Authors - Kyounghee Cho Abstract - South Korea is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading digital societies and a global model of e-government development. While previous studies have primarily examined Korea’s ICT development and e-government achievements from technological and administrative perspectives, relatively limited attention has been paid to how these developments collectively contributed to broader governance transformation. This paper examines how South Korea’s ICT and e-government development contributed to governance transformation beyond technological modernisation from the 1990s onward. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, the study analyses governmental policy documents, e-government development plans, institutional reports, and relevant academic literature. Particular attention is given to the Korean Information Infrastructure (KII), major e-government initiatives, and the role of state leadership and institutional coordination in shaping digital transformation. The findings suggest that South Korea’s digital transformation was not merely a technological process but a broader governance transformation. ICT development and e-government expansion facilitated administrative integration, strengthened institutional coordination, enhanced governance capacity, and reshaped interactions between government institutions and citizens. The study argues that these outcomes were driven not only by technological innovation but also by long-term strategic planning, state leadership, and institutional capacity. By analysing ICT development and e-government expansion as interconnected dimensions of governance transformation, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of digital governance and provides an analytical foundation for future comparative research on digital governance and AI-enabled public administration, particularly across different institutional contexts such as South Korea and the United Kingdom.
