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Korea World Leader in Broadband/Technology at Home
bozoman42 writes "67% of Korean Internet users are connected to broadband, some at 32Mbps! In fact, according to the Guardian Article, Korea is leading in nearly all walks of a modern high tech life. But there may be downsides. (Especially as covered here last week.)"
Yeah, like living next to North Korea.
Thanks,
--
Matt
Multiplayer games are absolutely huge in Korea, people have played themselves to death. And there are examples in real life beatings because of stuff that happens in multiplayer games.
SIG: Don't support Redhat until they support basic democracy in the dictatorship China vs democratic Taiwan issue. It's an evil company.
67% of Korean HOUSEHOLDS are connected to broadband. There's a big difference there, and it's very impressive. I'll bet that 67% of Mexican Internet users are connected to broadband, and it's around 0.1% of their population.
Ingredients for happy society:
Add: one ounce of capitalism, one ounce of socialism, a pinch of communism
Not everything in the world is black and white, especially when it comes to determining which "ism" makes the greatest number of people happy.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
In 2000, the government launched its Cyber 21 program, to train a million housewives in IT use in 18 months
-Haxx calls Korean Airlines for a flight to korea to find a wife.
Imagine discussing port security during intercourse.
This is not shocking due to some basic differencews between the US and South Korea.
1)The South Korean government is encouraging technological growth, while the US is still realing from P2P networks and people exercising free speach.
2)South Korea is relatively new, like Europe and Japan, South Korea recently (relativel) rebuilt its industrial base. The US has NEVER had a serious conflict close enough to home to neccesatate major rebuilding. This means that our stuff is old compared to theirs.
So you see, it is not only explainable, it is logical that South Korea would lead the US, and the rest of the world, in the people having cool toys and making cool tech toys.
Help I'm a rock.
He means South Korea.
I got these Korea at a glance, 15 Fun Facts! Let me tell you, there are a lot of reasons to move there aside from the high bandwidth penetration:
1) Korean women are hot.
2) Don't look at me like that. Seriously, they are muy en fuega.
3) I'm not chauvenistic. The female anatomy is a thing of beauty. Especially in Korea.
4) It's not a fetish thing. Sheesh.
5) They have lots of technology and stuff, unlike Thailand. Also, Thai women (while hot) have AIDS. Seriously, man, you're risking your life.
6) Government less fascist than Singapore or China, and getting less fascist every day (unless it's more, I forget). Although, there's this one Singapore chick who does this really funny webcomic. I would totally do her.
7) No, it's the Japanese who are into the cartoon porn.
8) Whoah! Evidently, Koreans also like the cartoon porn.
9) Korean cartoon porn is totally nasty.
10) Anyway, Korea doesn't look like a giant mall. Japan creeps me out - stainless steel fucking everywhere.
11) All Koreans are nerds, and totally bad ass at the same time. Swear to god, I knew this one guy in my engineering class who could do a backflip and kick out ceiling fixtures - he was 27 and he'd never kissed a girl. They won't even notice how much of a nerd you are. Swear to god.
12) No, he was totally not gay. His parents had arranged a marriage for him with... holy shit, he was so gay. How could I not have seen it? God damn, we were like in the locker room together all the time.
13) I don't have a problem with it! He's a cool guy. Leaves more Korean women for me, heh?
14) What?
15) In Korea, you can pick up chicks by playing video games and drinking soda that's been laced with speed. I swear, that's what pickup joins are like in Korea. Dude, I read it in the nytimes.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I live and work in Seoul and while its true that most people seem to have broadband at home it doesn't seem like they use it all that much. Its also incredibly affordable, very fast and extremely reliable.
With that said, Internet Cafes (PC Bangs) are a huge business here. They are literally everywhere. Its very difficult not to walk in a busy area and not see multiple PC bangs. So while all these people have internet at home, they still go out to the Internet Cafe to play games and spend extra money when they could easily do so at home.
I'm sitting in a PC Bang now, it has about 40 stations and half of them are in use. Mostly men in their early to late twenties. Most of them are playing Starcraft: Broodwar or one of numerous Diablo II clones. The handful of women in here are playing cards or using chat software. I will play Warcraft myself shortly.
Anyhow, my point is that all these homes are wired yet people still flock to these cafes unnecessarily. I mean, in the afternoons these places are filled with middle and high-school kids and then with adults all through the night. Most are open 24 hours.
So 67% of Korean homes may be wired, but I'd say an even greater percentage of the population are internet users, I don't know a single korean who doesn't have an e-mail address or an IM id.
There is some strange paradox here. Korea in fact is two Koreas. They started just in the same line and nearly with the same problems but today they seem to make a difference like Earth and Moon. We have the North with its rich resources but backward economy, its hunt for nukes, militarisation and lack of Internet (probably with exception of some bureaucrates). And we have the South that was considered to be more poor in resources, but which, in the end, is becoming the top technocratic country in the world. Yes, the South was also highly militarised and had nukes from the US. But the same went for the North with USSR.
I just wonder what will happen when someone will try a real reunification. What will happen when a North, which still cannot give up its dependency on someone else, with an economy in shambles and one of the biggest armies in the world meets a South which a big part of the world depends on, an economy that gives envy to anyone and carrying a more pacifist mood than ever?
North - What do you mean by "using Internet"?
South - What do you mean by "not using Internet"?
Here in the US, broadband "internet" is becoming more and more like cable TV. Unilaterally changeable service contracts ban useful services, ports are blocked and upload rates are artificailly reduced. It's mostly because of bad laws which alowed the regional bells to stomp fledgling DSL competition and other bad laws which essentially give cable operators exclusive franchises in huge areas. Rather than embracing the communications possibilities of wires in our homes and networks we have built, we plod along with pay per minute, voice only, long distance telephony.
Has Korea learned from our mistakes or will they repeat them?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why you listen to anything that this guys says.
... I don't think you'll find a bad word said about Microsoft. Nice to know.
If he isn't being paid by M$ he should be. Read his other articles...
A hard sell for cuddly new XP
The mother of all operating systems
Sun sues Microsoft from inside a glass house
To name a few
Game finals are even brought live on TV there.
Gaming IS a sport there, look at "starcraft" the prizes you can win in the rounaments are insane.
But that trend is starting to rise in the west too: think of CPL for instance, it's a worldwide event with international clans fighting for the first place (internationally!) in FPS games. And some clans even have dedicated fans nowadays, some players even have groupies (I kid you not: pretty girls, who take pictures with their webcams ofthemselves in their bra's holding a paper with the name of their favourite CS player for instance).
In a way I think that's a logical evolution in the world of sports: why would sport have something to do with only the physical? Look at chess, and snooker etc.
I mean, dedicated gamers even behave like real life jocks: they have the whole "yeah we're so 1337" thing going and act real tough (online that is
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
Japan launched 3G phones first, and broadband is equally prevasive here. Obviously, the author didn't check their facts. I probably just sounds better to say Korea, which has a back water image for some reason, than to compare to Japan. Still its more accurate to say large parts of asia (taiwan, korea, singapore, japan) are now significantly ahead of the west as far as being wired goes. Its easy here because due to population density the last mile problem disappears.
--wyn
Satellite's now two way. I'm in the Scottish Highlands with a satellite connection courtesy of Bridge Broadband (a reseller of course, Hughes Satellite Systems underneath).
Bandwidth is 512kbs UNCONTENDED down and 2Mbs burst contended. Only 150kbs up, but that should improve soon. It's expensive to put in, but with a pipe that size share the connection with a few neighbours and it's no more expensive than BT's ADSL offering.
Latency is only a problem if you want to play games. Notice that because the line is uncontended I've actually got considerably more bandwidth than you get in practise from ADSL.
You are correct when you say that there is a huge demand for broadband in the UK, but the really sad thing is that what is being offered to fill the demand is already out of date. In this day and age ADSL can hardly be described as 'broadband' as it is in most cases only 512Kb/sec. The UK government is dreaming if they really believe that everyone having an ADSL connection will make the UK the most competative place in Europe for e-business. By the time they have managed to roll out ADSL to the majority of the population, most of the rest of Europe will already have installed fiber networks and consumers will have 10Mb/sec connections. Sadly, at the moment, the UK governement either doesn't have a clue or doesn't have the inclination to even start talking about fiber networks.
I am from UK, but I live in Sweden in a town of approximately 120,000 people (small by UK standards) and I have a 10Mb/sec ethernet connection in my appartment for which I pay 300kr per month (about £25 or $30). ADSL costs the same as this in UK and in most cases is 20 times slower. Why can't UK get its act together? And before people start talking about BTs monoply causing problems please considered that Telia in Sweden also have about the same kind of monopoly position as BT in UK but this does not seem to have hindered the roll out of high speed consumer broadband in Sweden!
--
Steve Brammer
(From UK but currently living in Västerås, Sweden)
It would improve the social enviornment in the USA, and give kids a place to go.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
And if it weren't for the *EVIL* United States, there would be a single Korea and it would be one massive hellhole instead of half hellhole and half really nice place to live.
Right now the US has tens of thousands of troops right now helping the South Koreans hold of a million man North Korean army. With the news that North Korea has broken the treaty that gave them economic aid in exchange for giving up nukes, it should be increasingly obvious that the current US foreign policy that is heavy in, ahem, consequences, is not so naive after all. What is naive is the idea that you can solve all your problems with mean people by just talking nice to them.
I wonder how if South Vietnam would be doing as well as South Korea of the US had succeeded in defending it.
Brian Ellenberger
You do realise that there is only one nation which has actually used nuclear weapons in war - and its not any of the countries in the so-called 'axis of evil'.
If you still don't know the answer, visit this site
Tim
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Telia also is privatized and has responsibilities to its shareholders.
The reason it exists cheap broadband in Sweden is that an entrepreneur startad a company called Bredbandsbolaget (The broadband company) and started to connect people with 10Mbit/s broadband.
Others followed suit...
This message was brought to you by a broadband user in Väasterås, Sweden.
Just saying it like it are.