The Ministry of Information and Communication said Friday....South Korea plans to equip 90 percent of its population with Internet skills, or e-literacy, and hike the proportion of citizens to receive life-time education based on state-of-the-art digital facilities to 50 percent by 2006. The ministry announced a draft plan to promote information-based education for the public over the coming five years at a hearing held earlier in the day. The plan calls for expanding online education by promoting "online home education" via PCs or digital TVs and digitalizing school books, and strengthening cyber universities. In the e-commerce sector, the ministry envisions raising the ratio of e-commerce to 30 percent of the country's entire business transactions by 2006 and the number of e-signature users to 25 million by 2005. The ministry also plans for the nation to be one of the global information leaders by expanding the capacity of backbone infrastructure in major locations to several hundreds of gigabits per seconds and having digital TVs in more than 50 percent of the nation's homes by 2006. The ministry will finalize the plan March 27 after consulting with related government-run panels.