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

And they still jail people for joining unions, too

[labourstart]

It's very nice to portray South Korea as a techies' paradise, but let's not forget the more than 50 individuals languishing in jails there for the "crime" of being trade union activists.

The unions in South Korea also use the net, and they use broadband and they have been doing cutting edge stuff on the net for years, including daily video webcasts. But while the society is all very 21st century, or so it appears, in reality the present government is one of the most repressive Korea has ever known.

If you want to help use the new technology to support the imprisoned Korean trade unionists, go here: http://www.labourstart.org/actnow.shtml

To learn more about repression of trade unionists in Korea, go here: http://www.kctu.org or http://www.labourstart.org/korea/

I know from past experience that one is likely to get flamed on Slashdot for even mentioning trade unions, but I guess that's not much of a sacrifice compared to what the Korean trade unionists are going through . . .