Thursday, November 19, 2009

What was wrong with ifriendly.kr?

A couple days ago the government rolled out a website, ifriendly.kr, aimed at helping foreigners register with Korean websites, an oft-mentioned obstacle. I did a short write-up on Tuesday, focusing on how the English was atrocious, confusing, and about as unhelpful as you can get. I've had to go back and switch everything in my first draft of this post to past tense, though, because the English page is now gone and under construction, as are the Japanese and Chinese versions.

The awful English wasn't the only problem, though, and going through all the comments really reaffirms that we have another case of something ostensibly aimed at foreigners but created without consulting them at all. For instance, there was limited accessibility among those not using Internet Explorer, a flaw common among Korean websites, though people are at least aware of this deficiency.
Starting 2011, all of the 150 e-government Web sites are expected to be accessible from any browser.

The development is expected to be useful for overseas Koreans or foreigners logging on to Web sites such as www.hikorea.go.kr from aboard through alternate browsers. Operated by the Ministry of Justice, the Web site is a comprehensive online repository of information for oversea Koreans, immigrants and foreign nationals.

You might have anticipated such problems from ifriendly.kr since the page ripped off the Internet Explorer logo:



I don't know how common those other browsers are among Korean users, but looking through my Sitemeter stats---which only tracks the last 100 visitors---I can see that they're popular among people on my site. And looking at my Google Analytics page for the month October 19 - November 18, I can see that the majority of my 42,845 visits were by people not using Internet Explorer.



I'm an IE user, and my own visits to the site are, perhaps unfairly, counted among those numbers. But when looking at that 35%, consider that a lot of my visitors come between 8:00 and 5:00, when people are at work in Korea and, when using computers other than their own, have no choice but to use IE.

The page also relies on Flash, which not only doesn't work on some computers---I couldn't open the page at school---but prevents people from running the Korean text through an online translator. This is useful for when there is only a Korean-language version of a page, or when the Korean-language version is, as is always the case, more useful than the English one.

I'll reiterate that the English was among the worst I've ever seen on a Korean webpage. While I'm usually patient and tolerant with learners of English, that this is on a page created by the government to help foreigners, the arrogance of not deigning to check with a native speaker and carelessness required to get it so wrong cannot be excused. Here are a few examples:
"Internet guide of identical person acknowledgement on alien in Korea"


"Alien in Korea can confirm identical person through Internet easily with alien registration or passport."


"Making Republic of Korea
where communication is available by digital"


"'Identical person acknowledgement'is
to confirm identical person on the Internet
in order to settle using culture of sound internet"


"Citizens staying in
a foreign country
who are residing in Korea"


"Does identical person
acknowledgement not work?
try to confirm the followings!"

I knew what the "identical person acknowledgement" was referring to, since I know that many Korean sites require visitors to input their citizen ID numbers, and that more often than not foreigners' alien registration card numbers will not work. However, right off the bat there was a translation fail; from commenter Ryan G.:
When I asked my wife to help translate the Korean version of this website, they translated "poninhwagin" (I don't know how to type Korean in this comment box) to the English word "identical", instead of what it's supposed to mean: "identify", now it makes more sense to me.

The website is not talking about identical foreigners having trouble accessing Korean websites, but on how a foreigner must identify themselves to a Korean website.

That is simply ONE BIG FAIL. The atrocious mistake of using a key incorrect word completely changes the tone of the website.

This isn't new. Just last month I looked at the campaign "Visit Korea Year: 2010-2012," which besides carrying a ridiculous title, was aimed at foreign tourists but written entirely in Korean, and was inaccessible to many foreign visitors for that and other reasons. Here's what Chris in South Korea thought was how not to make a tourist website, rules broken by the Visit Korea website (which has since announced the foreign-language versions will be available next January):
Don't use a slow-loading interactive-looking-but-really-not-interactive graphic.

Don't use English without consulting an English speaker. Some words just don't go together - "Green & Human"? "City & Style" is marginally acceptable, but "Blue Ocean towards the World"? I'm not even off the home page yet (pictured above).

Don't use an English word / phrase to describe something, then link to an all-Korean page. The 'Sitemap' and 'Quick Menu' buttons are guilty of this. The language you see should be an indication of the language you'll see on the next page.

Don't use popups. They're annoying. Period. Heck, most internet-savvy people use a pop-up blocker for that very reason - meaning they never saw the pop-up about your English brochure. That there's no other way to access this English brochure is another strike.

Don't use popups that popup everytime you access / go back to the main page. They're doubly annoying. Korea Times, I'm looking at you too!

Don't use a language if it can't be translated by to a computer translation program (e.g. Google Translate, Babelfish) - pictures and Flash animations aren't recognized by these programs.

Don't link to a Korean page without some kind of warning. You're showing you either A: don't understand your audience, B: haven't recognized that there are other languages in the world, or C: haven't taken a break from your computer to peek out at the real world.

Don't forget that a fair percentage of computer users have a browser other than Internet Explorer. As a result, certain pages or page elements may be unviewable at worst, or not display correctly. Anecdotally speaking, these are the people most likely to try new things and get off the beaten path - the sort of thing you're encouraging people to do.

Don't take too long to get to your point / message / the good stuff. Nielsen says the average internet user may spend 68 hours a month online, but they'll only spend a matter of seconds looking on a given page for their topic.

Don't forget to run English by an English editor. It may not be Konglish, but it's still worth checking for meaning / comprehension. An example (from the brochure you can download in the pop-up you may or may not see): "Unlike previous Visit Korea years, which were one-year affairs, 2010—2012 Visit Korea Year will be promoted for three full years."

Finally, don't bother with 'intro' videos, no matter how flashy you can make them. We don't care.

Here are a few comments to my first post on ifriendly.kr, to give an early overview of user opinion to people who don't often check posts' comment sections.

Douglas wrote:
I've come to the conclusion that only vicious mockery will force these idiots to hire English speaking proofreaders; Korean or barbarian, it doesn't matter. As long as it gets these 750 point toefl idiots from using a translation program to process the text that was written first in Korean.

from holterbarbour:
I saw a link to this on the koreagov twitter and looked at the site. What a disgrace. I sent a letter to the editor of the Korea Herald about this campaign backfiring due to a) the persistent firefox/IE issues, and b) the sad, sad English wording. I should have also raised the prospect that they were improperly coopting the IE trademark, as obvious as it is on the front page, but I didn't feel like looking up the trademark statutes to get all cite-crazy.

from letsbook:
I saw this today too... I have come to the conclusion that this country doesn't want to learn English anymore. People here seem far too set in their ways and self-confident in their shitty English... Just walking in Han River Park near Yeouido and looking at the new colour signs there tells me that.

from Ryan G.:
I like to rip on about the bad use of English as much as the next person (and boy does this website have a GOLDMINE of terrible grammar). But as this website is indeed directed at us, as well as having a laugh at it, make your concerns known to the groups responsible or nothing will change. I made an email complaint to one of the organisations involved though this address:
webmaster@kait.or.kr

I would request that you all do the same, even if it's just a short email. The quicker they realise that this type of gibberish does not make sense, and the fact that they really need to get these websites WC3 compliant (as in compatible with Firefox), the better it will be for all of us.

from golden zephyr:
Wow. The lack of 'actual' English continues to astonish me... and maybe the "e" of IE won't be considered fraudulent by Microsoft if the surrounding English doesn't make sense... lol

from kushibo:
Ryan G. and I seem to be on the same page: If you want to see this changed you will probably have to contact the people who can change it.

from Zach:
Another Korean internet fail. Aside from bad grammar and confusing site structures, I hate how the majority (if not all) websites are designed for IE and Activex apps. I wish there was more support for other browsers to work with Korean webpages.

Chris in South Korea wrote:
By the way, has anyone visited http://visitkoreayear.com lately? It's actually gotten WORSE, if you can believe it. English has almost completely disappeared; if your computer doesn't have support for Korean characters (as the average non-Korean computer), it'll display nothing that endless rows of boxes.

Craig wrote:
Anyone have any idea how to register your alien registration info if it's not in their database? I've tried to signup for numerous sites, phoned the authority of this (can't remember the name now) they told me it was only for Koreans!! I was like are you sure? Argued with him for a bit and hung up. Would really like to signup to some sites, but never get very far before getting frustrated and giving up.

And Ryan G. again:
Craig: and that's the sad thing about this entire situation. This website is supposed to hold all the information you need to access those Korean websites. But if it can't convey that information to us (foreigners) then it highlights the utter failure of the point of the whole website, and basically amounts to a waste of time and money.

Stay tuned to the earlier post for more. Those in charge of creating products and services aimed at foreigners need to start consulting their target audience, if in fact their true aim is not simply to give the appearance of caring about foreigners. It's become very clear that Koreans must not use English for public consumption without consulting with native speaker proofreaders first. They've proven it doesn't work. But my issue isn't chiefly with the thoughtless Gibberlish---I don't want to get emails about how I must be patient with students---and indeed I recognize how hard it is to use a foreign language well. My issue is this is yet another example of creating a service targetting foreigners and English-speakers without consulting with foreigners and English-speakers first. Whether it's pride, laziness, ignorance, or indifference, I don't know, but it needs to stop.

31 comments:

holterbarbour said...

I'm always flattered when you quote me in a Korea Herald or Joongang Ilbo article or your own page...but I'm holterbarbour, not hotlerbarbour. How can I ever dream of fame with this unsurmountable obstacle before me? :)

Brian said...

Ooops, fixed. Did I ever make that mistake in the Joongang Ilbo?

holterbarbour said...

I remember being quoted twice, and I think it was the same in both articles...but let's be honest: being called "hotler" instead of "holter" is not like being called "Brain" instead of "Brian" :)

Stephen Beckett said...

The whole IE / Firefox compatibility issue is a serious black eye for Korea. This is a nation that invested heavily in broadband roll-out in order to lead the world in internet connectivity, and now sticks to standards that fail not just on account of their lack of advance-thinking, but are actually already several years out of date. Compare the functionality and aesthetics of a genuine 2.0 site such as Facebook or Gmail to ActiveX and animated-GIF monstrosities such as G-Market or Daum - it's like building a skyscraper and covering it top to toe in signboards. It's another case of Korea showing the will but lacking the substance.

아만다 said...

I'm still wondering why there's an Eiffel Tower in Korea. Did they build one in the time I've been gone?

David tz said...

To be fair, I teach the head of strategic marketing at Gmarket and the head of Human Resourse at Auction(both of which are now owned by eBay), about the prevalence of ActiveX and I was told that it's a sore point that's difficult to resolve because the Korean banks refuse to change and the site won't work without the cooperation of the banks. The international Gmarket sites in Malaysia and Singapore don't use ActiveX-- only the Korean site does. I expect there will be lots of changes at the Auction and Gmarket sites now that they are owned completely by eBay and must follow the directives set out by their American CEOs. The HR director has been flying back and forth regularly between SF and here, and the CEO of eBay was here last week from SF to discuss how to integrate Gmarket and Auction under the eBay umbrella.

Stephen Beckett said...

David tz - does the guy realise that his site is an absolute embarrassment and eyesore? It looks like an explosion in a GIF factory. Do they actually have qualified designers working for them? What sort of tasteless, clueless lackwit would lead the design of a site like that?

Stephen Beckett said...

Honestly, the next time you're with him, sit him down at a computer, open Internet Explorer (obv) and go to gmarket.co.kr and ask him to give you an explanation. Ask him to account for the presence of 20+ animated GIFs, flickering far too quickly to glean any sense from them. Ask him to account for the floating fucking sidebar. Ask him to account for the seeming lack of any sort of prioritizing or organization of information. And then give him a good hard clip around the ear from me.

David tz said...

An eyesore to who? A Korean or a person used to Google minimalism? A lot of those animated gifs are graphics provided by the companies selling products on Gmarket. It's not the complete fault of the designers of Gmarket. It's also mostly a Korean design aesthetic (ever seen a flyer for a nightclub? same thing). To a Korean, it's awesome, to a person who has grown up with Google, it's an eyesore and let's face it, Gmarket is not designed with you in mind-- eBay is.

If you look at the Japan site, there are no animated gif files at all. The Singapore site has a few, but it's mostly the products advertised as being made in Korea. And the main graphics showing the different categories such as Fashion, Health & Living, and Electronics(which have been designed by Gmarket) are static images.

Having worked as a Graphic Designer in Canada for 10 years, and 6 years here in Korea, I can assure you that the differences are like night and day. Korean clients want busy and garish designs and every single time I design something the way I was taught, schooled in the Western aesthetic, my designs get rejected. As soon as I take the same design and make it ugly and busy, I get a nice fat paycheck. Gmarket is in much the same position. It's nothing without the companies selling products and they're the one providing those awful gif animations. All the Gmarket designed graphics are actually static images.

I actually like floating toolbars if they're done right, because it means I don't have to scroll all the way back to the top to access major pages.

On a side note, for those of you who use Firefox, I suggest you try an add-on called IE tab. It utilizes the IE rendering engine within Firefox so you don't have to open a separate browser. You can set it so every time you encounter a *.co.kr site, it automatically opens the page with a new IE tab.

Stephen Beckett said...

David - I teach design here (not web design, admittedly) and I still say it's an eyesore, and cultural relativism be hanged. Animated gifs, regardless of who provides them (it is up to GMarket to properly supervise what is submitted to them) are shitty and old fashioned and look awful, and there's no getting away from that. Floating sidebars are never done well, always flicker when you scroll and generally ruin any site they are applied to. (If you can find an example of one done well, I'd be happy to see it.) And my issue is not wholly with old-fashioned or ugly graphics and features, but also the organization of information. I realise Gmarket is going for the 'cheap and cheerful' look of an apartment driveway cheon-won market, but this is the internet, and this is 2009, and they really ought raise their game. Do you think that Western consumers had to pester and harangue Google for their minimalistic, essentials-only design? Nobody, as far as I know, is demanding that Gmarket try to fit as much indecipherable and suffocated information as they can on one page - they do so because they think it is the best way to sell as much as they can. I disagree, however.

That Firefox add-on looks useful, so thank you. I shall give it a whirl.

faloii^_^ said...

Wow, You exactly mentioned what I want to say about Korean web sites. It's Impressive!

This Is Me Posting said...

I think my brain just exploded from looking at that Gmarket site for more than 10 seconds.

King Baeksu said...

When will you poor naive suckers realize that "Globalization in Korea" means "Our way or the highway, Big-nosed Barbarians"?

There's no point in even getting worked up about this kind of thing anymore, unless you consider banging your head against the wall an effective form of personal exercise, or masochistic self-improvement.

Ryan.G said...

David tz:

Your comments are quite fascinating, and I appreciate that you have shared them for us all. Thanks!

Darth Babaganoosh said...

I expect there will be lots of changes at the Auction and Gmarket sites now that they are owned completely by eBay and must follow the directives set out by their American CEOs

I didn't know Gmarket was bought out by eBay, but Auction has been under the eBay banner for at least 5-6 years. Not much in changes over all those American-owned years, so I don't see why there will be any now.

Stephen Beckett said...

There won't be. Not for that reason, anyway. Why would there be? Major corporations don't buy foreign sites so that they can fork out for a massive re-design.

old o said...

http://megabox.co.kr/ has the logos of every major browser at the bottom of their page, which I assume means they're compatible with all of them. So at least one company is waking up to the fact that other browsers and operating systems exist.

Unfortunately they still have forced popups that are just absolutely beyond annoying. This isn't 1996, people. If you're having a promotion, append a small unobtrusive button to your main page graphic. Then I have the option of learning about it by choice rather than having it effectively shoved in my face. And if I choose to use a popup blocker, I'll never even know about any promotion since they never have another way to get to it.

Brian said...

This post is getting passed around a lot among Koreans. I saw a few posted it to their twitter pages, and I found a conversation about it here, too:

http://www.parkoz.com/zboard/view.php?id=express_freeboard&page=1&sn1=&divpage=88&sn=off&ss=on&sc=off&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=414651

paquebot said...

아만다 - There is a miniature Eiffel Tower that was installed near the performance stage at 용산역!

juniverse said...

I followed a news article to this page. Good post. As being a Korean myself, I feel so ashamed whenever I hear about these things. I hope our people hurry up and get out of their xenophobic senses.

Anonymous said...

Even for people with the Korean language pack installed, some Korean sites doesn't work if you have a English version of IE or Windows. For instance the site to register for the test of Korean as a foreign language; when I tried to pay online on my computer the part to pay which was a popup showed up as characters that weren't readable and I had to go use a Korean computer to pay. The naver music player also doesn't work for me because it takes too long for me to download the song to my player and when I press pause, and wait for it to download it never downloads. If I keep it on play and wait for it to slowly play, then once it reaches the part that has downloaded it starts at the beginning again and again starts to download it from the beginning so there's no way for me to wait a while and then listen to the song.

David tz said...

@Steven

I wholeheartedly agree with you about the design, but doing things the way we were taught in design school and doing things to get paid are whole different ballgame. That's why I got out of the game in Canada and why I rarely do it anymore here in Korea. It's an endless source of stress and frustration with poor taste.

Peter said...

Thanks Brian, this is a really interesting post, with some really interesting comments as well. It's cool to see that Koreans are checking this out, too.

I think King Baeksu has a point. We simply assume that sites like ifriendly and "Visit Korea Year" are intended to show THE WORLD how "global" Korea is, when it's more likely that these sites are intended to show KOREANS how "global" Korea COULD be, if it chose to be. This would explain why the sites follow a decidedly Korean design aesthetic, and why they merely pay lip service to English rather than using it in a functional way (English text that links to an all-Korean page, for instance).

I think that many Koreans, while wanting Korea to be "strong", just aren't quite comfortable yet with the full implications of "going global". Which is fine -- ambivalence over globalization is completely understandable, and after all, there's no law requiring Koreans to care what foreigners think.

But if Korea DOES genuinely want to attract more Western tourists or businesses (or chooses to in the future), it should be understood that website failures like these will only make that more difficult.

justin said...

you guys are missing the whole point...

websites are designed as so because it caters to the "KOREANS".

they have little or no interest in bringing westerners to their site.. (especially sites like gmarket..i mean who buys it there when you have sites like ebay here in the states)...so you guys are the MINORITY and no company can satisfy every single one of their potential customers.

so as far as designs go...you should accept it as a cultural difference rather than as an indication of poor aesthetic decision...

what i don't understand from korean sites, though, is how they don't make their sites compatible with web browser other than IE!!!

i mean OSX people don't have access to IE...so they are SOL if they want to browse korean websites..

just my two cent on this whole issue

-random korean dude

Brian said...

Thanks for sharing those comments, David tz. Sounds like at least an interesting way to spend time in Korea, even if it can be frustrating as well.

따때리, thanks for visiting. I'm always surprised when I get Korean visitors. I just want to add that I don't think this particular website was xenophobic or an example of xenophobia. It was just an example of creating something without a clear idea of the target audience. Since the target audience is English-speaking foreigners---I'm not sure if the Japanese or Chinese versions were as confusing---they should have not only checked the English beforehand, but considered how many English-speaking foreigners (and people outside the country) use the internet. CHecking my site statistics show me how my visitors come to my site and what they use to view it, and I'm sure the government can easily look at, say, the visitors to the Korea Tourism Organization website.

justin, that's a good point. Though Gmarket looks confusing to me, and is way too flashy for my tastes, clearly Koreans like it. That's one reason Google remains unpopular with Koreans: the homepage is too plain and bare compared to Daum, Naver, Nate, 등. I do think it's something we'd have to accept as a cultural/national difference, rather than criticizing it for being different.

Brian said...

By the way, in the comments to my most recent post on this issue we learned that they totally redesigned the page to make it comprehensible and compatable. The purpose of my posts wasn't to simply make fun of bad English---though when it's done so blatantly it's easy---but to ask why these things weren't done in the first place.

Stephen Beckett said...

Justin - my comments do not relate to whether or not GMarket et al are badly design from a Western point of view or Korean point of view or whatever. My point is that they are badly designed per se. This is not a question of cultural relativism. It is a question of the Korean sites under discussion using outmoded protocols, ugly graphics (and ugly *objectively*), unnecessary and irritating fripperies (floating sidebars and the like), and cluttering their information in such a way as to choke all sense out of it. It's not that there exists some mysterious and eternal 'Korean aesthetic' that we Westerners will never understand. These sites are just plain badly designed. I teach design. I teach Korean students. I know what kind of aesthetic they tend to gravitate towards. I assure you that it is not the 'throw it all at the wall and see what sticks' aesthetic of GMarket and Daum. These sites look like they do because they are badly managed from above, not because they are being led by a skilled and forward-thinking designer.

I realise this line of discussion has wandered away from the original topic, and it is quite an esoteric area, but I will not accept the line of argument that 'Koreans want it that way!'. Koreans don't take to the streets begging for all sites to be available only to IE users, and nor do they write letters of complaint to sites that don't have several dozen animated gifs flickering epileptically away all the time. They take what they're given because the site provides what they want in terms of content. It doesn't mean that they should have to tolerate such awful design. If a person is hungry, then they want food. That doesn't mean that it should be served to them in a bucket.

Peter said...

Justin,

Before I start arguing, let me just say it's great to hear a Korean side to this. Thank you for adding your two cents. :)

You're right, these sites are probably aimed at Koreans. But the problem is, if they're aimed at Koreans, why do they make use of English at all? It doesn't make the sites more accesible to Koreans, and it just serves to confuse native English-speakers, who assume that a website that makes use of English is intended for them.

On the other hand, if the sites are intended for use by foreigners, shouldn't the web designers do their homework, and choose a design aesthetic that appeals to the target audience, rather than one that appeals purely to Koreans?

justin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
justin said...

Sorry for late replies...been busy with midterms and all..

Steve Bee,

I just checked gmarket.co.kr....and my god I must say that's a pretty horrible site..I didn't know it was that bad because I never checked their main web page...(I've only seen several "auction" pages of gmarket here and there a couple times)

None the less, I still gotta say that there is no right or wrong when it comes to design....it's a subjective discipline that can't be quantified in numbers...so the beauty can only be in the eye of the beholder.

And yes...you might not know but there is a such thing as "Korean aesthetics" in my dictionary....(I spent half of my life in Korea and other half of my life in America so I know both sides of the story quite well)
Have you seen Korean writing utensils? They are much more flamboyant and colorful compared to the Western ones...take a scratch paper for example...instead of a plain old college-ruled paper used here in the States for....forever, they have colors in rainbow and cutesy characters plastered everywhere..and the "trend" for these office supplies changes in like every MONTH...(similar situation in Japan)

My point being.....it has to be the cultural relativism that creates strong polarity in the verdict of deciding what is good aesthetic vs what is not.

I visit Daum and Naver on a regular basis to check out Korean entertainment news...and frankly I do not see enough problems to flag them as "bad designs." (Gmarket...that's a different story...it's one of the worst large-scale Korean websites I've seen...However, my taste is sort of Westernized myself...so to Koreans living in Korea might be a OK...*shudder*)

Outdated protocols, the use of active x, ect I agree though. Those are a part of not being compliant with the web standards...and I hate them for that.

Peter,

I wasn't aware of Korean sites that use English...would you enlighten me? Even if there is, I doubt Korean sites would use English as their main vehicle to convey information...That would defeat the whole purpose of being.......a Korean website.
They might have English as a small part of their overall scheme but... (If they did use English for everything...why they would waste their resources on creating English website when their target audience is clearly not English-speaking is beyond my comprehension).

If they did use English here and there...I would think it's probably because of the coolness factor that English brings... lol *shrugs*

(where's edit function? lol..

Anonymous said...

Brian, great post. But, I'm frustrated with Gmarket, as I tried to use it today. I wrote a post about it on my blog.