The governments of Korea, Japan and China have agreed to start an international working group to share their advancements in information technology, extending a movement among Asian countries to jointly develop solutions to compete against dominant multinational high-tech firms such as Microsoft Corp.

The three countries announced the launch of the East Asia ICT (CJK) Summit in Tokyo yesterday, with the sides agreeing to exchange information on markets, technology trends and standardization activities while encouraging business partnerships and strategic alliances in both the public and private sectors. The working group will run through December 2009 and include officials from governments, research institutes and private companies. The agreement resulted from a meeting of information and communication technology ministers from each country.

Under the agreement, the three countries will continue recent efforts to develop open-source software, setting up the tentatively named "Northeast Asia open-source software promotion forum," comprised of working-level officials from industries, research institutes and other related organizations to promote open-source applications. In other issues, the three countries decided to cooperate in developing third-generation mobile telephony and other wireless solutions, encouraging joint efforts in research and development of communication technologies and their standardization.

The working group will jointly develop solutions for the next-generation Internet, most notably Internet protocol version 6, and radio frequency identification technology. The sides will cooperate in the development and promotion of IPv6 application services, while leading the experiments in setting up an interoperable regional network for RFID. The three countries also agreed to exchange information on digital-television technologies and broadcasting, while setting up an international network to counter computer security breaches.