology, R&D, education and patents, and has shown a continuous improvement in terms of information economy. Keywords: Turkey, Information Economy, Information Society, South Korea, Science and Technology.