HCI in Korea: Where imagination becomes reality

HCI (Human-Computer Interface) has developed in Korea driven by the rapid growth of Korea's industries and its information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. The quantitative and qualitative growth of the ICT industry created a special interest in HCI issues among companies, research institutes, and universities. Interest in HCI has also grown within academia. In 1990, a special interest group on HCI was organized by the Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers (KIISE). It later became an independent academic society called the HCI Society of Korea (HCIK). Korean researchers began to present more papers on the topics of design, interactive devices, and information visualization. Recently, the research themes have covered exergames, crowd computing, and social computing, and other popular topics of recent CHI papers by Korean researchers include design, social computing, new interactive technologies, and information visualization. Korean HCI is characterized by a tight collaboration between practice and research, which is evident not only in academic research but also in the exchange of human resource.