Korea's Information Society----한국의 정보 사회

Apples and Oranges: Ranking the world's best new universities

2012-06-01T09:14:00.002+09:00

Quite predictably, the new Times Higher Education league table ranking the world's 100 best universities that are under 50 years old is getting widespread publicity. Forbes and other mainstream business press outlets have covered it. The new ranking, which aims to identify the "rising stars" of the global academy is definitely of interest here in South Korea, since the number one school on the list is Pohang University of Science and Technology, or POSTECH. KAIST, where I currently teach, managed to rank only fifth on the new list, even though most Koreans, including those knowledgeable about higher education, would chuckle at the very notion that POSTECH might outrank KAIST.
The comparison of KAIST with POSTECH is in some respects like comparing apples and oranges. KAIST was founded under President Park Chung Hee and a committee of experts led by Stanford professor Frederick Terman wrote the original plan for its establishment, in 1971. POSTECH is only 26 years old and was founded with substantial financial support from POSCO, a major Korean steel company located in Pohang. POSCO’s then-CEO, the late Tae-Joon Park, modeled it after the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, with an emphasis on science and engineering.
Although both KAIST and POSTECH drew upon the experience of elite California institutions in their formative years, the similarity in some ways ends there. For example, in terms of size and scope of activity, KAIST is a huge, sprawling institution compared with POSTECH. As noted in a Korea Joongang Daily article about the new rankings,Postech’s “selection and concentration” strategy was a crucial reason for its number one ranking. “Its resources are focused on a small number of research fields, and its intimate environment facilitates a highly personalized, hands-on, research-led experience for students,” said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education Rankings, noting that the 26-year-old university has 270 faculty members and admits only 320 undergraduates every year. Those of you who choose to look further into the quantitative basis of the rankings will find that POSTECH ranked extremely high in terms of the measures of academic citations that were used.
In conclusion, please don't interpret this post as "sour grapes" on my part since I'm currently on the faculty at KAIST. Both of these Korean institutions richly deserve inclusion on the new rankings. At the same time, the publicity surrounding this newest international ranking of schools should alert us to the pitfalls in any ranking system and the difficulty of comparing apples to oranges.

Links, language and culture: thoughts on the future of global television news

2012-05-31T17:42:00.002+09:00

Readers of this blog will know of my interest in the role of language and culture in shaping uses and effects of the new digital media. Regardless of the rapid changes in digital communications technology, computing power and the global scope of the internet, human language is still right at the center of all sorts of global communication. For all the talk about "digital divides," it may be more important to analyze linguistic divides, especially since language and culture are so closely intertwined. This reality helps to explain, among other things, why Chinese, Russian and Korean consumers still rely on their own home-grown "search engines," rather than using Google.
PBS's Media Shift blog has an interesting article entitled "Could LinkAsia's Digital Hybrid Model Be the Future for Global TV News?" I recommend it and will have more to say on the topic in the future.

Facebook's active users in South Korea

2012-05-25T08:48:00.002+09:00

The Korea Joongang Daily carried an article this morning that helps to clarify levels of usage of Facebook in South Korea. As mentioned in an earlier post, Nielsen data showed about 15 million Korean unique visitors to Facebook in April of this year. The Joongang Daily article was occasioned by a visit to Korea by Javier Olivan, Facebook's Head of Growth. “When I first came here, there were very few users of Facebook but now one out of five Koreans actively use it,” he said. “Active” is defined by at least one login per month. Based on what he said, some 10 million Koreans have not only registered themselves with the social network but also visit regularly. The accompanying graphic (click to see a full size version) shows the global growth of Facebook usage.

The state of software piracy in Korea and globally

2012-05-23T08:20:00.003+09:00

The Business Software Alliance (Korean language homepage here) has released its ninth annual study of software piracy around the world, and it contains some interesting data that show South Korea's changing place in this picture. The report, entitled Shadow Market: 2011 BSA Global Software Piracy Study, shows that the United States led the list of top twenty economies in commercial value of pirated software with a value of over $9.7 billion, followed by China, Russia and India. The web presentation of the report contains an interesting animated globe graphic. One of the reports statistics is the percentage of people in each nation who admit to pirating software. Sixty-nine percent of South Koreans admitted to doing so, compared with only 31 percent of Americans. Globally, 57 percent of consumers admitted to pirating software.
South Korea ranked 16th on the list with the commercial value of pirated software measured at $815 million.
More significant than South Korea's current world ranking is the trend in this country over recent years, as it has come to have a greater stake in the protection of intellectual property. As shown in the accompanying table (click to see a full-size version), the software piracy rate in Korea has decreased from 43 percent in 2007 to 40 percent in 2011, a pattern also shown in other Asia-Pacific nations. However, note that the overall commercial value of pirated software increased, despite the decreasing rate of piracy.

Facebook's prospects in Korea

2012-05-20T17:59:00.003+09:00

It seems the whole world, certainly its mainstream media, were paying attention to Facebook's IPO yesterday. In the afternoon, as I was driving home from a downtown visit, I received a phone call from a BBC Radio correspondent in London. He called again upon my return home and we had an interesting conversation and later a short studio interview. The BBC was interested in how Facebook will fare in Korea, China and some of the other Asian markets where it has limited experience to date but where the growth potential is very large.
One thing that can be said with some certainty is that Facebook is off to a good start in the South Korean market, where social networking via Cyworld's mini-homepages was launched half a decade before Facebook appeared. In fact, by the time Facebook was launched in the U.S., over a quarter of Korea's population and an estimated 90 percent of those in their twenties were using Cyworld. Today one can begin to piece together the overall picture by consulting data gathered by different organizations, with different sampling techniques and for different purposes.
As shown in a recent study by Neilsen (koreanclick.com), Facebook has recently overtaken Cyworld's mini-homepy service. The accompanying graphic (click to see a full size version) shows the trend in share of usage in a direct comparison of Facebook and Cyworld. Nielsen measures usage rates based on a comparison of unique visitors to both of the social networking sites being compared. The Nielsen data indicate that usage of Facebook surpassed that of Cyworld early this year. The Korean language report published by Nielsen notes that the great success of Cyworld in South Korea, especially during the period from 2003 to 2007, established the pattern that Korean consumers depended upon social networking to solve some of their communication problems. Thus, when Facebook introduced a platform that was open to external sites and users, Korean consumers were ready to switch.
Significantly, the Nielsen report suggests that PC and Mobile (Android) visitors to Facebook totaled more than 15 million people as of April 2012. (as a point of comparison, www.socialbakers.com suggests that South Korea has only about 7 million Facebook users) The pie chart from the Nielsen report (click to see a larger version) clearly illustrates the large impact that mobile broadband is having on the use of Facebook, a pattern that extends to other similar social networking services. Although 58.5 percent of Facebook users in Korea use only PC Facebook, 20.5 percent use Facebook only on mobile devices and another 21 percent (shown in green) use Facebook with both mobile and desktop (PC) devices.
The Nielsen report also shows clearly that young people in their twenties are driving the trend toward greater use of Facebook in Korea. The 19-29 year old age bracket accounts for 31 percent of all Facebook users in South Korea at this time.

Finally, I thought it would be interesting to consult Google Trends data on the number of visitors to facebook.com compared with visitors to cyworld.com. The results are shown in the accompanying graphic (click for larger version of graphic). Note especially that the number of Korean visitors to Facebook starts to increase in late 2010. It is undoubtedly not a coincidence that Facebook introduced its localized, Korean language service in August of that year. Google Trends also shows that it was sometime in late 2010 that Korean-language searches for Facebook (or 페이스북, written in hangul) began to increase.
Taken together, the patterns noted in this post bring into clear focus the challenge Facebook will have to ensure long-term success in the South Korean market. Success will depend upon how well it can localize its services, not simply by translating everything into Korean, but by adapting them to the consumer preferences in the fast-moving and always interesting Korean marketplace. That was the gist of my argument in a post back in 2010.
Incidentally, if Facebook really wants to thing about larger long-term success, it should begin planning for services that will assist in the reunification of divided families in Korea and ultimately the process of national reunification itself.

Smartphone use exceeds 50 percent in Korea: perspective on a milestone

2012-05-16T12:50:00.001+09:00

As reported widely in Korea and around the world,smartphone users in South Korea now account for more than 50 percent of all mobile subscribers. According to the three mobile service providers KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus, as reported in the Chosun Ilbo, the number of smartphone users stands at 26.72 million, 50.8 percent of all 52.55 million mobile subscribers.
However, some of the international press coverage fails to accurately report the Korean situation. For example, an AFP story suggests that "South Koreans were introduced to smartphones relatively late, with Apple's iPhone approved only in September 2009 because of privacy concerns over some of its features." While it is true that the iPhone arrived in Korea late, about two and a half years after its introduction in the U.S. and after it had entered 80 other national markets, the reasons have to do with much more than privacy concerns. There are at least three important factors.
First, the major mobile service providers in Korea (SK Telecom, KT and LG) were afraid of losing voice revenue to VOIP services if the iPhone were allowed into Korea's market. Remember, there was already an incipient trend among young people to install Skype on the iPod Touch. Second, a unique software protocol called WIPI was still required on all mobile phones used in South Korea, even though it had outlived its original stated purpose and had become more of a non-tariff trade barrier than anything else. Third and finally, Korea's handset manufacturers, led by Samsung Electronics and LG, had placed almost all of their emphasis on the development of feature phones and were perplexed by what to do in the face of the new smart phone paradigm.
Given these circumstances, including the obvious fact that Korean consumers had to watch and wait as the iPhone spread rapidly through other markets around the world, pent-up demand no doubt helps to explain the rapid diffusion of smart phones in South Korea. Another factor, of course, is is the presence of a tech-savvy and highly educated populace here. Koreans are quick to try out and use new information technologies, most especially ones that can help them better organize their lives and communicate with friends, family and co-workers.
It is important to place this milestone in the growth of smartphone usage in proper perspective. In a recent speech, the CEO of KT, Lee Suk-Chae, blasted Korea's big companies for "free riding" on KT's networks. As reported in The Korea Times,he said that “Korea needs a new paradigm. The digital revolution has changed everything. Despite heavy data traffic amid rapid rises of data-intensive devices such as tablets and smartphones, no one is ready to pay in return for using networks.’’

More evidence of outside information circulating in North Korea

2012-05-13T10:00:00.000+09:00

A study commissioned by the U.S. State Department is getting quite a bit of attention in the international media, and rightly so. Entitled "A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment," it was conducted by the consulting firm Intermedia. The study is valuable primarily because it provides empirical evidence that the North Korean public is using new media, including mobile telephony, television, DVDs, USB keys and so forth to consume information, including news and entertainment from the outside world.

Korea's "Smart Grid" test draws international interest

2012-05-10T10:00:00.002+09:00

As reported in The Korea Joongang Daily the town of Gujwa in northeastern Jeju last year became the only full test of a smart grid. Consequently, it has attracted international interest.
Around 6,000 homes are on the smart grid system and 168 companies are testing the grid’s technology, including the power company, telecommunications companies and even automobile and home appliances companies. As of last month, about 270 billion won ($236 million) was invested and the companies involved in the project include SK Telecom, KT, LG Electronics and GS Caltex.
A smart grid is a digitally enhanced electrical grid that gathers, distributes and acts on information about both electricity providers and consumers in order to improve the efficiency of electricity services. As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a larger version) the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology predicts that the global smart grid industry (including research) will expand from $200 billion last year to $238 billion in 2016 and $870 billion in 2030. Korea’s smart grid industry last year was around $3.8 billion in size, the institute said, and is expected to grow to $4.5 billion in 2016.
The Joongang Daily article is worth reading and this is a story that is worth following. South Korea clearly has the potential to be a world leader in smart grid technology. One of the most interesting aspects of this nation's broadband revolution of the 1990s was the role played by the Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO). As described in some detail in my book with Dr. Myung Oh, KEPCO began installing fiber optic cable throughout its network as early as 1980. This meant that, when it came to the big push to build out commercial broadband services in the 1990s, the KEPCO fiber network became extremely valuable. Today, the simple fact that South Korea possesses the most extensive and advanced digital networks in the world would seem to suggest that it will utilize these networks, alongside the electric power supply grid, to become a leader in "smart grid" technology.

The DMZ as digital divide and nature preserve

2012-05-09T10:55:00.003+09:00

When the United States and the Soviet Union agreed upon the 38th parallel as the point to divide their zones of occupation of Korea following World War II, few thought that this would mark a division of Korea that would last more than half a century. However, due to changes in the world and in the DMZ itself, the very character and meaning of this strip of land that crosses the Korean peninsula has changed.
The information revolution has transformed the character and meaning of Korea's DMZ. Formerly it was simply a military demarcation line and a visible, tragic reminder of the long Cold War and the lack of a formal end to the Korean war. Today it is the world's deepest and most prominent digital divide, separating the world's most advanced and extensive digital networks in South Korea, from North Korea which ranks last or near last in the world by most measures of digital networking. Chapter 8 of my recent book, Telecommunications and Transformation in Korea: A Personal Perspective, explores the implications of this change on the Korean peninsula for the manner in which we think about national division as well as the manner in which reunification is likely to occur. The change is also powerfully symbolized by satellite photographs of the Korean peninsula at night, published in earlier posts on this blog.

Other dimensions of the Korean DMZ have been recognized by the DMZ Forum for Peace and Nature Conservation, which has published some wonderful resources on its web site. In addition to the photograph published with this post, visitors to the site can tour the DMZ using Google earth. The photograph here immediately struck me, probably because I spent my first two years in Korea in Chuncheon, teaching English at Kangwon National University. I like the fact that the DMZ Forum hopes to enlarge the peace park project to encompass both Diamond Mountain and Sorak Mountain in eastern Gangweon Province, which is more mountainous and less populated than western stretches of the DMZ. Of course, the success of such a park will also signify reunification of the only Korean province split right in two by the demilitarized zone.

Virtual shopping in South Korea

2012-05-06T10:18:00.002+09:00

Last fall I was living in Seoul's Gangnam district when the British retailer TESCO introduced its "virtual shopping" experiment at a nearby subway station. It appears that this experiment has achieved some degree of success in Korea and may spread to other markets around the world. Forbes, in an article entitled "The future of shopping is virtual," reports that, the retailer Peapod is trying out a similar scheme in Chicago. As noted in that article, virtual shopping pioneered in South Korea. The video below provides an interesting glimpse into the fast moving Korean marketplace and how retailers are exploring new uses for those smart phones that nearly all consumers will soon carry.

Samsung turns to outside talent for mobile software

2012-05-05T16:23:00.000+09:00

The Wall Street Journal carried an article noting that Samsung Electronics has begun to aggressively hire foreign software engineers, especially from India, in an effort to keep up with its rival Apple. The article adds some interesting context to current developments. However, there is a somewhat misleading sentence early in the article, suggesting that "...as the smartphone market rapidly shifts its emphasis from hardware to software, the Korean manufacturer is realizing it must change its insular corporate culture." In point of fact, the smartphone market has been heavily dependent on software from the very beginning, especially the variety called mobile "Apps," but including all of the software required to support an "ecosystem of services." This reality helps to explain why there was such excruciating shock in the South Korean market when Apple's iPhone finally arrived in late 2009, after it had already been adopted in about 80 other countries over a two and one half year period.
The need for an ecosystem of services that provides useful information service applications also explains why there are two dominant players in the global smartphone market today, Google and Apple, which I identify in order of the degree of their present and future dominance. Google, with its Android software and growing array of cloud-based information services, has chosen a course that seems likely to make it far more dominant in the global marketplace than Apple. As to the Microsoft-Nokia alliance, I think that both of those companies came late to the party. Microsoft especially, suffers from being so closely tied to the old, Windows desktop model of computing, which is now rapidly being replaced by cloud-based, mobile solutions. Here in the Korean market, LG has paid a heavy price for its decision to use Microsoft's mobile software.
The Wall Street Journal article also notes that Samsung's own mobile software platform, Bada, has been unpopular with consumers. Rather than attempting to introduce an entirely new mobile OS, I would think Samsung could benefit over the long run by putting its software engineers to work on ensuring that all of its mobile devices run efficiently on Android and on the development of both Android apps and logical extensions of the Android platform (which after all is an open platform) in Asia and for the global marketplace.

Akamai's "state of the internet": A report from Daejon

2012-05-04T10:10:00.002+09:00

Akamai has released its State of the Internet report for the fourth quarter of 2011. Readers of this blog will know that I've been following those reports somewhat regularly in recent years, most recently in a post last fall. This latest report takes on even greater interest now that I've moved to Daejon in order to join the faculty of KAIST. You see, Daegu and Daejon (spelled Taegu and Taejon in the Akamai report) topped the list of the worlds cities with the fastest average broadband connection speeds, as shown in Figure 9 of the report. In fact, they were the only two cities with average connection speeds above 20 Mbps.

In this era of increasing use of big-data and data visualization on the internet, the Akamai report is well worth reading, and reading carefully with an eye toward data sources, sample size and possible sampling error. Even more interesting and useful than the downloadable quarterly State of the Internet report, are the online tools that can be accessed on the same page of the Akamai web site. They allow the easy creation of line graphs comparing data from different countries. For example, Figure 8 of Akamai's quarterly report contains the table presented here (click to see a full-size version), along with a world map that shows the location of leading countries. Although this static picture is interesting, it is possible to create a more informative picture of what is happening in those countries by using the data visualization tool on the website to create and download a line graph from the data made available.
I've done so and the graph is presented here (click to see a full-size version). It shows the average broadband connection speeds for the top five nations in Figure 8 by quarter, for over four years from the third quarter of 2007 through the end of 2011. This line graph is only one small example of what is made possible by Akamai's "State of the Internet Data Visualization" tool. Indeed, it is possible to compare data across time for many different combinations of nations. I found it very interesting to note that the world map presented on the Akamai site contains data for North Korea, but only if you hover over that country with the mouse pointer. Data for North Korea are not available on the drop down menu of nations and individual U.S. states. For the record, North Korea shows an average connection speed of 1,012 kbps, or just over 1 Mbps.
There is much, much more that could be said about the gathering and reporting of big data on internet trends, but I will leave that for future posts, while I continue to enjoy "Daejon-speed" broadband internet. As always, comments are welcome.

Korea's service sector lagged in 2010

2012-04-30T10:29:00.002+09:00

Statistics Korea has released the nation's first-ever economic census. Not surprisingly, it shows that in 2010 the manufacturing sector continued to dominate South Korea's economy. According to the report, the total yearly revenue of Korean businesses reached 4,332 trillion won ($3.8 trillion) in 2010. The breakdown of that total among major sectors is show in the accompanying graphic (click on it to see a full-size version). Note that the services sector, includes dining and lodging, broadcasting and media, education and health and social services.

As illustrated in a post I did over a year ago, the heavy dependence on manufacturing represents a long term trend. Korea's dependence on manufacturing and the export of manufactured products seems to permeate its ICT sector. Over the past week or so, Samsung Electronics has received a great deal of publicity owing to the dramatic increase of its exports in the first quarter of 2012, spurred by high global demand for its smartphones and other mobile handsets. Industry observers have also noted the success of Samsung, along with LG, in the global market for television sets and displays, now that the thinner, lightweight and lower power consumption LED technology is going mainstream.
Despite South Korea's remarkable success in manufacturing and the global export of its manufactured products, there seems to be a general understanding that, to ensure future success, the nation must improve the relative strength of its service sector. The reason for this is the relative size, in the global market place of services, software and content, compared with communications hardware.
It is difficult to convey just how large the global ICT sector is, but the accompanying bar chart from the Digital Planet 2010 report of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance provides one industry estimate. (click on the chart to see a larger version) To interpret this chart, keep in mind that communications spending, represented by the blue bars, includes the total value of voice and data communications services and equipment. The equipment category, of course, includes both wire line and wireless handsets, switching equipment, answering machines and so forth. Nevertheless, it seems clear from this bar chart that the total value of software and services far exceeds that of hardware and equipment.

K-pop and Korea's Entertainment Industry

2012-04-29T17:25:00.000+09:00

One of the topics to which I have returned on occasion is the heavy dependence of South Korea's economy and its ICT sector on manufacturing versus software and the creation of content and services. There are some bright spots that suggest this situation may change in the future. One of those is the multiplayer online game industry, especially as that industry adjusts to the increasing availability of mobile broadband around the world. Another one is South Korea's entertainment industry, which has generated a "Korean wave" that has swept across the globe, especially throughout Asia, in recent years. This year the U.S. market seems to be taking notice of K-pop. As suggested by the headline of a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, this may be the year that "K-pop enters American pop consciousness." As the article appropriately notes, "Poised at the intersection of two countries' fast-moving pop cultures and cutting-edge media technology, the sprawling genre colloquially known as K-pop has operated outside the American pop limelight. But that's changing." Later it notes that K-pop grew in Korea partly because "Songs and especially videos were quickly passed over high-speed Internet and mobile devices several times faster than what's available in America. In a related point, the article suggests that, "...while K-pop has a lively Internet presence, America lacks a dominant media hub for first encountering K-pop culture. If one emerges, it might the Culver City-based Mnet. Its cable channel, a division of CJ Entertainment, is heavily focused on K-pop and broadcasts a mix of video countdown shows like "M! Countdown," "Jjang!" (a celebrity gossip show) and "Hello Pop!" (a social-media-themed show whose 21-year-old host, Chrissa Villanueva, is L.A.-raised and Filipina).

K-pop received a big boost with the appearance in January of this year of The Girl's Generation on The David Letterman Show, as shown in the following video.

Online games and the end of mass media

2012-04-26T09:26:00.003+09:00

This week my undergraduate class at KAIST, entitled "Introduction to Mass Communication" is looking at the game industry, both globally and Korea's role in it. I was surprised when one of the students asked me to explain why we were studying online games in a course on "mass communication." A good question and it is worth being explicit about the answer.
First, I think there is a good argument to be made (it already has been by many scholars) that the era of mass communication took place in the twentieth century and is over. The data show that, all over the world, people are spending less time watching television or with other traditional "mass media" pursuits and more time online. The online experience is decisively different from "mass" communication and nowhere is this more apparent than in the online game industry.
Second, the game industry, including online games, arcade games, video games (as in Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft X-box) and most recently mobile games) are part of the entertainment industry. As digital technology, the internet and cloud computing continue to develop, online games are converging in some ways with both television and the motion picture industry. If you doubt this, view the following trailer for the new version of World of Warcraft.
Third, as we discussed in our Tuesday class meeting, Korea has a big stake in the game industry, as illustrated in the accompanying graphic that was published in a December 2011 Korea Joongang Daily article. (click on the graphic to see a full-size version). The title of that article, "E-sports spread from PC Bang to world stage" hints at the answer to my student's question about why the game industry is becoming part of media today.
Finally, the game director of Diablo III, one of Blizzard Entertainment's popular online games, was in Seoul earlier this week and was interviewed by the Korea Joongang Daily. He addressed the question of how important or large mobile online games may become as part of the global game industry. His take on this question is quite interesting. He suggests that, despite their alarmingly rapid growth, games designed for smartphones will not replace those made for online use on PCs but rather offer gamers a more diverse range. He cited his own personal experience. “I play tons of games on my smartphone. I play tons of games on my PC. And I play tons of games on my console,” he said during the interview. “However, each one gives me a different experience.”
So there you have it. Participation in a multiplayer online game, whether at home, at a PC Bang, or while riding home on the subway, is not really "mass communication," or is it? Comments welcome.

The rise and fall of Korea's PC Rooms (a.k.a. Internet Cafes)

2012-04-15T20:19:00.000+09:00

In recent years I have posted on occasion about the phenomenon of South Korea's internet cafes, known here as PC Rooms or PC Bang in Korean. Last July, I took note of the declining numbers of PC Rooms.
Just this past week, The Korea Times carried an article that elaborates on the decline of PC Rooms. The article notes that "A recent survey on Internet cafe owners by the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business showed that 64.5 percent of them have been in deficit for the past year; one out of three was barely breaking even, and only 1.8 percent saw a profit. Six out of 10 said their business seemed in bad shape, and 34.5 percent said it was very bad." Then, as I suggested last year, the article goes on to document mobile games and the arrival of the smartphone era in Korea as major reasons for the decline. Indeed, we might suggest that the decreasing popularity of PC Rooms here is another aspect of the so-called "smart-phone shock" that has rippled through South Korea's market since the arrival of the iPhone in late 2009. The graphic accompanying this post is an updated version of one published in my book with Dr. Myung Oh, Digital Development in Korea: Building an Information Society, (click on the graphic to see a larger version). I have not yet been able to find the data for 2009, although it appears that the number of PC Rooms began to drop sharply that year. Note also that the peak number of PC Rooms, 22,548, appears to be correct based on multiple white papers published by the Korea Game Industry Association. (I mention this because the graphic from the Joongang Daily article last July has a different figure, 23,548 and may have been a typo).

North Korea's Communication (Satellite) Failure

2012-04-13T09:57:00.000+09:00

A few days ago, noting the increased attention of global media, including CNN and the BBC, to North Korea, I thought about doing a blog post. It was apparent that the North Korean government wanted to use its planned rocket launch, along with other events, to create positive international public relations for the nation to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung.
Now that the rocket launch has failed, the question of how North Korea will deal with the international television and other media reporters who are in Pyongyang looms large, as noted by CNN reporter Stan Grant in this report earlier this morning.

A tip for smartphone users learning Korean: Use Google translate!

2012-04-12T10:58:00.000+09:00

Like many expats in Korea, I've been struggling to improve my command of the Korean language. It will, of course, be a lifelong struggle. However, Google Translate, the subject of earlier posts here, has taken a giant leap forward with the release of its "voice-to-voice" translation service.

This morning I downloaded the Google translate App for Android to my Galaxy Nexus phone and was delighted to learn that the voice-to-voice translation service is up and running for Korean to English or English to Korean translation. This is really a 21st century service. Basically, you just open the app, adjust a few settings and then speak the word, phrase or sentence that you want translated, after which you touch the speaker icon on your phone to hear a woman utter the translation in either English or Korean. It gets even better..... in "conversation mode" you can view the text of the translation even as you're listening to it being spoken.

Of course, the translations are not always perfect, and Google translate still works better for simple words and phrases than more complex expressions. Nevertheless, this is a tool that gives a glimpse of things to come! If you haven't tried it, I recommend installing the app and starting immediately, as an enjoyable supplement to more rigorous study of Korean.

The continuing problem of Korea's Microsoft Monoculture

2012-04-11T09:25:00.001+09:00

Since I live in South Korea, direct personal experience with the so-called "Microsoft monoculture" here is more or less inevitable. I've posted somewhat regularly on this topic.
At any rate, this week I tried to make use of a Google docs presentation in one of my classes, only to discover that the electronic podium was loaded with Windows XP and an older version (IE 6.1 I believe) of Internet Explorer that would not even allow me to log on to Google docs, let alone view the presentation! That excruciating experience reminded me that it was about time to take another look at this nation's excessive dependence on Microsoft software that much of the rest of the world has already discarded. The Korea Times carried a good summary a few days ago, entitled "Korea still stuck in Active-X." The opening two paragraphs of the story pretty much tell the story about internet use in South Korea, as follows.
"Many Internet users find Web browsers Google Chrome and Firefox more convenient than Internet Explorer (IE), but users here often stay with the latter due to the prevalence of Active X technology.
Over 80 percent of the country’s Internet sites still use this technology, which is not only vulnerable to malicious code, but also damages consumers’ right to freely choose the Web browser they want." The article goes on to note that "Internet users wanting to engage in commerce have no option but to use the Microsoft browser, and as a result IE has an 80 share of the browser market here while its ratio has fallen to below 40 percent globally." The accompanying graphic from StatCounter shows the global trend (click on the graphic to see a full-size version).
The Korea Times article contains some interesting background detail on how the current situation in Korea came about and is well worth reading.
I am one of many consumers, both Korean and expatriate, who would love to use my smartphone to check bank account balances or do other such routine tasks, but this will have to await decisions by government and industry bodies here to shed their dependence on outdated Microsoft software and enter the 21st century. People like me will not switch from using Chrome or Firefox back to Internet "exploder" just to do their banking or credt card transactions, especially with the security risks that such a move might involve.

Mobile telephony and communication with North Korea

2012-04-09T08:20:00.000+09:00

As readers of this blog will be well aware, mobile telephony has gradually been spreading in North Korea, mainly through the efforts of Orascom, but also, according to many anecdotal reports, use of Chinese mobile services whose signals reach into North Korea along its border with China. The Telegraph has published an article that provides some interesting, current detail on how clandestine mobile phone calls are being used by North Koreans who have fled to the South, to communicate with their relatives and others inside North Korea. Entitled "What North Koreans really think of Kim Jong-Un," it is well worth reading.

Korea leads world in proportion of WiFi Households

2012-04-07T09:18:00.001+09:00

Why was I not surprised by the findings of a new survey by Strategic Analytics? 80.3 percent of South Korean households use WiFi, compared with 73.3 percent in the UK and lower percentages in the other countries surveyed (with the U.S. at 61%). With fiber to the home (FTTH) or fast DSL service, it was only natural that South Korean households rapidly adopted WiFi for home use. My wife and I both use notebook computers at home, and I also make good use of my Galaxy Tab 10.1 pad device and Galaxy Nexus smartphone here at home. A wireless router connected to the FTTH router from Korea Telecom makes all of this very easy.
The graphic to the left shows the results of the Strategic Analytics survey (click on the graphic to see a full sized version).

Kindle Edition of Television's Window on the World published

2012-04-06T09:08:00.001+09:00

My first book, Television's Window on the World: International Affairs Coverage on the U.S. Networks, was published in 1984 and was based on my doctoral dissertation in Communication at Stanford University. I've now made it available in a Kindle edition, via Amazon's KindleDirect program here.
Although it does not deal with Korea or with telecommunications per se, a careful reader will notice the influence of my earlier Peace Corps experience in South Korea. The book did quite well, as academic monographs go, and can be found in many university and other libraries around the world. A few years ago I published the book in full view and with PDF download available through Google Books, and there have been thousands of visits to it in that form.
However, with the rapid diffusion of mobile broadband and smart devices, I thought it was time for a Kindle (Mobi-pocket) edition of the book. My own experience has convinced me that some readers will prefer this format over a straight PDF. It can be placed on one's Kindle bookshelf and organized alongside other books. The ease of highlighting, annotating and searching are shared with other e-book formats. Most of all, reading the book on a nice tablet device is more natural and easier on the eyes than sitting in front of most computer screens.
Over the years, Television's Window on the World has seen some use as a textbook, mostly in graduate seminars. That was another motivation to re-format this book as a Kindle edition. It fits in with my longstanding plan to eventually write a completely revised second edition, with embedded video or hyperlinks to video examples of television coverage throughout.
I've written a short new introduction to the Kindle edition. Otherwise it is the same book whose yellowing pages can be found on library shelves all around the world. The 40-plus tables and figures in the book have all been included as jpeg files, so the reader will occasionally need to double-tap to enlarge the scanned image.

The Languages of the Internet

2012-03-28T10:55:00.001+09:00

As readers of this blog will already know, I've been very interested in the role of language in the development of the ICT sector here in Korea and around the world. (see, for example, this post) Today The New York Times has an article that highlights the surging interest, all around the world, in learning computer codes which are the fundamental language of web content. Today, whether one is interested in social networking, blogging, or just putting up a simple web site, a knowledge of the various coding languages involved is a big advantage and, I might add, a "moving target."

President Obama's speech at HUFS

2012-03-27T19:35:00.001+09:00

President Obama made good use of his time on this week's visit to South Korea for the summit on nuclear security. He made the obligatory visit by a U.S. president to the Korean DMZ, but also became the first United States president to speak to university students, in speech given at the Hanguk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Seoul. As reported in The Washington Post, he got a rousing response from students at HUFS when he told them “In our digital age, we can connect and innovate across borders like never before — with your smart phones and Twitter and Me2Day and Kakao Talk.” The article also noted that leading up to the president’s appearance at the university, the White House had engaged the Hankuk student body in an online “Ask President Obama” contest in which questions were submitted through social media channels. The top 10 questioners received autographed copies of his book “The Audacity of Hope,” and the top three got hand-written responses from the president.
Obama's comments in the HUFS speech were all accurate, and underscored the contrast with his activities the day before, when he visited the DMZ. When asked at a news conference about his impressions of the DMZ visit, Obama replied that “It’s like you’re in a time-warp. It’s like you’re looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 to 50 years of progress.”

President Obama's emphasis, both explicit and implicit, on the disparity in ICT development between the two Korea's is timely and deserves even more attention from the press and policymakers. Chapter 8 of my e-book, Telecommunications and Transformation in Korea: A Personal Perspective, makes my own opinion quite clear. The chapter is entitled "From DMZ to Digital Divide: toward national reunification" and amounts to an elaboration on President Obama's point. The e-book is available on a free promotion through March 29.

My e-book available for free download

2012-03-25T09:58:00.000+09:00

I've set up my e-book, Telecommunications and Transformation in Korea: A Personal Perspective, to be available for free download from March 27-29. It will only be available free on those dates. Use this hyperlink.