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Cell Phones and Broadband 'Net Win in S. Korea
McLuhanesque writes "The Globe and Mail has an interesting column on how text messaging and the use of effective broadband internet content helped propel an obscure lawyer, Mr. Roh Moo-hyun, from a perpetual also-ran to become South Korea's new president. 'With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy,' the article says."
Just someone has to tell the koreans that 86 hours straight is a little on the excessive side. Even if you are camping....
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic
Maybe GWB should bribe the North Koreans with cell phones if they'll quit doing nuclear weapon shiznit. I'll start by donating my Nokia piece of crap!
South Korea, through capitalism and foreign trade, has built itself into an industrial and technological powerhouse. Flip over any electronic device, and it was probably made in Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. Korea today is in a similar place to Japan in 1980--trying to gain a good name in Western markets. No one drove Hondas in 1980, and Hyundais aren't too popular today. I bet, though, that in 2010 there will be Korean cars all over American streets. (Not European streets, tho. The only really successful Japanese car maker there is Mitsubishi, and that's because they build Mitsubishis in Europe, often alongside European makes, i.e. Volvo S40/Mitsubishi Carisma).
Now look where North Korea is... trying to build nukes and pissing off everyone in the world except bin Laden and Hussein.
You tell me which is the better system.
Could the north koreans have faked this by wardriving along the border?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
huh-huh....huh-huh-huh...huh-heh....he said penetration.....huh-huh...cool
didn't Al Gore use the internet in his campaigns? He did invent it didn't he?
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
oh.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Wow what a idiotic and misinformed post. Actually the Korean language is suited just fine for technology. There are 14 consonants and 10 vowels in the language for a total of 24 letters in the language. Compare that with 26 consonants and vowels in the english alphabet and it's not that bad at all.
As I recall he invented cell phone messaging!
Really, though this is a good story in some way, but the spam aspect does worry me. I hate spam in my email even if it's for a good cause. On the other hand it does sound like a good person won the race.
-- James Dornan
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Get your facts straight and/or stop plagurizing SNL skits!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
...do we have to go through this?
1. South Korea is a small country with the vast majority of it's population in a high density urban area (Seoul).
2. And probably more importantly, South Korea has just recently become industrialized, therefore the communications infrastructure is quite modern compared to other Western, developed countries.
Do we really need to hear about this on a weekly basis? I guess the slashdot editors don't read their own site.
While koreans do use chinese idiograms for some things, their alphabet is a real one (i.e, a small number of characters stand for sounds smaller than whole words.) There are 24 of them (28 if you count some archaic characters, I think).
ROFL.... yes actually I was. I thought immaturity would have reached peak a while ago considering the number of unique usernames already existing on /.
Guess I was wrong.
Well, great, not only will we be able to make our penis size bigger and make that extra million by doing nothing but selling to other people how to make a million,
but we get to get mail from would-be-presidents-of-whatever.
Think about, if this does catch on, then on top of whatever spam we usually get, we will get political email/popups/popunders/im's etc...
Then the love of technology would be one of the worst sins possible. So if any manufactor would like contribute some technology to an upstanding person as myself i would be glad to hate it for them. You know to like balance karma or something.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Yesh. The US has fared so much better with our actors, former CIA henchmen, coke addicts, and peanut farmers.
I was just thinking about how much people like you and I are played by this "Western Government". The deal is, I went to my state's web site to try to figure out how to run for Senator, Governor, etc. Yes, maybe I'm not old enough yet, but there was still no information! The best way (only way) right now is to be an intern and watch over some guy who did that too and move up.
What if you're just a simple decent qualified person who wants to run for Selectman/Mayor/Rep/Senator/Governor/President? I went to the Senate's web site, for instance (and many others using google) trying to find out HOW TO RUN! This information is just not on the internet (at least not for my state.)
Just yesterday I thought it would be sweet if there was a web site people could go to to see how to run for political leadership in their state. At least paperwork and deadlines would be greate, but procedures, rules, and regulations in addition, would be excellent!
Seriously, at least 100 million people in the USA are qualified to run for those positions I mentioned (at least by the age rule set in the constitution.)
I want to see competition, I want to see REAL people running! What would REALLY be sweet would be a law by the Senators to make States maintain a web site like I described and one that would also show WHO is running and what they DO and what they have DONE. This would be so sweet. And each candidate would have his own web site hosted (or just linked.) FAIRNESS IN EVERY WAY!
Nobody votes because theres a bunch of bums we don't know anything about who have a gazillion of ties and responsibilities, once in office, to the people who got them there!!!
This would be a pretty cheap way for equal spending that everybody keeps pushing for, good for communicating at least with voters that have access to the internet (the majority.)
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Quote "BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now. Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process? Clearly, Blitzer is asking Gore to offer an explanation of how he differs as a politician from other politicians in general, and his rival at the time, Bill Bradley, in particular. Here is Gore's entire response to Blitzer's question: GORE: Well, I will be offering - I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead."
There that settles that. He said he took the initiative in creating the internet. If you want to interpt that as inventing then yes he said he invented it. If you want to take it like exaggeration then yes you are right he just funded it.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
WTF? This guy is just copying and reposting his old stuff over again (look at his Russia/India posts) and changing names.
You can't possibly imagine how fast one can type Korean characters before you see it. Average Korean teenagers can type 100-200 characters per minute not only with keyboards but also with cell phones(using their two thumbs). Korean is really well-suited for technology.
But Korean is not written linearly letter
by letter! It is written in grouped syllables;
if you had any familiarity at all with Korean,
you'd know this!?
Korean has the worst mess in all Unicode, I'd say.
(a) The individual letters are in Unicode, and the
jambo syllables are *also* in Unicode
(b) And of course they have the Chinese (kanja)
I'm not knocking the Korean alphabet; they are
justifiably proud of it, and it is beautiful.
But it is not as easy to deal with on a computer!
What is a Unicode code point ?
(a) each leter, counting doubled consonants
as doubled code points
(b) each letter, except doubled consonant
letters are a single code point
(c) each jambo syllable
#c makes glyph work & editors *much* easier,
but makes letter-based analysis much more painful
Feeding the troll...
It would be apparent to anyone in Korea that you can't speak Korean, what with your grammar and all. Properly spoken: jega hangookmal mot'heyo.
Hyundai actually means "Modern Era" in Korean.
I'm not sure what you have against fermented food...kimchee certainly tastes better than the grease and salt of "American" fast food. At least Asian food doesn't slather things with lard, butter, and salt.
Such irE
With Reliance Group promising a mobile and broadband internet into every home in India
you might as well take this article, multiply all numbers in it by 100, change Roh Moo-hyun to Ram Mohan Roy and you'll have a new article for the future...
Good article.
A politician getting elected without corporate
political bribe money. Using the internet, and
democratic grass root principles... wow..
maybe that will make him more accountable to
the voters unlike the USA, where they are only
accountable to the special interests who write
the donation checks.
Why don't we try to get some of our own elected
here, in the USA too..?
Maybe slashdot would be a good place to start this from..
Then we would have a fighting chance to stop all
this bought & paid for legislation like the DMCA..etc..etc.
Maybe we should hurry before the establishment buys a law forbidding this! (which I am sure they will try..)
What the news article fails to mention is the astounding rally that the youth made in Korea. Seven hours before the polls closed, a close supporter of Roh in his coalition withdrew his support, and so there was a real danger of him not getting elected. In about 11 minutes or so, a bunch of Roh's supporters rallied on his website, through email, IM's, messageboards, etc. and encouraged each other to go out to vote (and Roh's fan website got about 3 million hits in four hours) making a record turnout for young voters, about 60%.
Amazing...
Such irE
You`re right about the food. I particularly liked the Korean Kentucky fried dog .
Hey, some Americans eat roof-rabbits (i.e. cats) and guinea pigs. Dog is meat. Why do people eat veal? Such a cute little calf...cows are actually quite intelligent.
Dog meat is actually not that bad, I've heard.
Such irE
"The Internet allowed Mr. Roh to liberate himself from "black money" -- corporate donations that are South Korea's traditional form of campaign financing. Largely through Internet-based campaign groups, Mr. Roh raised the equivalent of about $1-billion from more than 180,000 individual donors."
Maybe all representatives could have an account set up to where people can donate over the internet. Then the government could ban soft money donations altogether. But there would be so much opposition to it from corporate interests it would be shot down day one. But I can hope...
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
made the decision to spend our money on the internet?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
...how much of this article reminded me of William Gibson's books.
"The Internet has become the most popular way of organizing street rallies, political and otherwise -- including that of the estimated seven million South Koreans who swarmed into the streets after the stunning success of their national soccer team in last summer's World Cup."
reminds me of the lo-rez fanclub funeral that was triggered from the fan site
"Not all South Koreans are happy about the dramatic rise of the Internet. Critics say that the on-line games create "zombie" teenagers who do not know how to interact with the real world."
reminds me fo the gomi who game all of the time and cheat their way through school. They also help to build walled city.
"About 25 million of South Korea's 48 million people are regular Internet surfers. All across Seoul, high-rise towers and corporate headquarters are emblazoned with their Web-site addresses in huge letters or neon signs. About 30 million South Koreans have cellphones, and 10 million of these cellphones have Internet connections -- again, a world-leading number."
Reminds me of Gibsons landscapes : the sprawl, Night City.
"A witty saying proves nothing." -Voltaire
$1 amounts to some 1200 korean won
He made the decision that we should fund the internet and convinced enough politicians to actually get our money to support the net.
Hmmm... Pie...
Mr. Roh raised that equivalent of that amount of cash is what they're saying. I haven't read the article but it sounds like they mean that he got enough coverage from the internet and what not that would be worth 1 billion...
No, wait scratch that the articles author is on drugs or something. Maybe that's supposed to be in korean currency or something.
Hmmm... Pie...
One interesting aspect of this kind of election is that it starts to resemble the viewer-elections we see on reality shows. We are starting to see something that looks like instant democracy. Now, what's cool about this is that it breaks the back of the traditional political system.
I've noticed that those famous and/or powerful people who are not corrupt are invariably those elected by rapid popular vote, namely superstars of pop, sports, and so on.
A long, slow election process just gives all parties time to negotiate with interest groups. Slow elections generate corrupt politicians, and the semi-permanent election process we see in certain countries just creates completely corrupt political parties.
Electing politicians like this is going to annoy the established political parties. It's also going to raise a generation of politicians who have popular support but no real political network. But it's hard to see what the impact of this will be.
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[snip]
:ri:
Critics say that the on-line games create "zombie" teenagers who do not know how to interact with the real world.
[snip]
well, duh.
The only people that know how to relate to the real world are critics.. obviously.
A two-finger typing system actually makes sense in Korean, where most phonemes are written as one-vowel-one-consonant digraphs. (or was that dipthongs...)
For the unitiated, Korean writing is (mostly) phonetic. A vowel is matched with a consonant to form a phoneme, and these sounds are arranged to form words in a very sensible manner.
Characters are usually pronounced exactly as they are written - the only exception my round eye has seen so far is that syllables that begin with vowels are instead preceded by the symbol that would otherwise be spoken as "ioong": O.
Although the language is read left-to-right, consonant or vowel sounds are sometimes written one on top of the other instead of side-by-each for aesthetic reasons. "Lee" would be initial vowel + | ("ee") for O|. "Boo" is simply B (|_|) and "oo" (T) linked together:
|_|
T
It's a dead easy alphabet to learn, and anyone with an hour and a pencil can learn to read (and more importantly, write) Korean phonetically.
blah, blah, blah...
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
If you can type 600 keys in a minute you're likely to be called a fast typist in Korea.
But there's more than one keyboard layout, (like with QWERTY vs. Dvorak), and users of the sebulsik keyboard layout (as opposed to the doobulsik) are known to achieve speeds of over 1000 keypresses a minute.
No lard? No butter? No salt? Those are my favorite ingredients! Well, maybe not lard, but definitely butter and salt.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
where most phonemes are written as one-vowel-one-consonant digraphs. (or was that dipthongs...)
"Boo" is simply B (|_|) and "oo" (T) linked together:
|_|
T
Great info, but two small things- Characters aren't necessarily consonant-vowel pairings,
but consonant-vowel-consonent and consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant matchings as well.
ex)
O l = 'lee' or 'yi'
O l
L = 'leen' or 'yin'
O |-
2 D = 'almb' or 'ahlm' (meaning 'meaning')
Of course, the 2 is more 'angly', and the D is actually a box, but you get the idea..
Oh, and 'boo' would be
|=| or
T
|_|
|_|
___
|
He was also instrumental in supporting the academic internet during his years in Congress when all other people in Congress didn't have a clue about these things.
I know first hand about this because I was in IT at the time -- yes, I'm old -- and worked in a community college where we were debating whether or not we should halt the rollout of our TCP/IP network and switch to OSI because we were a two-year college and more tilted to serving business and not research and maybe the upcoming information super highway thing would be better than hooking to the then non-commerical Internet.
Now, as it turns out, the separate networks never materialized, OSI fizzled, and the non-commerical Internet became the Internet we know today and serious research institutions are going off on their own with Internet 2.
So, he's a tithead, but he *was* the leader in congress in understand the benefits of an internet (of some sort) and that commercialization of the internet is what was a large factor for the economic boom of the 90s.
Remember, no one outside of academia heard of the Internet before like 1992. The first mass media cartoon regarding the internet was in the new yorker in 1993 (the "no one knows your a dog on the net" one) which we all, at the time, were amazed (and scared) that mass media noticed the Internet.
p.s. I find it interesting, however, that conservatives are so quick to jump on someone's bad choice of words when their own people who can't choose good words in speeches are somehow to be given understanding, ala Bush and former VP Dan Quayle (and visa-versa of course).
Some more on this at snopes.com
"Just yesterday I thought it would be sweet if there was a web site people could go to to see how to run for political leadership in their state. At least paperwork and deadlines would be greate, but procedures, rules, and regulations in addition, would be excellent!"
i will never vote for someone who needs a `dummys guide to democracy` to work out how to get into office! If you were really interested, you`d already know, or you'd find out for yourself.
Now, since pigs are becoming a relatively common pet in California, I find those Friday's pork chops especially disgusting. You're eating my best friend! Yuck!
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Please respond to this... And I know it is offtopic but I want to know... and I have little insight into why all of this N. Korea business has even started at all.
Why would N. Korea reveal that it has nuclear weapons in direct violation of a fuel and food treaty when its citizens are starving?
I have a few theories, but none of them make any sense. I have no idea why this is occurring. Are these viable answers?
1. Becasue Bush called them the "axis of evil."
2. They want to influence the S. Korean elections against the US for removal of US occupation (so they can attack? Or unite without the US?).
3. They revealed their nuke program because of Saddam (a fellow dictator) so that the US would have to fight a 2 front war... the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend routine." Which obviously idn't work out the way they planned.
4. Their motivations and thought processes are so "not Westerner" that I as a westerner just can't get it and it is all too complicated to say anyway.
5. This has all happened before, maybe not in this scale, and it is a big bluff to hold a regime together.
6. The regime is dying fast, and it needs an enemy to hold it together, so it mentions it has nukes to the US to threaten them, and then starts the war machine to unite N. Koreans.
Once again, please forgive the offtopic, but our current situation is intimately tied in with this election, and I need a Korean point of view to really make any sense of it. I think I speak for more than a few Westerners when we say we don't have any idea how things operate over there. Please enlighten us.
You're referring to Saudi Arabia, I suppose. It's worth noting that the Taliban and Al Quaida were trained and armed (up to soon before Sept. 11) by the US government itself. The same government that keeps the Al Saud family in power because it guarantees the flow of oil.
No-one said it was possible to reform a political system overnight, especially when corruption is so completely part of global politics. Saying that a popular reaction to Sept.11th shows that fast-cycle democracy is no good is meaningless, since it is clear that the entire current terrorism cycle was entirely caused by cronyist oil politics in the first place.
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Is it just me or does this remind anyone of Max Headroom, where elections are held by TV ratings?
I suppose it might be more like voting with your cell phone, but still, there seem to be some similarities. Well, in my head, at least...
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
The old political boys in both Canada and the US would legislate the possibility of this out the window in North America. My impression is that things move so fast in Korea that they couldn't block something like this in government. When you have to build a network big enough to cover North America, the politicians have a bit more time to respond. Geez, I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Sorry.
A group here did useability testing of interfaces on cell phones. We found one of the primary reasons why the asian countries are leading the way, is for exactly the opposite of what you said...
Lets say, somebody wants to send a text message saying "I love you"...
With Chinese/HanJa/Kanji characters, that can be said with only two characters. Even one could suffice.
In english? Thats 10 characters you need to enter.
Lets say you want to say, "Lets go meet at the beach"
Again, in Chinese/HanJa/Kanji, that can be accomplished with 2 or 3 characters. In english? 25 characters.
This is one of the main reasons why the "clunky" interface is acceptable in asian countries, but not in the US.
Besides, I've actually typed on a Chinese/HanJa/Kanji keyboard before, its actually not too bad. There is usually a setting for romanized, where you type phonetically, and it comes up with a list of characters that make that sound. The better programs will even examine multiple words/syllabals, and figure out the correct word based on context, etc. Its not like you have a keyboard with 50,000 keys on it.
I don't think it was very haphazard at all. I think with most countries that have less "Urban sprawl" as compared to the US, wireless just makes since. One of my friends who lives in Kazakstan (sp?), said that wireless has high penetration there as well, but for different reasons. Because its easier/cheaper to set up cell towers than to run cables into every hut in the village. I would think Korea is the same. Its mostly a flat country with not many mountainous areas. I mean the highest mountain there is like only 6,000 ft high, at it isn't even in the peninsula, but on Cheju island. (if memory serves)... So I think cell towers make even more sense...
Great. So now I get to look forward to campaign pop-up ads and spam. What a great idea.
Vote for Pedro
groups, Mr. Roh raised the equivalent of about $1-billion from more
than 180,000 individual donors
A billion dollars is way to much. Since the article is from a Canadian paper, presumably it's in Canadian dollars, equivalent to about $630M US. For the last US presidential election, Bush raised about $90M US and Gore a little less than $50M US. Korea is a much smaller country and a candidate like Roh who uses the net for most voter contact doesn't need as much money as one who buys TV ads. What's more, the average contribution per donor comes out to $5500 CA or $3500 US, which is more than 10 times the average contribution in the US.
I suspect the reporter slipped a digit or two.
Hahah, nice cut-and-paste of your Russia/India tales.
For anyone interested, I was in South Korea both in 2001 and 2002. I found Seoul to be remarkably clean--much more so than Taiwan. Out of Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea, the latter felt the MOST like the US to me.
I didn't notice any funky smells.
I didn't have a problem with Kimchee.
I didn't bang any 16-year-olds.
But then, I'm not a troll.
What I found most interesting was the way that South Koreans, for the most part, don't seem very worried about North Korea. I asked some people what they thought about the recent warning shots that the South had had to lob towards a Northern ship, and they said something to the effect of, "Oh, it happens all the time--nothing to get too worried about." They find it interesting that the US is so concerned about North Korea, in fact. Of course, this was a couple months ago.
I mainly hung out with late-twenty-somethings, the sort that were more likely to vote for the President of Hyundai (yes, he ran for presidency). Nowhere did I ever feel unwelcome by the Korean people--as an American, I was well-received.
I will be visiting more often in the future. Well, as long as war doesn't break out over there, 'natch.
they really had keyboards with 50,000 keys on them!
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
Bah, you think you're so smart just b/c you know exactly what you're talking about and I don't ;) I sit corrected. I still shudder a bit when I think about the Korean language, 'cause the last time I confused "chun jin" with "hoo jin" I nearly ended up with a concussion.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
Syllable-initial consonants to the right, syllable-final consonants and consonant clusters to the left. All possible consonant clusters in Modern Korean are accesible by using the shift key. (Some are even available without using the shift key.)
Harder to acquire the knack at first, but it pays off.
(While consonant clusters can occur in a syllable-final position, they can't occur in a syllable-initial position.)
Syllable initial "double consonant letters" are entered by typing the same key twice. The "o" to the lower right corner and the "oo" to the upper right are to be used in compound vowels. (As part of sounds like "wa" or "wen".)
Due to the tri-segmented-layout (that's what sebulsik means, literally. Three Segment Type. Guess what doobulsik means.), typing in sebulsik Korean is very rhthmic. Left mid right, left right, left mid right, space, and so on.
IMHO Koreans should all use sebulsik and be proud of it's typing layout as well as it's writing system.. : )
I have been to s. korea numerous times. The last several times, I have even had the displeasure of driving there. I have only driven to Pusan from Seoul twice, but I have been taken around the southern peninsula. Granted, I may have been sleeping for much of that trip, but I do remember visiting many villages on the way.
2 points:
1.) My definition of flat is not literal. I mean flat as in compared to over here, where we have several 14,000 ft mountains nearby, with glaciors year round. Did I mention the tallest mountain in S. Korea is Hallasan ? Its only 5850 ft high, and not even on the peninsula. I don't care how many rolling hills you have, that is still "flat" in my book. The coast range here is like 2 to 4 thousand feet high, and I don't consider that mountainous. The rockies, thats mountainous.
2.) When I said the country was mostly flat, I was also referring to where the majority of the population was.
Looking at that map:
Seoul is in the "flat" part on the top of the country, and Pusan, in the "flat" part on the bottom. When I drove from Seoul to Pusan, I remember the toll highway being flat, so I"m guessing it cut through the mountain in a diagonal fashion. I remember there being two tunnels as well. We then drove west and then north. That could also help explain why from my memory I saw the country being more flat then it is. Others are listed in my other post.
Unless there was too much smog when I was there...
:)
;)
From the top of Namsan you can see almost the entire city. Same can be said when I was at the viewing deck of the 63 tower.
I suppose you are right tho. I'm remembering driving down the olympic highway, and there being a steep cliff on one side of the highway. I guess I spent too much time in the subway to realize the hills. All the smog must have hidden the hills. Kinda like in LA. During heavy smog days, (which is like 70% of the time), you can't see the San Gabriel mountains even if you were practically at its base.....
I know what you mean about the driving. Only reason I was driving was because my cousin thought it would be "funny". (And I thought LA traffic was bad)... I suppose I was too busy trying to control my natural tendency for road rage, to take in the landscape
I think I'll be going there this spring anyways, so I'll pay closer attention this time
PS: When I flew to cheju with my uncle I could've sworn korea was flatter then it was. I guess I just had a crappy view out the window.