The South Korean government plans to remove ActiveX from the county’s websites to boost foreign online shopping. The Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said on Wednesday that it will let the private sector drop the troublesome technical requirement, which has been cited as a major obstacle in Internet transactions.
ActiveX is an Internet Explorer exclusive plug-in that allows Internet Explorer to run executable files on a user’s computer. Most of Korea's financial websites and online shopping malls have relied on ActiveX to run their proprietary payment systems and online identity protection programs. But the outdated ActiveX dependency has prevented users of other web browsers or mobile devices from using those local websites.
As domestic manufacturers struggle with a sluggish domestic market, boosting foreign online sales could be a new export channel. Many Korean websites that require ActiveX to make online transactions prevent overseas customers from making direct online purchases.
President Park also impressed the need of immediate action to solve the problem at her New Year’s press conference. “Foreign direct purchases are still at their starting point compared to the amount of Koreans’ foreign online purchases, because of outdated regulations like ActiveX that complicates foreign shopping. If we can facilitate foreign direct purchases by simplifying the payment process such as in other countries, these online sales could become a growth engine like exports,” said Park.
According to the Ministry, at least 90 percent of the country's top 100 websites will replace ActiveX with alternative systems and technologies by 2017. This ActiveX-free plan provides subsidies of up to 50 percent of the financial costs to stop using ActiveX-based systems and to create HTML5-related alternative technologies to replace it, up to 100 million won (US$91,734) per web site or 20 million won (US$18,345) per solution. Furthermore, the Ministry will introduce a web standard certificate system for local websites and establish education programs and technology support and consulting centers in order to promote HTLM5-based platforms in the country, including for mobile interfaces.
“Following those efforts, we seek to spread the trend to other areas, such as finance, education, and entertainment,” the Ministry said. Later this month the Ministry will push public websites to remove the ActiveX software requirement as well. Analysts also advised that websites need to set up multi-lingual services to escalate international demand. Currently, foreign direct online purchases remain less than half of Korea's online direct purchase total of US$ 1 billion. However, the government sees great potential in changing the existing system.