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.

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.

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.)

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...

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: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...