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."

Comments

Technology is good...

[acehole]

Just someone has to tell the koreans that 86 hours straight is a little on the excessive side. Even if you are camping....

look at the difference

[der_saeufer]

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.

Re:look at the difference

[stephanruby]

Now look where US is... trying to build *more* nukes and pissing off everyone in the world except Bin Laden.

Re:look at the difference

[interiot]

There are a couple reasons to favor Honads/Toyotas over less established brands. Because they're more established and well known, you're more likely to get a higher resale value for those cars (though things can always change given 5 years). Also, toyota and honda in particular try very very hard to get top spots in consumer satisfaction surveys since they're neck-and-neck elsewhere, so if something really major goes wrong with those cars, even if the warranty has run out, you can get them to replace it on their dime because they don't want to lose you and your friends' loyalty.

Not that Honda/Toyota/other established brands are by any means necessarily the best, just that brand recognition can factor into a buyer's decision, and there's no reason to poo-poo that.

Re:look at the difference

[evilviper]

I bet, though, that in 2010 there will be Korean cars all over American streets.

No. Korea's advantage is that they can manufacture products cheaper than anyone else... When it comes to quality, they are behind (I know a KIA employees that won't drive their own cars).

In many places, the American mindset is to buy the cheapest items, no matter how bad the quality. I don't believe that situation will last much longer as worse and worse items are manufactured, and many factors make returns more difficult.

South Korea is doing very well, but so has every other country when there was a huge influx of money... History has shown that it will be short-lived. It's only a matter of time before their economy flattens out, and what happens at that time will determine the long-term status of the country.

Re:look at the difference

[kraksmoka]

from one liberal to another . .. .

1)Bill Clinton's (he's the man!) revelation of the strikes that would've followed failure of the Agreed Framework accords is one of the reasons they are being so agressive right now.

2)N. Korea would sell a nuke to feed itsself for the winter, and is irrational enough to use one on their peninsula.

3)they are extremely paranoid and prone to a realpolitik analysis of the security dilemma.

4)Good or Evil be damned, there is still not a permanent peace treaty from the Korean War, that's why there's the DMZ.

5)S. Korea stands to lose the most from another war, Seoul is Very close to the DMZ.

Add it all up, there is alot of potential for a realist approach to N. Korea. Unfortunately, they hold some really nasty cards, and the political will to cause damage to their neighbor, and by extension the global economy and us. They take the only advantage they can, one that this country feared for 40 years of cold war. N. Korea is a starving country, their population is dying of hunger and cold, admittedly by their own hand. They have little left to lose, and even less fear of losing it.

Re:look at the difference

[stephanruby]

Please note that I was only trying to show the irony in the previous posters' comment and whatever question you have about my comment -- you can ask the same question to the previous poster. In any case, I didn't realize that anyone would be pedantic enough or manipulative enough, to ignore the general meaning of my words, but now that you did, you've given me the license to become as pedantic as you are.

We are indeed reducing some of our stockpile for our bigger nukes, that's correct, but we are also developing and producing lots and lots of smaller tactical nukes, so in the end, the answer is no. The total number of nukes is indeed "probably" rising. I say "probably", because our current number of smaller nukes seems to be around 1,100, our ability to make smaller and smaller nukes is improving, and since Bush wants more and more of them -- our overall number of nukes is "probably" rising.

hehehe

[spdycml]

huh-huh....huh-huh-huh...huh-heh....he said penetration.....huh-huh...cool

Now why ....

[Snoopy77]

didn't Al Gore use the internet in his campaigns? He did invent it didn't he?

Re:Language is still a barrier

[Varkias]

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.

he didn't invent it, he just funded it

[SHEENmaster]

Get your facts straight and/or stop plagurizing SNL skits!

Re:he didn't invent it, he just funded it

[Arandir]

No, Al Gore did not fund the internet. I know most democratic office holders are multi-millionaires, but even Gore and his Daddy combined weren't rich enough to fund the creation of the internet.

How many times...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

OMG... and I thought the spam problem was bad...

[yeoua]

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...

OMG!

[xintegerx]

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.)

Re:OMG!

[poot_rootbeer]

Go to the library. There's plenty of documentation on what you need to do to run for office. It's all codified into the laws, y'know.

And before you go off half-cocked trying to run for President or something, aim a little lower and more realistically. Run for your town's board of freeholders or something.

You have to work your way up the ladder -- not because The Man is trying to hold you down, but because that's the only way to build up enough experience to be competent in higher office. When was the last time we had a President that had not previously been either a Governor or a Congressman?

Re:OMG!

[Guppy06]

"The best way (only way) right now is to be an intern and watch over some guy who did that too and move up."

You must live in the wrong state. When I ran for the US House last year (decided on very short notice), Google pointed me to the Louisiana Department of State, I found out there what was needed ($600 payed to the Department of State), filled out the paperwork, mailed in the money order, and that was that. The rest was figured out from the numerous and frequent mailings I ended up getting (and still get) from the state and the Federal Election Commission.

And it's not like Louisiana is world renown for its internet presence and connectivity or anything.

"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 [senate.gov], for instance (and many others using google) trying to find out HOW TO RUN!"

Of course they won't. If you bothered to peruse the US Constitution a little, you'd realize that it is not the federal government's place to tell the states how exactly their elections should be run. Different states have different requirements (beyond the lone federal requirement of "You must be over 30") and different qualifications.

"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."

Find your state's Department of State. That's usually the best place to start.

"States maintain a web site like I described and one that would also show WHO is running"

Like this?

"and what they DO and what they have DONE"

You have two options. One is to go to the congresscritter's website in question and look at the legislation they sponsor and/or co-sponsor, and to THOMAS to see how they voted on legislation.

The other is to go to non-partisan information sources like Project Vote Smart, who attempt to make the information more digestable.

"And each candidate would have his own web site hosted (or just linked.) FAIRNESS IN EVERY WAY!"

Fair to everybody except for the taxpayers. As a former independent candidate and as a taxpayer, I do not want tax dollars going to pay for private political campaigns. Candidates (especially for federal office) get enough free attention from the press as it is that it really isn't needed.

"Nobody votes because theres a bunch of bums we don't know anything"

Because the information isn't there to know, or because they don't bother trying to find out?

"This would be a pretty cheap way for equal spending that everybody keeps pushing for,"

First off, it would be even cheaper if the taxpayers didn't have to pay any of it.

Secondly, the problem isn't "equal spending," the problem is things like "truth in advertising" and "honesty about campaign fundraising and spending." And if you need a law to require candidates to register this information with, say, the FEC, it's already too late. If you need to twist their arms to get them to share this information, they shouldn't be in office to begin with.

Re:Maybe you should get your facts straight

[FS1]

Exact statement used by gore in an interview with Wolf Blitzer from this Source

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.

Re:My experiences in Korea

[Faeton]

WTF? This guy is just copying and reposting his old stuff over again (look at his Russia/India posts) and changing names.

Re:Language is still a barrier

[minko]

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.

Future for the billion strong (digital) democracy

[paschimghat]

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...

Not the only amazing thing...

[suchire]

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...

so he just

[SHEENmaster]

made the decision to spend our money on the internet?

Re:Wait a minute

[nulleffect]

According to Roh's site, he made 7,278,135,098 Won (about USD 6,000,000) from 203,764 donations, not CAD 1,000,000,000 (about USD 640,000,000) from 180,000 donors, as the article says.

Superstar politics = less corruption

[ites]

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.

Re:Superstar politics = less corruption

[sql*kitten]

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.

The problem is that it breaks everything else too. With instant voting, the US would have nuked Kabul hours after September 11th... totally missing those responsible and slaughtering millions of (relative) innocents. Latency in the system is there for a reason.

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.

There is one lesson that Tony Blair and New Labour learned too late: it is easy to be incorruptible when you have no real power. That's why, in Opposition, they could be "whiter than white", but as soon as they were in power, the scandals came rolling in. If the celebrities you mentioned had any real influence beyond entertainment, they would be at least as corruptible as anyone else.

Hint: any celebrity that has endorsed any product has a price.

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.

The weaker the government, the better it is for everyone. There's only really a problem if government is both strong and corrupt.

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.

Populism requires short-term thinking, and is invariably a disaster in the long run. Argentina's economy lies in ruins because of the populist decisions made by Peron (don't blame the IMF, they wouldn't have even gotten involved if Peron hadn't started Argentina's economy on the downward spiral, altho' they certainly haven't made anything better).

Re:Superstar politics = less corruption

[ites]

a, I believe Kabul was the target of US government policy, not popular demand for action. There is no proof that US popular opinion wanted war after Sept. 11th. More likely, public opinion in the US would have gone for insulation, rejection of the outside world, possibly some xenophobia.
b, New Labour is relatively clean, despite being the most powerful UK government since Thatcher's Tories. Of course there are scandals, but they are mostly banal. In some respects, it's a superstar government since they came to power from outside the London political scene (being an essentially Scottish party). Having no power does not make a party clean, as the UK Conservatives have shown.
c, Peron was not a populist, but an extreme example of government by political machine. He ruined the economy for standard reasons: using the country's economy to pander to friendly interest groups.
Powerful governments are not necessarily corrupt. There seem to be two factors: how long the government has been part of the mainstream political system, and thus open for "sale", and how long they can expect to stay in power, and thus able to exploit their position for gain.
Superstar governments have neither of these: quickly elected and quickly dismissed. It remains to be shown that this "populism" is actually bad in any way.

Re:Language is still a barrier

[Flakeloaf]

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...

Re:Maybe you should get your facts straight

[weave]

Well, he's a bit of an idiot for his choice of words, but it's not a complete fabrication. I remember fairly well over 10 years ago when he first became VP. At the time the Internet was research only, no commercialism allowed. At the time Gore was pushing for a "similar" internet for the public and described fairly well the benefits it could bring to business and the public. He called it at the time the "information super highway" (gack) and at the time it was thought that this new public internet would be separate from the academic internet. It was also supposed to use a different protocol, OSI, instead of TCP/IP. (Not that he knew what OSI was, that was just the conventional wisdom at the time).

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

Please some insight from Koreans...

[El Camino SS]

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.

Re:do you even know korean ??

[Psx29]

Japanese is different. In a purely syllabic system, there is a key combo to switch keyboards for both hiragana and katakana and each key is mapped to a syllable. I just wonder where the numbers go, since both keyboards use all keys (except keypad) for characters, plus some combinations with ctrl and shift.

Most people who type in Japanese presently use the standard qwerty layout and just type in romanized Japanese(myself included).

As for Chinese, there are many different input methods but the most common is most likely mandarin pin yin input, which would just be the romanization system for mandarin.

Re:more like 600 keypresses a minute

[Psx29]

This makes me curious, what would the standard Korean layout be?

Re:We wanted war.

[ites]

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.

where is max?

[certron]

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...

Campaign spam?

[geekee]

Great. So now I get to look forward to campaign pop-up ads and spam. What a great idea.

Raised $1-billion?

[upper]

Largely through Internet-based campaign
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.

Re:Actually

[Arandir]

Actually, the internet was already around by the time the politicians voted to spend money on it. It may not have been called the internet, and it may not have had all the technical characteristics it does today, but it was there.

Re:Language is still a barrier

[Flakeloaf]

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.

Re:cell phones

[MS]

Sorry, that should read "Mauritius", not "Maitius" - I hit the submit-button instead of preview.

Re:cell phones

[enkidu]

Uhm, "mostly flat country"? You haven't been there have you? Yes, the western and southern EDGES of the country are "flat" but the middle to eastern part is pretty rough terrain. The maximum heights aren't high because the area is small, but the terrain is incredibly rough. Heck, there were guerillas hiding out in some mountains 10 fucking years after the Korean War. To quote from the CIA World Book entry "Terrain: mostly hills and mountains; wide coastal plains in west and south". Or how about another source with a map and description:"Around 80% of the Korean Peninsula is covered by mountains while South Korea has a rugged and mountainous terrain... Only 15% of the land area is covered by plains, which are mostly located along the coast."

The reason its cheap to set up cells is simple population density. Also makes it cheap to run Broadband to every house in the country. AFAIK, South Korea put down fiber optic (I think 6 or 10 fibers) alongside every single power line over the last 10 years (new and retrofit). The power company then leases out those lines in a relatively non-discriminatory manner. Makes for a very cost effective high speed network.

EnkiduEOT

Re:actually

[enkidu]

Seoul is flat? Uhmm. NO. Seoul is COVERED wit and SURROUNDED by hills. And not "rolling hills" with low gradients, but steep hills. Would you call San Francisco flat just because the highest point (Twin Peaks) is less than 1000 feet? Seoul is way more mountainous than most major U.S. cities (New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles etc.) Like I said, just because the peaks aren't high doesn't mean that the gradients aren't steep. Did you look at the map? Here's a sample contour map. This place has another click through sample on this page.

You seem to be confused as to the relation between altitude and gradient. If you have a steep slope that goes up and down over 10 miles (In Korea), it's going to be alot shorter in overall height than one that goes up and down over 200 miles (the Rockies). That still doesn't mean that the first mountain is less steep (and rough) than the second. And plus, how many cities in the U.S. have 14,000 foot peaks "nearby" (less than 2 hours drive).

Didn't you have to go through tunnels in Seoul (There's quite a few). Did you go to Namsan Tower? How much did you drive in Seoul? How about this quote from a 5th grade study outline "A physical relief map will reveal that the north and east parts of Korea are very mountainous while the south and west have more fields. It is said that you can see a mountain from everywhere in Korea. Have students speculate on the amount of land that would be available for agriculture in such a mountainous country. (Only about one fourth of the land comprising the Republic of Korea is arable)." (source. Or how about this page. Don't you think they would know?

Look, obviously, you have experienced Korea (and you have my sympathies if you chose to drive). What I'm saying is that the perceptions which remain from your experience are flawed. Are you saying that all these sources have a distorted view of the terrain of Korea and your view is correct? Ask your guide in Korea. Ask anyone who has done more than "visit" Korea. Trust me: No one (especially not a cable or antenna engineer) is going to call much of South Korea "flat". Not even Seoul or Busan.

EnkiduEOT