Net-Nexus Seoul

An anonymous reader writes: "Wired has a story in their new issue about Seoul, Korea and how it is The Bandwidth Capital of the World It is really interesting how popular the internet and cybercafes are as a social medium there. They also have a huge following of online game players, with over 70% of broadband users playing online. For me, the best quote about the business opportunities that have sprung up is '(We) wanted to focus on interaction. And what is more interactive than games? We made this market. We made new sectors. American media companies were just using online capacity to distribute offline media.'"

Comments

Starcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know if anyone has any links to this but, Starcraft is like a cultural icon over there. I remember seeing a pic of a doritos bag w/ a hydralisk on it somewhere :0

Ratings

[ZaneMcAuley]

"The government has even set up a certification program to rate buildings based on the quality of their data lines"

Where I am all appartments are cable ready, you dont need to ask. Next will be the trains, planes, etc...

Elsewhere (UK *COUGH*), its a joke, if they had data ratings built into the prices of accomodation then maybe more rollout would be done. After all you want the largest price for accomodation right?

I can imagine me asking a landlord in the UK "Is it cable ready", he would laugh at me. Here, they say "Dont be stupid, ofcourse it is".

It's crazy

[maynard-lag]

I was there for a few months this past spring. It's true, Seoul is *very* connected. People are crazy over there, spending 8+ hours a day/night playing games. Diablo 2 is particularly popular over there. Man.. so many wasted hours I had over there. It's a different culture, not as many people own their own pc's, you go to an internet cafe instead. It's definitely different.

So, how important is bandwidth?

[Otter]

In the last paragraph, she kind of hints at what I was wondering for the last couple of pages:

She makes a big deal about the country's great bandwidth. But it seems like the big selling point involves real-world interaction -- playing games and hooking up in baangs, playing games and hooking up with people in other baangs. As she describes it, it's the social scene that's gelled around computer clusters that's important. (Sort of like pre-Internet CS clusters, except with much more attractive people.)

So, maybe providing bandwidth to the home is a dead end and it's developing cybercafes that's the key to a computer-centric culture?

(I've really got to visit Korea one of these days. I've changed planes in Kimpo plenty of times but never went outside. The biggest impression the country made on me was when I was watching a "Good Morning America" type show and the Katie Couric-ish host modeled the season's new thong bikinis. That was an adrenaline shot at 7 am, after a 12 hour flight.)

Re:So, how important is bandwidth?

[aaarrrgggh]

So, maybe providing bandwidth to the home is a dead end and it's developing cybercafes that's the key to a computer-centric culture?

I think one of the big differences that "westerners" have to realize is that Asian homes are typically much smaller than "ours," which encourages going out to do things. Most people cannot really entertain in their homes, so they go to a restaurant to entertain their friends. It's a different culture...

That said, broadband has REALLY failed in Asia to the home. Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea... they all have fiber to the basement, with impressive video-on-demand offerings, but... it isn't that successful.

Compare to the US. While there are social connections that make us want to go to the bar, restaurant, whatever... we tend to live in a much less dense urban environment. Is the bottom line that you are willing to pay more to do something out of the house than you are "just" at home?

Re:So, how important is bandwidth?

[Otter]

Also, dating creates a big niche for businesses. High schools heavily discourage flirting, chatting and touching (at least in Japan, probably in Korea as well) and most single adults live with their parents. There's a huge market for places where singles can meet and get to know each other, and where couples can get some privacy.

I'm not suggesting that cybercafes and gaming centers could succeed in the US the way they seem to have in Korea -- just wondering what will get lost as a result.

I Spent a Few Weeks in Seoul...

[vergil]

in the summer of '99, after flying Korean Air in from Jakarta. I showed up at a surprisingly sanitary $10-night youth hostel w/ no knowledge of the Korean language or culture (even though I'm 1/2 Korean).

After wandering around the city, I found a well-stocked Internet cafe that sold decent coffee and fairly decent cigarettes (Mild Sevens). The per-hour price wasn't bad, and it wasn't exactly difficult to master the Korean language keyboards. This particular cafe was classy, boasting a waxed wood floor and decorative plants. The drop-down Windows "run" menus of its 3-4 PCs were full of Ivy League servers, vestiges of touring American bluebloods.

Unfortunately, this particular cafe shuttered relatively early in the evening. Later in the night (when I wasn't occupied w/ meetings), I'd frequent an entirely different sort of Internet cafe accessible through a alleyway door and a staircase. This dim, windowless cafe was crammed wall-to-wall with high end PCs -- almost all manned by a stooped Korean teens mesmerized by StarCraft. For some reason, the beefy proprietor always waved away my cash, never accepting any of my proferred payment.

I haven't thought about Korean Internet cafes (or posted to slashdot) for some time, until encountering this article. Good to be back, and props to the trollaxor crew.

Arcade Revival in USA

[Vegan Pagan]

This article describes something that could happen in USA: A revival of arcades based on broadband.

One of the major appeals of arcades was that they let you play on technology more powerful than anything at home, with your friends, for as little as 25 cents. They steadily lost that advantage in the 1990s until they got to today's point where home games are MORE powerful, and arcades games cost 50c to $1 per play.

But what if they got that advantage back? What if arcades were based on broadband? I've noticed that in USA broadband is far more likely to be set up in large buildings and institutions than in homes. And when it does become popular in homes, the standard connection for large organizations might jump ahead again.

I'd like to see broadband arcades where you could play with people in the same room and people hundreds of miles away at the same time! And of course it would allow for voice chat, and maybe videophoning as well. The arcade owner would only have to install hardware and software once: The cabinet/cocpit itself would auto-update software forever after. And it should cost have a reasonable cost, the way arcades used to.

Would you go?