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In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People
_martini_ writes "This short article suggests that, in Korea, email is used only for formal communications, or by older, less tech-saavy generations, while IMs, blogs, and SMS has taken over as the primary means of day to day messages."
I can understand how IM appeals to kids (regardless of nationality), but I find IM incredibly distracting. I guess it's the natural evolution though. As telephones cut into the postal load, so are chat functions overtaking email.
In Korea, (current subject) is only used by old people!
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How do they get their v4lub13 P3n!s 3n1arg3men+ notices?
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Seriously though, no credit? Come on!
I wonder how the legal community operates? In this country, you'd be disbarred for sending an SMS to a judge or use AIM to communicate with opposing council (for serious matters). As much as email is used, all the documents we use at our firm are typed up and made official.
SMS still costs some money, IM isn't as formal, and email is more wide-spread. Doesn't mean anyone has to do what HelloKitty loving teens are doing in a place where technology changes daily.
A blog like any other.
email is for old people what do they think of those who use the "physical" postal service...
Get your torrents...
From the article: "Email's efficiency falls in terms of promptness, convenience and credibility," observed Yoo Hyon-ok, president, SK Communications. "With the continuous emergence of new communication means, communication formats will develop further in the future."
How do IMs, blogs or SMS provide any more credibility than E-Mail?
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People
;)
Of course, there is the corollary: IM, blogs, and SMS are kiddy tech.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I love Korea a lot, but it's got some drawbacks, particularly in its journalism and media. The impetus behind this article might have a lot less to do with the actual oncoming death of email and a lot more to do with maintaining a tech-obsessed culture -- much easier to do if you're constantly promoting new toys, which Korea is.
It'd be like a Hollywood tabloid saying that indipendent film is on the way out.
The ebb of email is confirmed by a diminishing trend in pageviews, a tabulation of frequency in service used by email users. Daum Communication, the top email business in the country, saw its email service pageviews fall over 20 percent from 3.9 billion in October last year to 3 billion in October this year. By contrast, with SK Telecom, the nation's No. 1 communication firm, monthly SMS transmissions skyrocketed over 40 percent in October from 2.7 billion instances last October. Cyworld, a representative mini-homepage firm, witnessed its pageviews multiply over 26-fold from 650 million instances in October last year to 17 billion in October this year.
This paragraph, for instance, is as much about corporate branding as it is about giving email stats.
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THats something that I hope does not evolve here. Mainly because people complain about emails sometimes getting lost, but they are more institutionalized and easier to find/access than blogs, SMS, and IMs. It is also more of an "on-demand" service. That you can send files, reply immediately [even if the user is not online], etc. And best of all is it automatically keeps your messages...
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i'm not surprised, korea is one of the worst spam sewers on the net outside the US, and many mail admins just pre-emptively firewall or ACL korean (or all of apnic) net space. Apparently Korean isp's could care less about all the firewalling, ACL's, and blacklists they end up in and their users are just moving on to IM's.
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I came across a nice way to use IM as a primary means of communication. I run naim with GNU Screen on a server on which I have a shell account. This way, naim functions as an "answering machine" when I'm not online, and a normal IM client when I am. Enjoy.
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It's like that here (in America) too. Most teenagers in America use AIM, IRC, or MSN more than they email. Reasons for this are pretty simple. IMs (and chat rooms) provide instant communication (this is comparable to a phone call, or talking in the halls), whereas an email is like passing a note. The reader has to read and respond seperately.
And as far as blogs, teens like talking about themselves, so this gives them a place to write about themselves as much as they want. Then anyone who knows how to get to it can read it, so its spread to the masses.
And SMS. Many teens have cellphones, and aren't at their computer 24/7, so an easy way to communicate is to a device that they carry with them all the time.
Coincidentally, the spam problem in Korea is also worse than just about anywhere else, it's for good reason that much of the world is firewalling the country off. So I wonder how much of the decline in e-mail usage there is due to the spammers.
Most of the reasons they give for email being shunned for other mediums are pretty flimsy.
I know people who set up their AIM client so that you can't tell whether they're idle, and only respond to messages 10 hours after you've sent them, and i know people who watch their inboxes like obsessive hawks.
as for email being less "fun" than aim... I don't know, i think my gmail account is pretty cool... and conversational for that matter.
This debate is pretty silly, after all, all we're talking about is persistant electronic messaging. In terms of user experience, email and a client like ICQ aren't -drastically- different. Presumably email will get faster and friendlier, and hell, at some point probably may as well be the same as an IM system.
There are lives at stake here!
you know you've left yourself wide open there...
Advanced users are users too!
(like I didn't know that) ...and IM and SMS is supposed to be a more credible alternative?
The one thing I like about email is that I can get to it when I need to. IM basically requires both parties to be at a computer and logged in at the same time. SMS solves that, I guess, but is it as reliable as email yet?
I'd try SMS if it weren't so much more expensive than email and if I weren't charged to recieve messages I didn't want. I suppose SMS in Korea is a lot cheaper.
You know, writing decent email is an art form, something we used to take pride in. But these days, with these kids texting ungrammatical half-phrases all over the place, it's becoming something of a lost art. I tell you, kids today can't write a complete sentence, and they barely even know how to use an emoticon properly. :-\ It won't be long before people forget how to type. Oh, the inhumanity!
My grandparents prefer e-mail. Why? Because they have always enjoyed writing letters. It was the preferred method of correspondance to people who they couldn't otherwise call on the telephone. E-Mail for them is just a "new fangled" way of writing letters.
If shown Instant Messaging they wouldn't use it as nifty as they think it might be, because it's a paradigm they don't neccesarily buy into.
I would imagine this would apply to many older people. Hell, I even enjoy the eloquence of well written letter.
--J
IM clients piss me off, always in your face. They have pop ups, blink in your tool bar, whatever to get your attention. Then to top it off there are 4 major IM's and the good multi-im clients tend to have bugs and not support all the features. There is a good console multi-IM client that works well under screen, but has proxy issues.
Email works, hell, I'd rather have an IM2mail gateway so I can use a mail client. Mail is passive and you control it, IM wants to control your life. (No this isnt a in Russia joke.)
I can also sort mail, pop web mail, attachments, etc. Mail is much more powerful. And newer IM devices include email accounts (POP or Ldap) Even ATT Wireless (Er Cingular now) the Ogo.
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why would you need to archive lunch invitation of the day? or "hey.. what's that place to download firefox from again??"
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The phone is the only way to be sure you're actually talking to the correct person.
I wonder what Mitnick would have to say about that.
However, this is not only in Korea. I live in Hong Kong, and essentially all casual communication is done via SMS (which is extremely cheap here) or IM (ICQ being the favorite of the various messengers).
We use e-mail for our help desk for example. You send an e-mail to the help address, it creates a new ticket for your issue. This works well, as we get documentation of everything you say to us, and us to you, and it allows us to deal with your problem when a person with the requisite knowledge has time.
IM would be totally unsuited for this. When peopel have your attention in realtime, they want results in realtime. If I answer a chat about a Solaris problem, I'm not the one you want, you want the Solaris admin. With e-mail, this is all taken care of. Someone submits their request, and when the Solaris admin is available, he deals with it.
I certianly don't think IM is useless, but I think young people (I include myself in this category, I'm 24) are a little too caught up with the wow factor. When it comes to bussiness, there are major reasons to want to use e-mail instead.
Each serves their purpose. If I need to speak to someone interactively and immediately, IM is generally a better choice. On the other hand, if I want to send a good bit of information to someone that they're likely going to want to refer back to, or they're not online when I think of something I need to tell them, email is a much better alternative.
I quite like the way gmail is set up, and that is certainly done well to support a "conversational" format. I don't see why this persistent need in the tech community that one tool is always and for everything better than another. It seems pretty frequent though (Windows vs. Linux vs. *BSD vs. Solaris, email vs. IM, blogs vs. newsgroups, I could go on but I'd fill up the server.)
Why doesn't anyone acknowledge that, quite like in reality, software is a tool, and one type of tool is generally better at a given job then another? You don't use a hammer to loosen a nut, nor a wrench to drive a nail, and you wouldn't want to be stuck without either when the need arises.
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this is the case in the United States, too. I'm 25 and I only use email for formal communications or some large, organized "packet" of information that I need to send to someone. Just about all of my friends are the same way.
I realize you can't generalize based on your own anecdotal experience... but does anyone really send one or two-line emails anymore when IM is a hundred percent easier and instantaneous?
+++ATH0
my email looks like a bulletin board! full of crap like "hey look at this", "hey what are you doing tonight?"... i want my email to be for meaningful correspondence.
this creates alot of email that one has to sort through.
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Korea is still very much divided into two completely different countrys. South korea is rich, modern, and the most wired country on earth. North Korea is very poor, essentially unchanged in the last 50 years, and the Internet is illegal, along with cell phones. Pyongyang tried an experimental rollout of cell phone service but it was stopped, probbably because the authorities couldn't keep adequate control over it. I've oftened wondered what it would be like if the North actually invaded the South. It would be almost like time travel for the poor Northern soldiers.
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Think about it for a minute.
Spam typically COMES from Korea. It would make sense then, that Koreans generally do not use email (which, in most Korean's minds is for SPAM only) as a communication means.
What a dumb article. Email is hear to stay in one form or another for very basic reasons that make it different from IM. Each is suited to a different task. Email isn't well suited to saying things like "how did your day go" just like IM chat isn't well suited towards critiquing a paper. Really what this article is about is how email was being used for quick forms of communication where it really was never very well suited.
Email is a medium best suited to explaining large topics where you need to compose and edit a message. That does tend to be more formal communication. Really it's an inherently different way to communicate because you get to compose a message rather than have a conversation. IM is realtime conversation, whereas email is a form of writing.
I've had chat capability almost as long as email, probbably started somewhere around 1991. I actually do tend to use email to talk to people that are less tech savy, and IRC or IM to those that are more tech savy, so it's not just a Korean thing. The core reason for the tech-gap is because email caught on much quicker than chat because email doesn't require a constant on connection. With people having broadband connections that're always on more and more it's obvious why IM is becoming a more and more popular a form of communication. Most communication people do is the short "can you do blah" rather than "here's a long winded explanation of blah".
AccountKiller
I was thinking that this is about South Korea, whereas North Korea's primary means of domestic communication are still starvation and threats of summary execution.
There is a program for teens, $25 for unlimited SMSes for a month.
The cheating via SMS for university entrance exams was uncovered, and investigated. Teens in SK cannot live without the cell phone, especially SMS, that's the major communication device quick and easy.
They can send messages at the same speed as we type on keyboards.
I don't like the immediate interaction of IM for the same reason I don't like phones, cell or otherwise. I don't like people virtually popping in and demanding my attention no matter what I am doing. Most of my calls go to VM and when I tried IM I found that I left it set to 'away' most of the time.
If you need to get a hold of me, email is the fastest way. I check them every hour or so. I check the VM only 1-2 times a day. If only I could turn off the phone at work as well.
I'm in my early 20s, and have some major difficulties with IM. Some of my contacts are younger and do prefer IM for almost everything, but I get the sense that they are suffering from continual distractions. Some have admitted to me, jokingly, that they are "addicted to MSN". I think this isn't far from the truth.
An instant conversation is nice to have, but if you have ongoing conversations throughout the day you simply can not focus on your computer work!
People often think they are smarter than they actually are. I am willing to acknowledge that I don't have the mental capacity to seriously work on more than one thing at a time. I prefer the operation of email, since communications get queued up and will be answered at my convenience. Not only are they queued up (Jabber, ICQ does that too of course) but this is the expected mode of operation, so there is no etiquette problem with delays on the order of days before a reply.
Another thing is, most of my friends who are non-techies have given up on email because: spam, and junk from friends. Well, neither of these is really a problem: wonderful, free spam filtering systems exist that will reliably get rid of 99% of your spam, and simple self discipline (and being politely firm with your contacts) will prevent your inbox from becoming the destination for circulated crap.
If I want instant conversations, I pick up the phone or go outside. This is coming from a young guy who is plenty literate with computers! Besides, you can't reliably pick up cues from girls behind a keyboard.
I hate to say this but you can safely ignore anything Chosun Ilbo brags in their so-called 'tech' section. it's nothing but corporate PR stunt. IMHO ETNews is far more reliable source of tech news in Korea. (And yes, I'm a Korean)
How about plucking a feather from your pet goose, and starting a long love letter by scratching its inked tip on the surface of a ruguous sheet of yellowed paper instead?
Now _that's_ writing. Forget about emoticons, let your emotions flow instead.
It would be helpful to point out that everyone, everywhere, at ALL TIMES (no, i am not exagerrating) is within arm's reach of their mobile phone: on the subway, walking, in the car, meetings, in the hwajongshil, everywhere, always. The same does not hold true for what Koreans consider "email", where you sit down at your desk, open up Outlook, type a message, and send it off.
The other cultural thirk here is that Koreans, especially in Seoul, are very very demanding of instant answers to the slightest issue. As such, there is no taboo for answering your cell phone in the middle of a meeting (by contrast, this is as bad as farting in a meeting in Japan).
I will say that email is still used for "official" stuff: official sales responses, bids, inquiries, and for formal appointment arranging.
davejenkins.com |
We've blocked every IP block from Korea at the router level. The level of spam originating from their IP space is simply astronomical. Maybe if their telcos got their act together, more of their citizens who might want to contact people outside the country might be able to do so. Otherwise, I suspect the reason most people don't use e-mail is because it's completely unreliable due to spammers taking over their networks and being RBL'd.
(Kim Ki-hong, dama90@chosun.com )
In America, e-mail is more widely used because it has a longer history. It's been around since the beginning of the Internet, and e-mail was a much better method of communication during the dial-up era. If you're getting charged by the minute (which is what used to happen on dial-up), you want to download your e-mail, read it offline, compose replies (still offline), then connect to send them so that you're not getting charged for nothing. Even after broadband became more popular (and dial-up cheaper), e-mail remained popular because it was well established.
In Korea, Internet access exploded onto the scene with broadband access almost from the start. Imagine a situation where barely anybody uses the Internet, and then one day everybody's on a DSL or cable connection. Also imagine that these users have never been exposed to e-mail. Sure, some of them will use e-mail (especially in the academic circle), but most of the users will be drawn to the communications applications that are more interactive, less boring(?), and require more bandwidth. E-mail just has that much less of an established reputation in such a situation.
Another eason may be cultural. E-mail is time consuming (compared to cell phones or IM), and it is a much more private medium. Koreans are very impatient, and they are also a very community-oriented nation of people. E-mail just doesn't cut it for these types of people, since you never know how long it'll take to get a reply back. Message boards, blogs, IM, and cell phone conversations do, however, satisfy the need for instant communication and community-oriented communication.
Just my $0.02 (or roughly 20 won)...they'd better send us this fad as well.
Mal-2
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I'm living in Beijing, China and have a lot of friends from Korea (both North and South)
:)
What you have to remember is that in this part of the world, not everyone can afford a computer desktop, but even my maid has a mobile phone, with SMS messaging.
Another important factor is that young people don't always have a personal computer that is private from their parents, while their mobile phone is typically very private. Also, most younger people don't like to hang around the house, they are typically out meeting with friends in some youth oriented location. This is both personal preference and the fact that they want some privacy. So SMS get's really popular because you can always have your mobile phone around.
There are some political issues. Lots of people are more concerned that the gov't is checking emails servers for what is classified as subversive activity. Not that SMS is more secure, but I think that the gov't hasn't quite caught on to it yet, dispite what happened in the Philopeans a few years ago
Another thing is that SMS and IM are more interactive, and during that time of life you are working a lot to develop your interpersonal skills, so you want to spend a lot of time chatting.
Why not just call and talk? Well, typically SMS messagin is very cheap compared to talking on the phone. Actually when I first got to Beijing I really annoyed some people when I was calling them, because I was costing them a lot of money.
You can also type SMS with your hand hidden in a coat pocket or in a purse, which is something that a lot of younger people in class do. You can SMS your friends while sitting in class much more easily than calling them on the mobile.
When you get older and have your own apartment you don't mind spending so much time there because your parents are not peeking into your bedroom. So you will be more comfortable to use technologies like email with a desktop, that is tied to a single location. I don't worry that my parents will walk in and see me blowing kisses at my girlfriend when we talk online, for example.
But yeah, this can be a big generation gap. I run a couple of social groups that I use email mailing lists to organize, and several of the younger people in the group are always sending me SMS's because they don't read the emails. So I guess I will look into some sort of SMS to email gateway, since the whole point of having the mailing list is so that I don't spend too much time organizing the projects.
Anyway, just remember that tech is always evolving and that if you want to keep of the lines of comunication you need to stay on top of it.
Peace, or Not?
Which is rather than distinguishing by age, they really should consider it by social status. There are young people who don't like to be disturbed and find IM to be an annoying intrusion. This and SMS are more for people who like to gossip and need to feel like they're part of a group. That's not necessarily a measure of age.
I am sure that Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and some of the major cities in China have far, far better telecoms than anywhere on earth but I don't think this is a good measure.
Would anyone be surprised that SMS is more widely used than email.
Now I'm not a Korean, but I can say I gave up on email too.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, email was a valuable communication resource. I used to actually look forward to receiving email. I used to actually give my email to people, and I used to open emails from strangers. I used my real email on newsgroups. When I wrote a walkthrough for a game, I put both my email addresses at the time in it, so people can write me an email if they have questions. Some of them with attachments too, such as their saved game where they have problems or a screenshot.
But back then email was still usable, and spam was still in the range of maybe 1 spam email per week.
Nowadays, if anyone did that, especially the part about opening emails with attachments, you'd probably call them a stupid n00b.
And then the payback time came. Those email addresses I've used everywhere were hit by a tsunami of spam. I got a new email address and only told it to my family, friends and boss. It soon became flooded just the same.
Email has been plundered, raped and poluted by a bunch of idiot spammers, to the point of being useless. I'm no longer looking forward to emails. It's just not worth it any more. Yeah, I can install spam filters and whatnot, but even configuring and training those all the time is just not worth it any more.
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This isn't new. Around 1993/94 my school friends and I had CB radios, as phonecalls were charged by the minute in the UK local or not. When uni started in 95 we left our irc clients running. IM came along and I use it all the time.
The whole time though, for anything I want to pay serious attention to I'll use e-mail or the phone.
It's just kids wanting instant gratification, same as ever. Nothing has changed; rather they just have more toys to play with. Patience is a virtue.
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