South Korea aims to become 90 percent independent from ActiveX by 2017

Chances are you haven't heard about ActiveX in years but in South Korea this outdated technology is still commonplace. In the 1990s the country adopted a web authentication system to ensure a safe Internet experience, this system is linked to your identity number and biometrics and the entire infrastructure was designed for ActiveX. South Koreans are mandated to use the system for everything from logging into the web to shopping online.

The big problem is the entire system is build upon ActiveX, which is one of the reasons why Internet Explorer is still so popular in South Korea. ActiveX has been obsolete for some time now but South Korea is slow to move away from the system. ZD Net writes the current goal is to remove ActiveX from the country's 100 most popular privately owned websites by 2017.

The South Korean Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, which announced the plan to remove ActiveX from e-commerce websites, said it also wants to extend this to the finance, education, and entertainment sectors, and will work towards doing so.

Out of the top 100 websites, the ministry will first help small and mid-sized firms adopt web standards using solutions that can replace ActiveX. It will support as much as 50 percent of the cost, with a 100 million won ($91,000) cap.

The government will also provide financial support for the development of 48 alternative technologies with the same cap.

This year, the government will provide 1.2 billion won ($1 million) to support already developed solutions in security, payment, and authentication -- which accounts for 66 percent of ActiveX users -- to be adopted. Multimedia, documents, and other areas will be provided with support starting next year.