18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

1 MISSION AND PURPOSE OF PROPOSED GTLD

Verisign commissioned quantitative market research in multiple markets to determine the best possible transliterations of .com. The Korean market study consistently chose the single character phonetic representation of “com” as the best choice. This preferred string is “컴”, and is Verisign’s preferred choice for this application. Due to the ICANN single character restriction currently in place Verisign is not able to apply for the Korean markets preferred choice, and instead is applying for an alternate two character version. Verisign will continue to work with ICANN to overcome concerns regarding single character IDN Top-level domains.

The primary mission of the KOREAN_TRANSLITERATION_OF_.COM gTLD is to improve the user
experience by offering a fully internationalized domain name (IDN) that includes a transliteration of .com.
This gTLD is intended to serve users whose primary language is Korean, which uses the Hangul script.
For the first time in the history of the Domain Name System (DNS), internationalized generic top-level
domains (gTLDs) create the capability for speakers of non-Latin-based languages to access the DNS
entirely in their native script. Offering KOREAN_TRANSLITERATION_OF_.COM represents a critical step
toward implementing that functionality. Verisign’s vision is to improve usability of domain names for users
of major scripts around the world. Registrants and Internet users will be able to use their native script, if
desired, to take advantage of their domain name’s functionality, ubiquity, and stability.

Similar gTLD applications: (1)