Futurize Korea

News Roundup

FuturizeKorea — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:36:19 +0900

LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics had their mobile television technology adopted by the Advanced Television Standards Committee:

The international non-profit organization develops standards for digital television transmission, and it has been working on mobile broadcasting since May 2007. The organization selected a technology that uses the same standard as LG’s terrestrial digital television VSB and Samsung’s Advanced-VSB.

The JoongAng Daily has a summary of some changes by the major Korean portals to their search engines:

This month, on its portal Nate, SK Communications introduced a semantic search system, which uses networks of relationships between terms - rather than simply on the number of times a term appears or the number of hits a certain site receives - to determine the intention of the user and generate accurate results.

Korea is also expanding their use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to stop counterfeit liquor sales:

The National Tax Service will use more radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to detect counterfeit liquor from Thursday to include 1,045 bars in Seoul's Gangnam district and 150 liquor wholesalers who deal with them.

The campaign targets a total of 2 million bottles of liquor including Diageo Korea's 12- and 17-year-old Windsor whisky, Pernod Ricard Korea's 12- and 17-year-old Imperial whisky, and Lotte Chilsung Beverages' 12- and 17-year-old Scotch Blue whisky.

Futurize Korea: Korea develops RFID system to battle counterfeit whiskey sales (December 2, 2008)

North Korean website firewall easily bypassed

FuturizeKorea — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:12:09 +0900

A lawmaker from the ruling Grand National Party highlighted the obvious when he showed how it is relatively simple for users in South Korean to access sites blocked by the South Korean government:

He said the law "stipulates that access to pro-North Korean websites whose contents run counter to the National Security Law could be banned. Under these laws, access to about 50 [North Korean] websites has been banned by police and the Korea Communications Commission. But the reality shows that the ban is ineffective."

In 2003-2004, North Korea declared a plan to strengthen contact with South Korea through the Internet. As controversy heated up in South Korea, Seoul in November 2004 blocked major North Korean websites.

The Korean government also uses the filters to block to restrict access to pornography, gambling and other restricted sites using the 2001 “Internet Content Filtering Ordinance” requiring Internet service providers to block restricted websites. In July, websites determined to be distributing malware in the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks were also blocked by the Korean Government.

CNN: Seoul blocks beheading video (June 25, 2004)

The Guardian: South Korea wants to gag the noisy internet rabble (October 8, 2008)

OpenNet Initiative: South Korea

Akamai State of the Internet, 2Q 2009

FuturizeKorea — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:13:57 +0900

Akamai’s State of the Internet report had Korea ranked first for broadband connection speeds at an average of 11Mbps while also ranking third in a list of originating countries for malware and other Internet based attacks.

News.Com: 'State of the Internet' assessed

Akamai Press Release: Akamai Announces Second Quarter 2009 State of the Internet Report

Another recently released study also had Japan, Korea and Sweden with the most advanced broadband connections in the world:

The performance of broadband Internet connections has surged ahead in many countries in the last year, even before government stimulus packages aimed at upgrading networks take full effect, according to a study to be published Thursday.

The most advanced broadband connections are in South Korea, Japan and Sweden, according to the study, conducted by the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the University of Oviedo in Spain, and sponsored by Cisco Systems, the telecommunications equipment maker.

News Roundup

FuturizeKorea — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:34:35 +0900

Korean MP3 and PMP device maker iriver recently unveiled a new e-book reader called Story for the Korean market:

iRiver’s eBook reader Story has been sold out. Also, it is receiving a series of inquiries from buyers around the world.
iRiver said on September 28 that it has sold out its initial stock of 2,000 units of Story, a newly developed eBook reader, in just two days since it began the preorder sales.

Telecom regulators are forcing Korean mobile phone operators to lower rates for subscribers:

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Sunday that subscribers will be able to save an aggregate 1.5 trillion won (about $1.3 billion) next year, equal to 7 to 8 percent of the combined sales of the operators ― SK Telecom, KT and LG Telecom.

Microsoft announced new funding support for Korean game developers:

U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. has disclosed a plan to invest 23 billion won ($19.2 million) over the next four years to support Korean game developers, a government agency said yesterday.

According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, Microsoft will provide at least 25 game development firms with technological and marketing support. It will also educate and train developers and help set up new business entities, and assist in their overseas advancement.

Korea.net: Microsoft Korea plans to support local game development (May 6, 2008)

The growing community of Korean Twitter users recently held an offline networking event:

The social networking service that launched in the United States is rapidly gaining traction in Korea as more users here catch on to the benefits of broadcasting in lines of 140 characters each. And like its U.S. counterpart, Twitter Korea is moving beyond social networking and into job hunting, marketing and other functions.

Hyundai, Kia equipped WiBro cars by 2012

FuturizeKorea — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:56 +0900

With navigation systems already supporting WiBro, Hyundai and Kia recently announced a deal with KT that will see WiBro connectivity for navigation and other services:

The new "WiBro" feature provided by KT's WiBro service will allow drivers to have high-speed access to a variety of services, including traffic updates, route assistance, weather forecasts and entertainment activities.

"Amid the industry's convergence moves, putting information technology to consumer electronics-related products has become an essential for the technology of future cars. Such technological collaboration mainly focuses on passenger safety and building solid customer relations," according to the company spokesman.

Futurize Korea: WiBro enabled car navigation systems (June 4, 2009)

Korea IT Times: KT and SK Telecom Struck by Smooth Competition (July 7, 2009)

KT also unveiled a new WiBro network for Hyundai Heavy Industries last month at their shipyard in Ulsan:

The service allows workers on the 59.4-million square-meter site to exchange voice, video and data with mobile devices. KT expected its service to enhance productivity of the world's top shipbuilder by allowing real-time tasking not only at the office but also at the shipyard field. This was the first time for a shipyard to adopt WiBro technology.

Telecoms Korea: Hyundai Heavy to Embrace Mobile WiMAX (April 29, 2009)

Vietnam Marine Social Network: Hyundai adopts WiBro (April 29, 2009)

Korean golfers hitting the virtual links

FuturizeKorea — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:55:27 +0900

CNN recently looked at the booming business with “screen golf” cafes becoming a popular alternative for Korean golfers:

There are an estimated 3.5 million golfers in South Korea but many of them have never seen an 18-hole course out in the open.

Their game lives in the virtual world - forced indoors because most of the 260 golf courses in South Korea are expensive and oversubscribed.

A round of virtual golf will cost between $20 to $30 and the format has seen a proliferation of users - just over five years ago there were 300 golf cafes but now there are over 3,000 operating some 12,000 simulators.

The screen golf cafes are also tied into online communities like Golfzon to provide virtual golf leagues and contests.

Business Week: Virtual Reality Golf Takes Off in Korea (October 27, 2008)

New York Times: Virtual-reality golf is a winner in South Korea (June 9, 2008)

ABC News: South Koreans Prefer Golf Cafes to Courses with video (July 5, 2008)

Popularity of Korean online education sites

FuturizeKorea — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:58:39 +0900

The New York Times profiled how Korean online education sites have grown into some of the largest technology companies in South Korea:

About 2.8 million students, including approximately half of all college-bound high school seniors, are members of Megastudy, which allows them access to some of the country’s most celebrated exam tutors. For a fraction of what they would pay at traditional private “cram schools,” students can watch video-on-demand tutorials on home computers or download them into hand-held devices for viewing in the subway or parks. They can skip or fast-forward through some parts of a lecture and bookmark or repeat the rest.

Online education sites also got a boost when the Korean government announced plans to limit the operating hours of cram schools:

Market watchers point out that the Korea-specific phenomenon ― if the government tries to reduce private education costs in one area, the money will flow into another segment ― will offer a windfall to the country's education companies that have already chalked up fast growth over the past few years.

Korean government to deploy cyber sheriffs

FuturizeKorea — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:06:36 +0900

As part of a new cyber security plan, Korea will hire 3,000 computer security experts to help battle computer based crime:

The project is part of the Lee Myung-bak administration's comprehensive cyber-security measures, which were finalized after a government-wide meeting Friday to prevent online attacks in the future, according to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).

The 3,000-strong cyber police force will be deployed full-time to detect any potential threats and minimize damage should there be another attempt to bring down local Web sites, it said.

Government looks to enforce PC security

FuturizeKorea — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:48:00 +0900

The Korean government has responded to the distributed denial of service attacks this July by including rules that would require Internet service providers to enforce customers maintaining security software on their computers:

Exposed as defenseless against the powerful Internet attack that crippled scores of South Korean computers in July, the government has been considering more ways to strengthen the online security requirements for both individuals and companies.

However, it has now been revealed that the plans include blocking the Internet access of computer users failing to equip their devices with proper security programs, triggering a debate about whether policymakers are going over-the-top.

Korean government agencies have also started to release survey of the effectiveness of anti-virus software:

Around two-thirds of the locally-made anti-virus programs sold during the first half of this year failed to pick up malicious computer codes, according to a survey conducted by the Korea Communications Commission and the National Internet Development Agency of Korea.

Despite the so-called “denial-of-service” attacks last month that paralyzed major Web sites here, 84 local anti-virus programs out of the 134 surveyed failed to detect a single malicious code from the 1,500 online samples tested.

News Roundup

FuturizeKorea — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:44:48 +0900

An affiliate company of the SK Group, SK Marketing & Company, has launched a new product review site called iprosumer for blogger reviews:

The Web site may find little trouble in sourcing content, as a growing number of companies, looking to benefit from word-of-mouth endorsement, are handing out their products to popular bloggers and other willing consumers in exchange for online exposure.

Korea’s mobile phone operators are under pressure from the government to lower their mobile phone rates:

Surveys conducted by the Korea Consumer Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development say Korea’s cell phone rates are the world’s highest. In the wake of media coverage of this news, telecommunications providers are claiming that the survey methods employed the agency and association are misleading.

Mobile phone companies may end up responding by ending their subsidies when purchasing a new phone.

Korea Times: How Much Will Telecom Rates Go Down? (June 25, 2007)

Not surprisingly, an industry research institute run by telecom company KT suggested the statistics showed Korea already had low mobile phone rates:

KT officials explained that the United States and South Korea are the world's top mobile users and the reason is thanks to cheap prices. Per minute costs are so low that users dial their cell phones even when they're home, they said.