During the week of June 12-15th, NIA officials went to Colombia in order to select a suitable location and partner in order to establish an Information Access Center (IAC).

Information Access Centers is one way of the initiatives Korea has undertaken to help developing countries, bridge the global digital divide. The Korean government has built Information Access Centers in developing countries to improve the environment for information use, and contributed to the
establishment of information infrastructure and better information access in each region.

It was during this week in June that NIA staff conducted a field inspection of 6 different suggested places and with the close cooperation of Colombia || chr(39) || || chr(39) || || chr(39) || || chr(39) || || chr(39) || || chr(39) || || chr(39) || || chr(39) || s Ministry of ICT and the Bogota Mayor Office, it was finally decided that UNIMINUTO (www.uniminuto.edu) would be the preferred premises for the

Colombia/Korea IAC. UNIMINUTO (Corporacion Universitaria Minuto de Dios)

is a not-for-profit education institution established in 1990 in the capital,
Bogota and now has up to 40 campuses nationwide.

Before the official MOU signing ceremony, NIA officials had a meeting with H.E. Minister Diego Molano Vega of the Ministry of ICT of Colombia as well as Dr. Jong Youn Choo, the Korean Ambassador to Colombia at Ministry of ICT of Colombia. H.E. Minister of Diego Molano Vega showed that he

had a lot of interest in the IAC and suggested that collaboration of the IAC project should be together with the Compartel project, which is one of the big similar local projects done by Ministry of ICT
of Colombia throughout the country.

On June 14th, under the participation of Dr. Leonidas Lopez Herran, Rector General, UNIMINUTO and Mr. Myungha Hong, Executive Principal of the Global Project Department of NIA, NIA and UNIMINUTO came to an agreement for the establishment of the IAC and signed the MOU. UNIMINUTO (Corporacion

Universitaria Minuto de Dios) is a not-for-profit education institution established in 1990 in Botota. It has 40 campuses nationwide.