Why South Korea Is Shackled To Windows

baron writes with a blog post explaining in detail why 99.9% of S. Korea uses Windows. This amazing tale began in 1998 when Korea decided it couldn't wait for SSL to be standardized (which it was in 1999) and commissioned an ActiveX control for secure Web transactions. At first there was a secure Netscape plugin too, but we know how that story ended. Quoting: "This nation is a place where Apple Macintosh users cannot bank online, make any purchases online, or interact with any of the nation's e-government sites online. In fact, Linux users, Mozilla Firefox users, and Opera users are also banned from any of these types of transactions..." Now that Microsoft has made ActiveX more secure in Vista, every Web site in S. Korea is scrambling to get things working again and the government is advising citizens not to install Vista. At the end of all this work, they will still be a monoculture in thrall to Microsoft, with millions of users sitting behind some of the fattest pipes in the world.

Comments

wait?

[Tom]

This amazing tale began in 1998 when Korea decided it couldn't wait for SSL to be standardized (which it was in 1999) and commissioned an ActiveX control for secure Web transactions. Has anyone ever investigate which backroom dealings resulted in this decision? Decisions like this, with a multi-billion profit guarantee to a specific vendor, aren't made for technical merit. If you really believe that neither MS nor someone else with stakes in it (maybe some reseller?) was involved, I have a few bridges for sale...

TCO Study?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Anyone? I'd love to see a widescale analysis of how much vendor lockin actually costs. When it's this bad I imagine it's disastrous

Korean _WEBSITES_ SUCKKKKK!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

daum.net is 40KB of html (with all CSS and javascript inline) compressed. It uncompresses to over 150KB ppv, absolutely unbelievable. That web team are way beyond the reach of the almighty clue bat; they need shooting.

Re:This is MS's fault how?

[michaelvkim]

There is no reason the Korean community can't develop a plug-in for other systems. Contrary to what this article is trying to say, there simply is no reason to develop a plug-in for other systems.
You need to understand the Korean mentality. It wouldn't have mattered if the government made Active-X the standard, or if they outlawed it completely. Hell, it wouldn't have mattered if the government didn't do anything. This would've happened regardless. The reason is that unlike in America where it's cool to be different and unique, the Korean mentality is to be as homogeneous as possible. Anybody "weird" is singled out and alienated. This mindset is embedded in their society, culture, personal and professional lives, and everything else they do.
The mere fact MS bundles IE with XP pretty much ENSURED that IE would be used by the vast majority of users in Korea.
Even if standards were opened to allow Firefox, Safari, or Opera access to everything online, I will bet that IE will still have 99.9% of the market. Simply because it's what everybody else is using.

uh?

[waspleg]

this is a country where one of the most popular sports is watching people play online games, a quick search for korean gamer scored 1.2 million hits with a number of articles talking about south korea as the gaming capital of the world.

maybe this has something to do with a fervent windows dedication? linux games are still limted to cedega, and no one wants to pay for play, although some people don't care, like my friend who pays their dev fee on top of his WoW subscription; i guess it depends on your disposable income.

what i'm saying is maybe ActiveX isn't the only factor here, maybe DirectX is a big (bigger?) one.

waspleg

this is a perfect indicator

[JustNiz]

as to the problem that would quickly happen to the rest of the world too if it weren't for OpenSource and GNU/Linux, and the EU fighting Microsoft.

Shackled? And this has hurt them how?

[LaughingCoder]

This amazing tale began in 1998 when Korea decided it couldn't wait for SSL to be standardized (which it was in 1999) and commissioned an ActiveX control for secure Web transactions.

According to Wikipedia, South Korea's economy began a miraculous recovery starting in 1998. They enjoyed 10% growth in 1999 and 9% in 2000. Growth continued, though at a slightly slower (but very respectable) 6% after that. And interestingly, the major driver of that growth is in the service industry - the very segment of the economy that relies on Windows. Could it be that having Windows as a monolithic IT infrastructure is/was a key driver of that economic growth? Most developed nations would *love* to be shackled to growth like that.

Re:Shackled? And this has hurt them how?

[Shaper_pmp]

Indeed. And look where it got them - massive costs to update their entire online commerce infrastructure overnight, or be effectively locked out of the entire future of the single overwhelmingly dominant computing platform.

And if they make the same mistake again and just retool for Vista/IE7 instead of migrating to open standards, another huge up-front cost when those proprietary formats and "standards" go the way proprietary formats always do.

It's kind of like taking massive amounts of coke - sure, your mate might be happier and more lively and more fun to be around, but in five years' time he's likely to be a paranoid, abusive down-and-out without even a septum to his name.

What benefits, eh?

It is worse elsewhere, almost ...

[kbahey]

South Korea is one country that shares a language with only one other country (North Korea).

The matter is worse in other parts of the world where many more were affected.

A while ago, I wrote about Microsoft and Arabization and the issue of browser independence.

Remember that there are about 300 million native Arabic speakers, and it is the 5th language or so worldwide, spread over 20+ countries. Not to mention the many others who read or speak Arabic as a second language.

In the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft entrenched itself in the Arabic internet market. Most sites were just unusable form anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Since MS IE does not adhere to standards, and it became the dominant browser by the early 2000s, this monopoly further entrenched Microsoft as the sole technology provider for web sites in the Middle East.

Speaking to a developer at a fairly large company about it, he said : "forget Mac and Linux, we say the application requires Microsoft IE 5 [at the time]". I was flabbergasted by that attitude.

Not only is he mandating a certain browser, but an entire operating system and hardware architecture! And that went unchallenged.

Fortunately, things started to improve over the last year or two, with FireFox gaining ground, and there is no single government forcing a monoculture via banking security or something like that. Sites that used not to work (including Al Jazeera Arabic web site) are usable once more, perhaps with a few glitches here and there.

Still, most people use Hotmail for their email, and MSN for chat (voice and text). It may take time, but I hope the spread of FireFox, Mac OS/X and to a lesser extent Linux will continue to keep web site developers cross platform, and never force the monoculture that was prevalent up until a few years ago.

Re:The Anti-Massachusetts

[hey!]

Boston: 42 22' N 71 2' W

Seoul: 37 34' N 126 58' E

Which explains a lot; 126 58' E - 71 2' W = 198 00'.

In other words, we're practically 180 apart.