Aggressive Marketing Plan for New MS Word 2000

Microsoft Korea announced Wednesday that it is offering the local version of its new Word 2000 program which enables improved word processing in Korean and English and has an inreased Chinese character function storing 26,000, to consumers through a W10,000 annual subscription fee starting Saturday. The subscription for the new local version is substantially lower than the price tag for the regular English-only version of Word 2000 which has been selling for W320,000. Currently, individual consumers favor the Korean firm Hangul & Computer's 'Hangul' program, while more businesses have been using Microsoft's Word. The cost of an upgrade from Windows 97 has been set at W45,000 while the total cost for a new installation has yet to be fixed.

(Hwan Soon-hyun, icarus@chosun.com)