Futurize Korea

LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics had their mobile television technology adopted by the Advanced Television Standards Committee:

The international non-profit organization develops standards for digital television transmission, and it has been working on mobile broadcasting since May 2007. The organization selected a technology that uses the same standard as LG’s terrestrial digital television VSB and Samsung’s Advanced-VSB.

The JoongAng Daily has a  summary of some changes by the major Korean portals to their search engines:

This month, on its portal Nate, SK Communications introduced a semantic search system, which uses networks of relationships between terms - rather than simply on the number of times a term appears or the number of hits a certain site receives - to determine the intention of the user and generate accurate results.

Korea is also expanding their use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to stop counterfeit liquor sales:

The National Tax Service will use more radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to detect counterfeit liquor from Thursday to include 1,045 bars in Seoul's Gangnam district and 150 liquor wholesalers who deal with them.

The campaign targets a total of 2 million bottles of liquor including Diageo Korea's 12- and 17-year-old Windsor whisky, Pernod Ricard Korea's 12- and 17-year-old Imperial whisky, and Lotte Chilsung Beverages' 12- and 17-year-old Scotch Blue whisky.  

Futurize Korea: Korea develops RFID system to battle counterfeit whiskey sales (December 2, 2008)

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A lawmaker from the ruling Grand National Party highlighted the obvious when he showed how it is relatively simple for users in South Korean to access sites blocked by the South Korean government:

He said the law "stipulates that access to pro-North Korean websites whose contents run counter to the National Security Law could be banned. Under these laws, access to about 50 [North Korean] websites has been banned by police and the Korea Communications Commission. But the reality shows that the ban is ineffective."

In 2003-2004, North Korea declared a plan to strengthen contact with South Korea through the Internet. As controversy heated up in South Korea, Seoul in November 2004 blocked major North Korean websites.

The Korean government also uses the filters to block to restrict access to pornography, gambling and other restricted sites using the 2001 “Internet Content Filtering Ordinance” requiring Internet service providers to block restricted websites. In July, websites determined to be distributing malware in the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks were also blocked by the Korean Government.

CNN: Seoul blocks beheading video (June 25, 2004)

The Guardian: South Korea wants to gag the noisy internet rabble (October 8, 2008)

OpenNet Initiative: South Korea

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Akamai’s State of the Internet report had Korea ranked first for broadband connection speeds at an average of 11Mbps while also ranking third in a list of originating countries for malware and other Internet based attacks.

News.Com: 'State of the Internet' assessed

Akamai Press Release: Akamai Announces Second Quarter 2009 State of the Internet Report

Another recently released study also had Japan, Korea and Sweden with the most advanced broadband connections in the world:

The performance of broadband Internet connections has surged ahead in many countries in the last year, even before government stimulus packages aimed at upgrading networks take full effect, according to a study to be published Thursday.

The most advanced broadband connections are in South Korea, Japan and Sweden, according to the study, conducted by the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the University of Oviedo in Spain, and sponsored by Cisco Systems, the telecommunications equipment maker.

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Korean MP3 and PMP device maker iriver recently unveiled a new e-book reader called Story for the Korean market:

iRiver’s eBook reader Story has been sold out. Also, it is receiving a series of inquiries from buyers around the world.
iRiver said on September 28 that it has sold out its initial stock of 2,000 units of Story, a newly developed eBook reader, in just two days since it began the preorder sales.

Telecom regulators are forcing Korean mobile phone operators to lower rates for subscribers:

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Sunday that subscribers will be able to save an aggregate 1.5 trillion won (about $1.3 billion) next year, equal to 7 to 8 percent of the combined sales of the operators ― SK Telecom, KT and LG Telecom.

Microsoft announced new funding support for Korean game developers:

U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. has disclosed a plan to invest 23 billion won ($19.2 million) over the next four years to support Korean game developers, a government agency said yesterday.

According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, Microsoft will provide at least 25 game development firms with technological and marketing support. It will also educate and train developers and help set up new business entities, and assist in their overseas advancement.

Korea.net: Microsoft Korea plans to support local game development (May 6, 2008)

The growing community of Korean Twitter users recently held an offline networking event:

The social networking service that launched in the United States is rapidly gaining traction in Korea as more users here catch on to the benefits of broadcasting in lines of 140 characters each. And like its U.S. counterpart, Twitter Korea is moving beyond social networking and into job hunting, marketing and other functions.

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With navigation systems already supporting WiBro, Hyundai and Kia recently announced a deal with KT that will see WiBro connectivity for navigation and other services:

The new "WiBro" feature provided by KT's WiBro service will allow drivers to have high-speed access to a variety of services, including traffic updates, route assistance, weather forecasts and entertainment activities.

"Amid the industry's convergence moves, putting information technology to consumer electronics-related products has become an essential for the technology of future cars. Such technological collaboration mainly focuses on passenger safety and building solid customer relations," according to the company spokesman.

Futurize Korea: WiBro enabled car navigation systems (June 4, 2009)

Korea IT Times: KT and SK Telecom Struck by Smooth Competition (July 7, 2009)

KT also unveiled a new WiBro network for Hyundai Heavy Industries last month at their shipyard in Ulsan:

The service allows workers on the 59.4-million square-meter site to exchange voice, video and data with mobile devices. KT expected its service to enhance productivity of the world's top shipbuilder by allowing real-time tasking not only at the office but also at the shipyard field. This was the first time for a shipyard to adopt WiBro technology.

Telecoms Korea: Hyundai Heavy to Embrace Mobile WiMAX (April 29, 2009)

Vietnam Marine Social Network: Hyundai adopts WiBro (April 29, 2009)

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CNN recently looked at the booming business with “screen golf” cafes becoming a popular alternative for Korean golfers:

There are an estimated 3.5 million golfers in South Korea but many of them have never seen an 18-hole course out in the open.

Their game lives in the virtual world - forced indoors because most of the 260 golf courses in South Korea are expensive and oversubscribed.

A round of virtual golf will cost between $20 to $30 and the format has seen a proliferation of users - just over five years ago there were 300 golf cafes but now there are over 3,000 operating some 12,000 simulators.

Business Week: Virtual Reality Golf Takes Off in Korea (October 27, 2008)

New York Times: Virtual-reality golf is a winner in South Korea (June 9, 2008)

ABC News: South Koreans Prefer Golf Cafes to Courses with video (July 5, 2008)

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The New York Times profiled how Korean online education sites have grown into some of the largest technology companies in South Korea:

About 2.8 million students, including approximately half of all college-bound high school seniors, are members of Megastudy, which allows them access to some of the country’s most celebrated exam tutors. For a fraction of what they would pay at traditional private “cram schools,” students can watch video-on-demand tutorials on home computers or download them into hand-held devices for viewing in the subway or parks. They can skip or fast-forward through some parts of a lecture and bookmark or repeat the rest.

Online education sites also got a boost when the Korean government announced plans to limit the operating hours of cram schools:

Market watchers point out that the Korea-specific phenomenon ― if the government tries to reduce private education costs in one area, the money will flow into another segment ― will offer a windfall to the country's education companies that have already chalked up fast growth over the past few years.

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