By NORIMITSU ONISHI　

　　SEOUL, South Korea---South Korea, the world’s most wired country, is rushing to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life. The government, which succeeded in getting broadband Internet into 72 percent of all households in the last half decade, has marshaled an army of scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society.

　　By 2007, networked robots that, say, relay messages to parents, teach children English and sing and dance for them when they are bored, are scheduled to enter mass production. Outside the home, they are expected to guide customers at post offices or patrol public areas, searching for intruders and transmitting images to monitoring centers.

　　If all goes according to plan, robots will be in every South Korean household between 2015 and 2020. That is the prediction, at least, of the ministry of Information and Communication.

　　 “My personal goal is to put a robot in every home by 2010,” said Oh Sang Rok, manager of the ministry’s intelligent service robot project.

　　Kim Mun Sang, director of the Center for Intelligent Robotics, said eventually “robot could change how we live in a way we can’t predict right now. It’s like the PC. No one ever thought the PC and the Internet would transform our society the way they have.

　　The government deregulated the telecommunications and Internet service industries and made investments as companies laid out cables in cities and into the countryside. The government offered information technology courses to homemakers, subsidized computers for low-income families and made the country the first in the world to have high-speed Internet in every primary, junior and high school.

　　South Koreans use futuristic technologies that are years away in the United States; companies like Microsoft and Motorola test products here before introducing them in the Untied States.

　　Since January, Koreans have been able to watch television broadcast on cellphones, free, thanks to government subsidized technology. In April, South Korea will introduce the first nationwide superfast wireless Internet service, called WiBro, eventually making it possible for Koreas to remain online on the go—at 10 megabits per second, faster than most conventional broadband connections.

　　About 17 million of the 48 million South Koreans belong to Cyworld, a Web-based service that is a sort of parallel universe where everyone is interconnected through home pages. The interconnectivity has changed the way and speed with which opinions are formed, about everything from fashion on politics, technology and social science experts said.

　　Chang Duk jin, a sociologist at Seoul National University who has studied the effects of technology on society, said it had profoundly influenced domestic politics. Two years age, after the opposition-led National Assembly impeached President Roh Moo Hyun, a consensus began forming on the Internet that the move was politically motivated—two hours after the vote took place, Mr. Chang said.

　　“That quickly led to mass demonstrations,” he said. “That kind of thing had never happened in Korea before. Everyone is connected to everyone else, so issues spread very fast and kind of unpredictably.