HE Dr Donhee Lee, Minister of Education of Korea
Dr Sang Chang, President of Ewha Womans University
Mr Tadao Chino, President of the ADB
Dr Jeong Taik Lee, Lead Shepherd of HRD Working Group

Ladies and gentlemen ,

It is a great pleasure and honor for me to deliver a congratulatory message at the opening of this important event.

First of all, I would like to express my admiration and appreciation to our hosts, the Ministry of Education of Korea and the Ewha Womans University for their initiative in organizing this APEC International Roundtable. My thanks also goes to the Asian Development Bank for its valuable support.

Ladies and gentlemen,

At the close of the 20th century, mankind has witnessed the unprecedented progress in information and communication technology which has brought about profound changes in almost all aspects of our life. Education is no exception.

With the advent of New Economy characterized by ICT and increasing dependent on knowledge, education has become a decisive factor for the progress of society and the sustainable growth of economy. It determines how much and how fast an economy can benefit from globalization. New economy in essence is knowledge-based economy with education as its very foundation.

Nowadays, education for most people is already a part of their life. But to provide education for all and for lifelong is still a noble vision yet to be realized. The cyber education has opened a window of opportunity for us. By incorporating ICT into education, it provides a mode of distance learning which can deliver education to people in a speedy and the most cost-effective way, enabling people of all ages anywhere in the world to learn at their own convenience. This explains the very reason why Cyber Education is fast gaining ground as the way to reach across geographical and time boundaries. I think the Roundtable we are having today is very relevant and timely. It presents a great opportunity for the best in cyber education from APEC member economies to share their ideas and experiences and work together to advance our cooperation in this area of growing importance.

Within APEC, there has always been importance attached to education as an integrated part of overall efforts to develop the human resources and build up the capacity of member economies. Brunei Darussalam, as Chair of APEC 2000 has made "Delivering to the Community" as its main theme for the year. It underlined the importance on human resource development and emphasized on "Creating New Opportunities" from the technology revolution which is seen as a driving force of the new economy.

APEC Education Ministers, when they met in Singapore in April 2000, emphasized the importance of enhancing teaching/learning and achieving lifelong learning in the new century, and called for building "Learning Societies in the 21st Century". They recognized the vast potential presented by the Internet and multimedia tools and welcome APEC member economies to undertake projects such as Multimedia Distance Learning and Distance Learning on Basic Telecommunication Technology.

APEC Leaders at their recent meeting in Brunei, also gave their support to enhancing the quality of teachers and building sound education management. They agreed that information technology should be a core competency for learning and teaching. To ensure that everyone in APEC region benefits from the opportunity presented by ICT networks, leaders endorsed a strategy to enable region-wide access to Internet services by 2010. As a first step towards this goal, APEC aims to triple the number of people within the region with individual and community-based access by 2005. This is a concrete measure taken by APEC in its endeavor to bridge the digital gap and turn "digital divide" into "digital opportunity" and "digital dividend".

Moving into 2001, APEC is poised to work towards meeting the challenges of the new economy by giving priority to human capacity building. With this in mind, the outgoing and incoming hosts of APEC, Brunei and China will jointly host a high-level meeting on capacity building in June next year. Furthermore Ministers in charge of HRD will also meet in Japan next year to take stock of cooperation in HRD and map out the plan for the future work in this area.

Ladies and gentlemen

One of the beauties of APEC is characterized by far-reaching, pragmatic and well-thought cooperative initiatives by its members. Korea has long been proactive in fostering cooperation among the diverse membership of APEC. The Cyber Education Roundtable is another good example. It once again demonstrates the commitment of Korea to the APEC process and illustrates the farsightedness of Korea in bringing the most current and relevant issues to the forefront of APEC cooperation. This project encompasses APEC's priorities in capacity building, education and utilization of new information and communication technologies. I believe that the result of this roundtable will provide new momentum in accelerating collaboration in cyber education, thus helping member economies to build up their capacity to meet the challenge of the new economy.

As incoming Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat, I would like to assure you our continuous support and cooperation to ensure the successful outcome of these efforts. We look forward to working closely with Korea and other member economies in pursuance of this project in 2001 and beyond.

Finally, I wish you all the best in your deliberations and look forward to a fruitful Roundtable here in Seoul.

Thank you.