While S Korea govt turned crisis into tech revolution PAP might turn crisis into social erosion, if they opt for the casino!
The future is South Korea
Tech firms try out latest in world's most wired society
Birgitta Forsberg, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 13, 2005
If you live in South Korea, it is an everyday reality to have always-
on superfast Internet -- broadband -- both in your cell phone and in
your home.
South Korea is the most wired country on the planet. Some South
Koreans can get up to 20 megabits of data per second -- breakneck
speed by today's standards. Americans are lucky if they get 4 Mbps.
While South Korea leads in the rollout of broadband, the United
States --
supposedly the world's technology leader -- comes in no better than
No. 13, according to experts. About 76 percent of households have
broadband in South Korea. The figure is 30 percent in the United
States.
Broadband widens the digital data pipeline to allow complicated
files, including pictures, graphics and video, to be downloaded at
near-instant speed. Experts consider the development of broadband
networks to be the single most important step for expanding digital
technology and bringing cutting-edge computer applications directly
into people's lives.
While broadband is usually associated with computers, wireless phones
are also an important part of the picture. Here the situation is
similar to computers. Some 75 percent of South Koreans have a mobile
phone, compared with 60 percent of Americans. And South Koreans
generally do more and cooler things with their phones.
"There is no point in Korea where you can stand without receiving a
signal," said Joy King, director of industry marketing at Hewlett-
Packard. "In the U.S., we are still at the 'can-you-hear-me-now'
level. When Europe and Asia are moving to multimedia text messaging,
the U.S. has just started text messages. The U.S. is a Third World
country in this aspect."
Silicon Valley used to be hailed as the world's high-tech capital.
Now many consider South Korea the king.
"From my perspective, Silicon Valley does not have that role. The
lead is in Asia, in Korea and Japan, no question," King said.
South Korea has managed to leapfrog the United States in both
broadband and mobile phone usage thanks to a population density that
makes connectivity easier and government policies that promote
development. South Korea also has a culture where people are crazy
about playing online games and don't go home after work. Instead,
they go to dinner, to karaoke or to a bar -- all the while using
their mobile phones.
U.S. technology leaders are sounding the alarm that the nation is
falling dangerously behind in broad areas of digital innovation,
including broadband.
Last week, technology executives affiliated with the lobbying group
TechNet traveled to Washington to press for government policies that
would promote broadband development.
The U.S. information superhighway has turned into a "bumpy, two-lane
country road" compared with broadband development in other countries,
the group said.
Future is now in South Korea
As Silicon Valley's biggest corporations complain about the relative
backward state of broadband in this country, they are rushing to
South Korea to see if their products pass muster with some of the
world's most demanding technology customers.
Silicon Valley companies view South Korea as a sort of time machine
when testing broadband applications, a place where they can get a
glimpse of what Americans will use in the future.
Samsung, the giant South Korean electronics company, tests its new
products in Korea first for six to eight months. "It collects
feedback from customers (to) remodel and fix things before
introducing the products worldwide," said Jong Kap Kim, executive
director of South Korea's iPark Silicon Valley. "And several U.S.
companies are doing the same."
Microsoft brought MSN Mobile, which enables instant messaging on
mobile phones, to South Korea two years ago. It introduced the
service in the United States six months later.
"It's still much more popular in Korea," said Brooke Richardson, MSN
lead product manager. "It's not only that the U.S. is not so advanced
in broadband. Mobile phone usage is not so high here either. MSN is
bridging the two worlds of PCs and mobile phones, and Korea has that
connectivity. We have incubated some of our stuff in Korea, like
mobile instant messaging and mobile e-mail. We have also launched
services there that the rest of the world was not ready for."
For example, with MSN Messenger, Koreans use avatars, a cartoon that
represents them online. When your friends see your avatar, they know
you're online and instant messaging.
"Basically, customers in Korea buy a virtual person. For a small fee,
they can buy clothes, shoes and purses for it," Richardson said.
Crisis turned tech revolution
South Korea's success story began when the country was hit by a
financial crisis in 1997 and 1998.
"At that time, the Korean government turned to the high-tech industry
as a solution to overcome the crisis. Broadband was a new market with
new demand for modems, routers, servers, computers, a new
infrastructure. It caused a lot of activity and created many jobs,"
iPark Silicon Valley's Kim said.
The South Korean government ensured competition by ending state-owned
Korea Telecom's monopoly. The government spent billions of dollars
building a fiber grid, reaching schools and government buildings, and
offered another billion in financial incentives to phone companies
that strung broadband links to homes. Tough competition drove prices
down, demand surged and the country was on a roll.
South Korea is also a small country where 30 percent of its 48.6
million inhabitants live in the three main cities -- and most of them
in dense apartment blocks.
"It's unbelievable dense," said Ward Hanson, a research fellow at the
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research who recently returned
from a visit to South Korea.
"When you drive in to Seoul along the Han River you see thousands of
high- rise buildings, 20 to 30 stories high. It's much like Manhattan
in New York, but even denser than that."
And it is much cheaper and much easier to wire an apartment building
than a typically spread-out U.S. city and its suburbs, not to mention
the nation's vast rural areas.
Experts also point to computer games as a crucial catalyst for
Korea's explosive broadband growth.
"Until very recently, Korea strictly limited impact of Japanese
culture, remembering the colonial Japan, and prohibited videos,
movies, video games and PlayStations from Japan," Hanson
said. "Koreans therefore played PC games and a whole industry with
game parlors grew. Now there are more than 100,000. And if you
competed with somebody who had broadband, you were killed."
Why U.S. lags in broadband
President Bush has said all Americans should have access to broadband
by 2007. To reach that goal, he has promised to remove bureaucratic
obstacles. But, unlike the Korean government, his administration is
not pumping money into the market.
HP's King cites several reasons for slow broadband
development. "North America is lagging because first of all it didn't
have one underlying standard, " she said. "Secondly (it's lagging)
because the government has not really invested directly in
infrastructure. "
And, because Americans go home after work, "the lifestyle doesn't
create as much demand for certain services," she noted.
Hanson said he doubts that the United States will reach its broadband
goals by 2007.
"In Korea, competition has been a driving force. In the U.S., you
often only have one cable company, and the company is not forced to
upgrade its speed," he said. "I have had DSL for three years and I
have never been approached about an upgrade. In Korea, you can even
watch television on DSL.
"What we have now is good for print, but multimedia is very
challenging. We haven't invested in infrastructure the way other
countries have. If you have very high speed, the whole system
upgrades around that, you get applications for it, and congestions
and bugs get fixed," Hanson said.
South Korea goes Wi-Bro
Right now South Korea is changing over to wireless broadband, Wi-Bro,
and it will also have digital multimedia broadcasting.
"While I drive my car, I can enjoy my cellular phone that broadcasts
over the Internet while I simultaneously have Yahoo map service up,"
Kim said. "I can just switch between the two. The tests are already
done, companies will start selling these applications around
midyear."
The Korean government has a strategy designed to push the nation into
the next generation of broadband applications.
It calls for the introduction of eight new services, one of them Wi-
Bro, which will require building three networks. That infrastructure,
in turn, will pave the way for nine fast-growing technologies, such
as digital TV and multimedia broadcasting. The program aims to help
raise Korean gross domestic product to $20,000 per capita from
$12,600 in 2003, the latest available figure. In the United States,
GDP per capita was $40,000 in 2004.
One of South Korea's nine new technology sectors is a computerized
appliance, called a ubiquitous robotic companion, which you could
carry with you to connect to the Internet wherever you are.
Whether or not these applications will be popular, it is clear that
South Korea has created an environment where technology development
is very fast.
And the South Koreans are using their domestic market as a stepping
stone into the world. Korea's information technology sector accounted
for exports of $75 billion in 2004.
South Korean company SK Telecom supports rollouts of wireless
broadband services in other Asian countries. "We are also expanding
our experience to the U.S.," said SK Telecom Vice President Wonhee
Sull, citing a joint venture with Internet service provider EarthLink
in Atlanta.
While South Korea has focused on consumer products, HP's King said
she sees an opportunity for the United States in business tools.
"The U.S. may be able to regain its footing as a leader in offering
services to enterprises. This goes nicely with the U.S. focus on
capitalism and business," she said.
i think in 50 yrs time the biggest powers in the world will be
