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.)"

Comments

But there may be downsides...

[MattRog]

Yeah, like living next to North Korea.

Multiplayer games are HUGE in Korea.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Slight rewording

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Slight rewording

[plone]

The article said that 67% of Korean HOUSEHOLDS are connected to broadband, not 67% of Korean Internet USERS. That means that 67% of the homes are wired with broadband. The actual percentage of population of people who have access to broadband is therefore much higher than 67% since Households usually constitute more than a single person.

They may be on to something

[Haxx]

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.

Why is this shocking!?

[prichardson]

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.

Re:Why is this shocking!?

[tshak]

This is not shocking due to some basic differencews between the US and South Korea.

You forgot:
3) South Korea is smaller then the average US state and therefore very easy to wire for broadband.

Re:They lead?

[sam_handelman]

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.

Interesting to Note...

[Eidolon909]

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.

I don't doubt that they watch VOD more

[keyed]

Having got broadband internet, Koreans use it much more. Dr Heejin Lee, a lecturer at Brunel University, says Koreans rack up an average of 1,340 minutes per month, which compares with the UK average of 382 minutes. The high usage stems partly from it being fast enough for video on demand: people can use it to time-shift TV programmes, or catch up with episodes of soaps they have missed. Also, 54% of Koreans play online games.

Their TV stations do VOD the right way. You can watch any show up to that they've aired for up to a week and without commercials. My mother, who lives in San Antonio, TX, and knows nothing about computers, watches these after she gets home from work. The quality of the video streaming isn't that good at times, but that probably has more to do with the fact that it's being streamed from Korea. It doesn't bother my mom too much as she watches the news and old style music shows that she liked when she left Korea 20+ years ago.

Weird world of Korea

[Ektanoor]

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"?

Fast and impressive, but is it free?

[twitter]

Are these networks free or gimped like US? Can the average Korean set up web, email, ftp, cvs services at the end of that fat pipe? If so, they will surely kick the world's ass in software development. If not, entertianment is nice but their net will be disipative.

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?

Jack Schofield??? Nooooooooo not him!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why you listen to anything that this guys says.

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 ... I don't think you'll find a bad word said about Microsoft. Nice to know.

Gosu ^^

[jedie]

Think about the fact that Korean gamer's can become official "sportsmen" with corporate sponsorship etc.

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 ;))

Re:Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK

[digithed]

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)

We need that here,

[HanzoSan]

It would improve the social enviornment in the USA, and give kids a place to go.