Status of photonic network research in Korea

Korea is small country but has recently dramatic growth in broadband internet subscribers. At the present of December in 2003, about 73% of total households are internet subscribers. The country is now pursuing new internet highway with faster speed and broadband services for future intelligent internet. The viable research targets are the switching technologies, the access network and convergence network technologies. The optical burst switching will be discussed as the intermediate solution before the coming sophisticated optical packet switching technologies. Another important issue is how we accept diverse service types in future network. There are always dilemmas to choose "optical" or "electrical" for the network in both cost and technology views. The WDM PON-based FTTH and the broadband convergence network (BcN) plans in Korea will also be discussed.