Two South Korean govrnmental organizations, Korea Post and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) will migrate their banking activities to Linux, ending the complete dominance of Windows and IE in this sector. The moves comes in the wake of encouragement by the country's Ministry of Information and Communication to move toward an open source strategy.

"The Ministry is fostering open source software such as Linux in order to end the monopoly by Microsoft. Linux system users have demanded the new banking system as well," said Korea Post official Oh Kwang-soo in a local newspaper. "We've decided to launch it because we feel responsible as a public organization. We believe that private firms will follow us once our Linux online banking system is proved successful".

Shinhan Bank, which is in the private sector, has released onling banking software for the Mac, but has not yet moved toward Linux. Other private sector banks continue to support a Windows-only environment. Yet the government is reportedly planning to move toward Linux in many organizations, and apparently hopes elements of the private sector will follow its lead.

The Ministry of Planning and Budget, for example,  plans to use open source software for 37 projects in 23 government agencies in the coming year. This ministry will also allow government organizations to select the software they want to use, and it will encourage education for those wishing to learn more about Linux.