South Korea is the most connected, high-speed Internet country in the world -- and the technology is having a broad impact on society, providing hints of what may come in North America as speeds and use increase.
"Advancements in information-technology have changed the way [South] Koreans work and live, with the Internet embedded among the infrastructure of business, society and culture," wrote Kim Sa-hyuk, a senior researcher at the Korea Information Strategy Development Institute, in an August report.
Almost three of every four South Korean households had a high-speed Internet connection at the end of 2003, according to a June report by Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. That's double the No. 2 country, Canada, with 37 per cent of households, and more than three times the United States, with 23 per cent.
"Korea," Merrill analyst Glen Campbell said, "leads the broadband world."
The ubiquity of the Internet has touched most sides of society, from helping businesses become more efficient to the emergence of a massive on-line gaming culture, the country's biggest Internet trend. The Internet has also made an impact on politics. In the 2002 presidential election, left-wing candidate Roh Moo-hyun swept to a narrow, unexpected victory, bolstered by support generated on-line. On election day, supporters of Mr. Roh sent e-mails to 800,000 peoples' mobile phones, urging them to vote. The call went out early on, when Mr. Roh was behind, according to exit polls, and helped turned the tide.
"There's a lot to learn from looking over Korea's shoulder and seeing how they're using it," said Iain Grant of SeaBoard Group, a Montreal-based consultancy.
Instant messaging on-line, which is growing in popularity in North America, has become a primary mode of communication for post-secondary students, according to SeaBoard Group. In 2003, 56 per cent of South Korean students used instant messaging for more than half an hour each day.
Other segments of society, such as small businesses, are highly connected, as well. With government encouragement and financial help, many small businesses conduct work such as inventory management and billing on-line. With speedy connections, emerging tools to collaborate with customers or co-workers by videoconference are catching on too.
How did South Korea become the world's IP leader?
The government was behind the principal push in the past half decade or so to move the country forward in Internet usage, helped by strong competition in the market.
First, the country is densely populated, with the bulk of people living in large cities, and many of those in apartment buildings. Such countries are relatively easy to wire, compared with a country such as Canada, where people generally live in standalone homes and the country itself is much larger.
Because people in South Korea mostly live near a network hub, the speeds at which they can connect are much higher than North America. The standard speed now is three megabits per second -- about the same as Canada and the U.S. -- but the quickly emerging standard is 20 megabits. That's six times better than here, where cable TV and phone companies are busy improving their networks.
Internet usage has spread well beyond peoples' homes and offices in South Korea. And beyond the desktop computer, technology usage and high-speed data connections are commonplace. KT Corp., the former state telecom monopoly, has deployed thousands of WiFi hot spots, which provide high-speed Internet access wirelessly at short ranges.
The biggest trend to emerge from the ubiquity of high-speed Internet is on-line gaming, particularly interactive multiplayer games. These games can come in many forms, such as strategy-fantasy or straightforward action.
Gaming is so big that winners of competitions are treated like sports celebrities and several cable television channels are devoted solely to broadcasting gaming.
"It's become part of their lives," said Agatha Poon, an analyst at Yankee Group, the consultancy based in Boston. "People get used to these types of channels to communicate with their peers."
But there's a dark side, as well -- Internet addiction is a problem, particularly among young people. In one strange case, a 24-year-old man died playing computer games for 3½ days in a row in a PC b aang, as Internet cafés are known. A survey this year cited by the Korea Herald indicated that almost half of the 582 students that responded considered themselves addicted to the Internet.
The government created the Centre for Internet Addiction and Counselling in 2002 to deal with the problem and, in June, it co-ordinated a countrywide campaign to encourage healthier Internet use.
Mobile phones are also huge. SeaBoard Group estimated that every student in South Korea owned a mobile phone by the end of 2003 and that 70 per cent of the general populace of about 50-million had one. In Canada, the figure for the country as a whole is approaching one in two.
The phones are being used for all sorts of applications, including serving as a credit card and as a console to view video-on-demand. Speed of the connection is a key, again.
South Koreans can get wireless data at around two megabits a second, roughly the same as a fixed connection in Canada and about 20 times faster on a domestic mobile network.
