Toward a Digital Society and Its Citizenship Education

Abstract

The digital transformation that started in the 1990s, which was called the era of the Internet revolution, further accelerated due to the COVID-19 crisis. With this transition, the digital divide between generations and income has also deteriorated. In this context, it becomes an urgent task for us to educate the digitally underprivileged for stable digital transformation. To this end, this paper developed a digital transformation index and compared and analyzed the digital transformation level of each country. The result confirmed that there were significant differences in the degree of digital transformation among countries and regions, which is related to the country’s economic development. In addition, digital education policies and performance for the digitally vulnerable were reviewed, focusing on Korea, which ranked high in the digital transformation index. It found that the digital citizenship education for the elderly of Korea, has been a significant and positive effect in improving the digital ability of those digitally vulnerable citizens. We expect that the case of Korea provides a good precedent for developing countries to set up policies related to accelerate digital transformation and ease the digital divide, which further contribute to enhancing diplomatic relation with Korea.