Groupon coming to Korea.

Last May a reader asked if there were any websites in Korea that offered group coupons. There are, and a short article on 이티뉴스 on February 8th says Groupon, "the global social commerce market leader," is coming to South Korea in March:

Groupon . . . begins its business in Korea by founding a branch here and hiring 150 or so employees. The size is quite large and not eclipsed by the 200 or so staff of Ticket Monster, the Korean company dominating the local market. As such, a noticeable change is expected to follow in the segment that is poised to explode this year.

The branch is going to be run jointly by an executive from the headquarters and a Korean entrepreneur. Hwang Hee-seung and Yoon Shin-geun are strong candidates for the latter.

A blog post from last fall profiles the three largest social commerce sites in South Korea, though last month Ticket Monster, the biggest, bought out its closest competitor. Also from last month a JoongAng Daily article looking at complaints customers have made about local social commerce sites. Ticket Monster (티켓몬스터, and on Facebook) has group deals for Gwangju and the surrounding area, as well as for Seoul and the other large cities, in Korean. No word on whether the Korean Groupon will be easily usable by non-Koreans.

Student in Ulsan dies after long gaming session.

From Sportsseoul.com. This question mark clipart looks to have become obligatory in Korean articles this year.

In what is sure to spawn even more "news of the weird" articles out of South Korea, the Korea Times writes about a college student in Ulsan who died after nearly twelve hours of online gaming.

On Monday afternoon in a PC bang in the southeastern city of Ulsan, the collegian, only identified as Moon, suddenly fell to the ground and was rushed to a hospital but he was declared dead upon arrival, police said.

The 19-year-old collegian went to the PC bang at around 2 a.m., stopped by his home briefly at 10:30 a.m., to eat, and returned to the PC bang.

His families and friends told the police that he habitually played the online shooting game.

In March, after the death of a baby at two internet-addicted parents made headlines, I shared a couple other recent examples of internet use taken to extremes, as that story and others drew attention to the problem of internet addiction in South Korea. Probably the best-known example, historically, is out of Gwangju, where a young man died after 86 hours at a PC방 in 2002.

South Korean police raid Google offices over privacy concerns.

Two former English teachers in South Korea passed this news along this afternoon, news of South Korean police raiding Google offices in Seoul and seizing computers. An excerpt from the BBC:

A police statement said they suspected Google has been collecting and storing data on "unspecified internet users from wi-fi networks".

The firm recently admitted that its Street View cars had been collecting information over unencrypted wi-fi networks, calling it "a mistake".

Google is currently under investigation in a number of countries to see if it broke data protection or privacy laws.

"[We] have been investigating Google Korea on suspicion of unauthorised collection and storage of data on unspecified Internet users from wi-fi networks," the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) said in a statement.

Korean media reported that 19 KNPA agents raided the office, seizing hard drives and related documents.

The Korea Times and JoongAng Daily are the two domestic English-language outlets with the story early Wednesday morning Seoul time.

Changes ahead for browsers, Korean internet.

In the Wall Street Journal today Evan Ramsted writes about big changes on the way for the Korean internet and its users. A few excerpts:

South Korea's government is wiping out rules for Web browsing that trapped the country's Internet users with 1990s-era security technology and created a de facto monopoly for Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer here.

The South Korean rules had long stood in contrast to efforts by other governments around the world that have tried to break Microsoft's grip on the Internet browser market. For South Koreans, they made Internet transactions a nuisance by requiring that users download plug-in programs, sometimes a dozen or so, for each website with which they did business.

. . .

[. . .] South Koreans in coming months are likely to experiment with other types of browsers as operators of websites, particularly banks and stores, update with more sophisticated security and data encryption techniques that don't force users to install special security plug-ins, or applets.

. . .

Last week, the Financial Supervisory Commission, which regulates banks, said it would permit all online financial transactions to use either the Korean-mandated security technique or "equivalents" that are as good or better. The change was set for July 1, though regulators said it will take weeks for companies to modify their sites and for consumers to be able to conduct transactions on other browsers.

In addition to frustrating Korean users, the reliance on Active X and Internet Explorer---webpages are often only viewable by IE users---commonly annoys expats trying to use the Korean internet. It holds a marketshare of something like 98% here, but as I showed in a March post about Active X making smartphones stupid, over 66% of my blog's visitors were using something other than Internet Explorer. That number might be higher if teachers weren't forced into using IE---often IE6*---at school. Though my readership is fairly diverse and includes Koreans, expatriates in Korea, and passers-by from all over the world looking for Korean porn commentary on local issues, my very unscientific survey shows the need for Korean companies to understand their visitors when creating websites for a global audience.



Looking at numbers for July 28, 2009 to July 29, 2010, from Google Analytics.

* IE6 was on every single computer I used in South Korea from 2005 through 2010, including those at several different schools and public PC방. The number of visitors here using IE6 has gone down over the past year, and I'm one of many who started using a newer version. From May 29 to June 28, 2010, of the 31,512 visitors to my site, 1,642, or 5.2%, were viewing it with IE6. During that range in 2009, 5,480 of the 37,609 visitors, or 14.6%, were using IE6. For what it's worth, I always used IE6, and don't complain about IE in order to pretend to be interesting don't know enough about technology to want to move away from Internet Explorer yet.

Non-Koreans and the Korean internet in the news.

The Korea Times on Tuesday looked at the difficulties foreigners have using online shopping malls in South Korea, whether because of the language barrier or software obstacles.

Some of the biggest online shops, Interpark (www.interpark.com), Auction (www.auction.co.kr) and Yes 24 (www.yes24.com) still do not have any English available that would make it easier for foreigners to register and use the Web site. Only Gmarket (gmarket.co.kr) has a separate English Web site.

If a foreigner understands the Korean language, it can be quite easy to sign up for an account. But for those who are not quite fluent, it can be a struggle.

Teresa Quach, a teacher from Sydney, wanted to sign up for Interpark to buy some concert tickets a few years ago. The registration process was all in Korean, and while she could understand some of the forms, she turned to online translation tools for some help.

For what it's worth, in 2007 I wrote a guide explaining how to register for Interpark, though I can't guarantee the registration form is the same three years later. Even though I signed up and still have an account, and still get spam from them nearly every day, actually buying stuff was too much of a hassle so I grew to avoid it altogether. I don't know if it's still the case now, but a couple years ago I was ready to buy some DVDs only to find they accepted wire transfers from nearly every bank in the country except KEB, the bank I used. Trying to buy airline tickets through Interpark was also extremely irritating.

Anyway, it continues:

But the experience made her feel that foreigners are unfairly excluded from cyber shopping malls, especially since usually it is the most convenient way to buy stuff since it is delivered directly to one's residence.

``I do feel that foreigners are shut out from all the online shops,'' Quach said, noting that even airline Web sites like Jin Air and Jeju Air do not provide English-language booking.

I don't think a Korean website in South Korea in Korean is "unfairly exclud[ing]" foreigners, and belaboring that expected inconvenience takes away from the legitimate barriers that can make the Korean internet an unpleasant experience for non-Koreans.

The article goes on to talk about limited or nonexistent English-language pages, and introduces TheBestBuyKorea, "designed," according to the webpage,

to provide our members with the same convenience and unbeatable price that local Korean shoppers enjoy access to.

On the same topic, I was pleased to read a couple weeks ago a Chosun Ilbo article titled "Website Registration for Expats to Get Easier."

As part of efforts to reduce inconvenience from the uniquely fiddly subscription requirements of Korean websites, nationals living overseas who have no residence registration number in the country can now subscribe with their passport numbers and names.

The Korea Communications Commission on Wednesday said it established an identification system that makes this possible in cooperation with the Korea Internet and Security Agency and the Korea Association of Information and Telecommunication.

The four-sentence write-up has no details, though, and no place to look for more information. The Korea Times filled in some gaps, reporting a day later that this will be for overseas Koreans:

South Korean nationals who have established legal residence overseas will be allowed to subscribe to Korean Internet services by using their passports for identity verification, according to local Internet authorities Wednesday.

Most Korean Web sites require users to submit their names and resident registration numbers, a 13-digit code that indicates their date of birth, sex and registration site, basically Korea's equivalent to social security numbers.

However, the law mandates resident registration numbers to be cancelled for those who obtain permanent residency in foreign countries, making it complicated for them to subscribe to Korean Web sites and other online services based on Korean servers.

Some sites did allow Koreans living abroad to fax over their personal identification cards or other documents to gain approval as members, but this was a frustrating process that normally took about a week.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, said it's using the Web sites of two local newspapers to test a system that enables Korean expatriates to subscribe by inputting their names and passport numbers.

The article goes on to say

There are growing complaints among Internet users that subscribing to Korean Web sites has become an annoying experience[.]

but this annoyance certainly isn't limited to Korean internet users, or to people overseas: the Korean internet experience for foreigners in Korea can be pretty rotten.

Then again, there really isn't anything indicating non-Koreans can't use this system to sign up with sites using their passports. Some portals, for instance, already allow that option. If I were running an English-language paper or site in South Korea I might highlight that benefit, rather than appealing to overseas Koreans, but I'm not so I didn't.

UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression to give talk at Yonsei University, May 15th.

Ben Wagner left a comment on a post yesterday informing us about a talk by Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, at Yonsei University at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, May 15th. Mr. La Rue's visit is part of a "fact-finding mission," according to a May 3rd press release---provided by Mr. Wagner---by the UN Office of the High Commission for Human Rights:

“It will be a good opportunity to assess the progress in enhancing the right to freedom of expression in the Republic of Korea fifteen years since my predecessor visited the country, particularly in the current context where the use of the Internet has become widespread,” said Mr. La Rue, noting that the first visit by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression was to the Republic of Korea in 1995.

“During my mission, I will gather first-hand information on the situation of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of the media, and the related right to freedom of assembly and association,” said the independent expert. He added that the main purpose of the mission is to “contribute, through collaborative engagement with the Government, on ways and means of better enhancing the enjoyment of the rights related to my mandate in the country.”

The Special Rapporteur’s mission will take him to the cities of Seoul and Gwang-ju. Mr. La Rue, who will visit the country at the invitation of the Government, will meet with representatives of national and local authorities, and with members of the legislative and judicial branches. He will also hold discussions with non-governmental organizations, journalists and press organizations, and other organizations and individuals working in areas related to his mandate.

The visit is particularly timely for the expat community because news just broke that author and Korea Times columnist Michael Breen is being sued by Samsung for poking fun at their corrupt bosses over two sentences in a satirical year-end piece "What People Got For Christmas."

The talk will be held at the Gwangbok Hall Annex (광복관 별관, #28 on this campus map, or this one in Korean), and the campus is accessible by subway via Sinchon Station (신촌역).

Korail's English-language option way more expensive.

The Korea Herald looks at Korea Railroad's website and how the discounts and promotions available for Korean customers aren't made known to people using the English-language page:

You could be paying 60 percent more for your rail tickets if you use KTX’s English language website, but administrators say they have no intention of letting users know this.

The site allows foreign users to buy tickets, but the discounts available on the Korean language site vanish when the English language option is selected. The site gives no notice that discounts are available for certain tickets, people and groups.

. . .

KTX representative Dan Nam-su said foreign customers could get discounts on the Korean site or at train stations, but confirmed there was no such option on the English language site.

“When we developed the homepage in the English version, there were some problems in data processing so we could not make the English version in detail,” he said, explaining that issues with foreign credit cards also made service provision difficult.

“We assumed that most rail customers are domestic travelers. We admit that we’ve lacked the promotion for foreigners who might use Korail on the website or at the station,” said Dan.

Read more in the article, in the accompanying Dave's ESL Cafe thread, and the thread that started it all on March 31st. That foreigners can make reservations online in English at all is an accomplishment: just a couple years ago the options ranged from doable with a Korail pass acquired via a Korean-language form, to impossible because the English-language option was removed.

Paying the full fare is I guess a, um, price of living overseas. I'm happy that it's not nearly as bad in Korea as it is in, say, Taiwan, where hotels often charge foreigners significantly more. Discounts are of course available to foreigners in South Korea, provided they can navigate Korean-language sites. If you're interested in getting the best available rates for hotels and airline tickets online---other industries that offer promotions not announced in English---as well as for restaurants or KTX tickets, it behooves you to check the Korean-language sites as well.

Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism goes after netizens for ill-intended video clip.

The Korea Times has the story:

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has filed a complaint against a group of netizens, who allegedly uploaded an edited video clip of skating queen Kim Yu-na and Minister Yu In-chon together.

Jongno Police Station in Seoul said Wednesday that it was investigating the netizens for uploading the clip after receiving complaints from the ministry. The clip was edited to look as if the minister tried to embrace Yu-na and the skater avoided him, the ministry said, complaining that it was an act of sexual harassment.

The video clip in question is an edited version of a KBS news segment when the minister greeted the athletes from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics on their return home at Incheon International Airport on March 2.

It shows Yu giving the gold medal-winning figure skater a bouquet and celebrating with her at a faster speed than in the original clip.

The ministry said the video clip was edited with ill intentions, distorting the minister's behavior, which is libelous against the minister.

"The minister only tried to congratulate Kim, but it was edited to look like Yu was trying to hug or even molest her. This kind of false representation causes people to misunderstand the minister's good-hearted gesture," a ministry official said.

You'll find clips of the KBS footage on YouTube:



Just last week we read the results of a BBC survey that said 70% of Koreans don't consider the internet a safe place to express opinions. Last week, too, Reporters Without Borders named South Korea one of the "enemies of the internet" because

draconian laws are creating too many specific restrictions on Web users by challenging their anonymity and promoting selfcensorship.

Matter of fact YouTube users from within South Korea aren't even able to upload videos to YouTube because the company chose not to comply with Korea's real-name verification law. The way around that is to simply switch your location from Korea to Worldwide.

My favorite Yu In-chon moment was when some bad English made it look like he was encouraging people to stop buying DVDs and simply copy them.

ActiveX makes smartphones stupid in Korea.

South Korea's reliance on ActiveX controls draws a lot of complaints from expats, especially those using browsers other than Internet Explorer. The JoongAng Daily looks at ActiveX in Korea vis-a-vis smartphones; an excerpt:

The number of smartphone users in Korea neared 1 million at the end of last year, with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Omnia 2 gaining popularity. However, smartphone users are having trouble whenever they try to use mobile banking services or shopping sites, since the browsers designed for smartphones are not equipped to handle ActiveX.

With the installment of ActiveX emerging as a problem domestically, experts are proposing alternatives. A team headed by researcher Kim Hyung-sik at Cambridge University recently released a study saying Korea’s Internet banking industry should allow users to choose whether to install the programs.

Local officials are looking into the issue as well.

“The discussion over whether using ActiveX is proper is underway at the Financial Supervisory Service as we look to resolve the problem of restricting electronic transactions on smartphones,” Choi Si-joong, chairman of the Korea Communications Commission, said on Feb. 22 in the National Assembly.

Headline taken from a Joongang Sunday interview two days ago, which readers of Korean want to give a look.

The article also has a chart breaking down the market share of browsers overseas and in Korea. Worldwide 62% of people use a version of Internet Explorer, according to those stats from Market Share, whereas 98% in Korea use IE, with 50% of the total using IE6. I mentioned web browsers a little in this November 2009 post looking at some complaints people had with a website created, ironically, to help foreigners, and I wrote that Google Analytics told me a little less than 65% of my visitors over the past month arrived using something other than IE, a high number considering many people visit my site when they're at work in Korea, locked into using Internet Explorer when they otherwise might choose not to. I looked at my stats just now, and saw the numbers changed only slightly, with 42.5% of visitors using Firefox compared to 44.92 in November, and 33.93% using IE now compared with 35.59% then:



Of the users with Internet Explorer, 21.3% use IE6. Interesting to learn that 1.71% of my visits from February 13th through March 15th were on mobile devices. Thanks for the love, but even I don't love this site enough to try and read all that text on a phone or PSP.

Internet fundamental human right, say 96% of Koreans in BBC poll.

Earlier in the week BBC released the findings of a survey about internet usage:

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.

Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.

International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.

You can view the findings in detail on this .pdf file. Ninety-six percent of the 1,002 South Koreans surveyed strongly agree or somewhat agree that "access to the internet should be a fundamental right of all people," the highest percentage of respondents from the 26 countries. 77% of Canadians, 76% of Americans, 80% of Britons, and 85% of Australians answered likewise. Sixty-seven percent of Japanese and 56% of Mexicans strongly disagreed with the statement "I can cope without the internet."

Here's a bit of the country profile for South Korea in the report, on page 13:

South Korean users are the most clearly opposed to government regulation of the internet—83 per cent agree it should never be regulated—and they are more wary than users in most other countries about expressing opinions online, with only 30 percent agreeing it is safe to do so.

Germany was the only country with a higher percentage of respondents saying it was unsafe to express opinions on the internet.

In South Korea, inevitably called "the most wired country on Earth" in the accompanying article, of course does have strong government control of the internet and the opinions expressed there. The real-name verification system is perhaps the best-known manifestation of this, a law in response to cyber-crime and cyber-bullying, two negative consequences of the ubiquity of the internet in "the most wired country on Earth." The Christian Science Monitor, interestingly, didn't pick up on that:

Maybe where censorship is highest is also where people most see the Internet as a basic right? But South Korea – one of the most-wired countries on the globe – blows a hole in that theory.

The Marmot's Hole recently posted that Reporters Without Borders named South Korea an "enemy of the internet" because

draconian laws are creating too many specific restrictions on Web users by challenging their anonymity and promoting selfcensorship.

I've written about the Korean internet a few times, looking at the good, the very good, and the not so good:

* 2010.02.08 - ""South Korea has world's fastest internet, US 18th, says State of Internet Report."
* 2009.11.24 - "In the Korea Herald, writing about the lessons learned from ifriendly.kr."
* 2009.11.23 - "A more Korean Google Korea coming next month."
* 2009.11.19 - "What was wrong with ifriendly.kr?"
* 2009.08.26 - "US is 15 years behind South Korea's internet speed."
* 2009.03.30 - "Google Korea, YouTube Korea to begin real-name system April 1."
* 2008.08.19 - "Google Korea is upsetting Victorian sensibilities again."
* 2008.08.14 - "YouTube Korea in trouble?"

South Korea has world's fastest internet, US 18th, says "State of the Internet Report."

From the U.S. News & World Report, passing along results from the Akimai's "State of the Internet Report" for the third quarter of 2009:

What do South Koreans, Romanians, and the Swiss all have in common? On average, they enjoy faster Internet connection speeds than Americans, according to the quarterly "State of the Internet Report" issued by Akamai, a technology company in Cambridge, Mass., that sells fast data delivery to businesses and other enterprises that put content online. The company looked through its data for an average connection speed throughout the United States and found it to be 3.9 megabits per second, the 18th highest among all countries—meaning that it is well behind first place South Korea, with 14.6 megabits per second. Not only does South Korea have a high average connection speed, it also has a high number of very fast connections: Seventy-four percent of the country's connections are more than 5 megabits per second, a speed that Akamai calls "high broadband." Only 24 percent of U.S. connections qualify as high broadband.

News of this report came out in January, and Extra! Korea beat me to it by about three weeks. The KBS World article notes that Japan came in second, and Hong Kong, Romania, and Sweden round out the top five.

In August we read that the United States is 15 years behind South Korea's internet speed, and I noted that while both Incheon and Narita airports offer free internet access in certain public stations in the airside terminals, at Chicago's O'Hare they were charging five dollars for the first fifteen minutes, $0.33 for each additional minute.

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.

US is 15 years behind South Korea's internet speed.

Ugh, according to a new report the US is 15 years behind South Korea's internet speed.

In the last year, the average upload speed in the United States “barely changed,” the report said, and download speed only grew a little, from 4.2 megabits per second in 2008 to 5.1 megabits per second in 2009.

In South Korea, average download speed is much faster — 20.4 megabits per second. The United States also lags Japan (15.8 mbps), Sweden (12.8 mbps), the Netherlands (11 mbps) and 24 other countries.

At average U.S. speed it takes about 35 minutes to download 100 family vacation photos, and four hours to upload them.

Via Todd's Posterous Blog. Not really related, but worth sharing that during my 29-hour trip back to Pittsburgh a couple days ago I noticed there are kiosks with free internet in the airside terminals at Incheon International Airport and Tokyo's Narita International Airport. In Chicago's O'Hare? Five dollars for the first fifteen minutes, $0.33 for each additional minute. Way to keep sucking, guys.

Google Korea, YouTube Korea to begin real-name system April 1.

Christ Almighty.

Google, the world’s largest Internet company, has finally submitted to South Korea‘s unprecedented Internet regulations, including agreeing to implement a “real name” system in which any South Korean can post their contents only after they confirm their resident registration number.

Here's an earlier overview I did of Google's problems in Korea. Given that both it and Youtube have such a small market share in Korea, and are prone to xenophobic backlash and, at least for school teachers, occassional censorship by school boards, I wish they would have just pulled out. It's not like either site would have been unavailable in Korea, it just wouldn't have been available in Korean-language. Pulling out would have proven a point---both here and internationally---and would have allowed them to retain some credibility, rather than simply caving into local pressure.

The article closes with:

Google Korea representatives have further indicated that they will create a way for foreigners living in South Korea to access YouTube using foreigner registration numbers. “Foreigners living in South Korea have a right to use YouTube too,” a representative said.

No shit, it's a foreign company, fuck face. If they knew they were going through with this censorship, ironing out the foreign ID situation should have been the first order of business, given that non-Koreans are far more likely to turn to YouTube than anywhere else.

* Update: Chris has done a longer, better post on this news. Perhaps the most significant thing I took away from his post is how, well, the news didn't make the news.

Google Korea is upsetting Victorian sensibilities again.

Google Korea is in the news again, this time in the Chosun Ilbo in an article today titled "Google Video a Hotbed of Illegal Videos." I scratched my head upon first seeing the title, because whenever I'm looking for a Korean music video or a clip from a Korean TV show, the first places I turn are Naver, Daum, and the lot. But the article focuses, too, on the threat of pornographic and dirty videos, a tune we've heard before around here. A couple excerpts:

The Korean version of Google Video, the search engine recently launched by Google Korea, is becoming a hotbed of illegal clips. Despite its powerful search technology, the site seems powerless to prevent users uploading pornography and copyrighted content.

. . .

Google's negligence has caused concerns about copyright violation. For example, Type in "Prison Break,” the popular American TV drama, and set the parameters to "more than 20 minutes," and as many as 2,480 43-minute clips show up.

. . .

A similar video search service is also provided by domestic web portals Naver, Daum and Empas, who filter search results in various ways. In the case of Naver, monitoring personnel review search results. But Google is determined not to impose such restrictions on its search function, remaining faithful to the concept of freedom of information.

And the caption to the accompanying photo:

The search word ‘sex’ yields more than 1 million video clips in results on Google Video in this screen capture.

By contrast, typing sex or other dirty words into Naver will bring up an age-verification screen. Once I was looking for a TV clip I had seen on Jeollanam-do, but wanted to see all the videos relating to the area, so I typed "Jeolla" in Korean. Turns out it means "naked," so the search wouldn't go through. I'm not sure what's beyond the formidable ID check, and whether porn will show up after you verify your age. People would be leery, perhaps, of browsing such content if they knew their movements were being recorded.

I talked a little about Google Korea last week when an article came out talking about YouTube Korea's potential adaptation of the "real name system" used on Korean portals. I mentioned that Google Korea eventually agreed to censor search terms on its site, meaning that if you search for something dirty you'll get an age-verification prompt above the results. (However, I'm not sure what's preventing people from searching those same terms on google.com, which does not have such filters.) I couldn't find the original articles that ran at the time, but many were a little over-the-top in accussing Google of exposing children to pornography and other filth, as if the search engine were to blame for the children doing the actual searching. That hubbub came around the time the South Korean government announced it was blocking foreign pornographic websites after apparently some dirty movies were uploaded to an internet portal.

Major internet portals have come under fire recently for a lack of responsibility.

On March 18, two pornographic videos were posted on Yahoo Korea, the nation's second most visited portal and over 20,000 users downloaded the files. Yahoo Korea has faced a barrage of criticism for having left the clips for six hours.

Daum carried a video of half-nude foreign fashion models for seven hours last Tuesday. Naver is also being criticized for not having removed a nude photograph for about four hours.

When you type in a variety of dirty terms in Korean into Google Video you'll find some hardcore porn and nudity, but not surprisingly I guess it's usually foreign. That tells us that not only is Korean porn kind of lame, but that you also have Koreans uploading this foreign pornographic material to Google, unless people from other countries are typing filenames and descriptions in Korean. And clearly Koreans were the ones doing the uploading to the Korean portals, which if I'm not mistaken prohibited foreigners from signing up with them at the time. Google has consistently come under fire in large part, I think, because it is foreign and represents a foreign menace, and South Korea neither likes foreign invaders nor plays nice with foreign companies.

Ironically, South Korea is the biggest consumer of pornography in the world, with the average Korean spending almost four times as much as the average Japanese and nearly twelves times as the average American. I came across those stats from this 2007 blog entry, which is worth a read. An excerpt:

. . . [T]he South Korean government has recently been clamping down on internet sex after some laughably tame incidents in March. An article entitled Foreign Porn Sites Will Be Blocked explains that it all started when two porn videos appeared on Yahoo Korea on March 18th. "Daum, the second-largest portal site, also carried an audio-visual file of foreign fashion models exposing their breasts for approximately seven hours last Tuesday," Korea Times reported. "On the same day, a Web surfer posted a nude photo of a woman at the top portal Naver but the company did not remove the picture for about four hours."

The South Korean government responded to these "wardrobe malfunctions" with wild abandon. “We are set to deny access to porn sites based overseas, with details being unveiled early next week,” said the Ministry of Information and Communication. According to ZD Net Asia, the government's Korea Internet Safety Commission will use domain name and URL filtering methods to check not only IP addresses but also file indexes and sub-directories as well -- "because most of obscene materials originate outside South Korea".

Heh, have a look at the Seoul Times, an English-language online newspaper that routinely has nude and NSFW images in its photo galleries, the one I linked to having been up for the past six months or so. Unsurprisingly they tend to be of foreign fashion models. If you want local talent . . . hmm, I guess you don't have any options outside of the major newspapers, the entertainment websites, the blogs, and the internet cafes devoted to racing girls.

YouTube Korea in trouble?

From the Hankyoreh yesterday:

Google’s YouTube (youtube.com), the world’s largest video site, has become subject to the real name system, which obliges Internet users to use their real names when posting information to Web sites. YouTube now stands at a crossroads and must decide whether to adopt the real name system or alter or drop its service in Korea.

The government announced on July 22 comprehensive measures to protect online information, expanding the number of sites subject to the real name system from media outlets, portals and UCC sites getting up to 300,000 visitors a day to those getting just 100,000 a day. YouTube, which was getting 800,000 visitors weekly as of the second week of August, will from next year be subject to the real name system. An official with the Korea Communications Commission said that YouTube, even though it is an overseas site, will not be exempt from the system, and that Google has, in the past, accepted Korean regulations, such as those regarding underage protections.

The article continues to tell of YouTube Korea's increased traffic over the course of 2008, even though it was lampooned early on as being a failure. I'm curious, though, besides being written in Korean, does YouTube Korea differ from any of the other YouTubes? Is there anything beyond the language barrier preventing people from contributing should the site go down?

Google, which owns YouTube, hasn't been very successful in Korea. That January KT article I just sited said Google and Yahoo each have less than 5% of the market-share of internet searches. A lengthy Associated Press piece from 2006 goes into why Google may be struggling. An excerpt:

Still, Google faces an uphill battle, simply because it can be tough to change Internet users' habits.

Many Korean Internet users start their Web browsers with portal sites such as Naver that offer detailed category listings, online shopping and news headlines. Koreans embrace the visually rich websites because they also benefit from being a world leader in per-capita broadband connections — meaning fancy graphics and animation flow quickly onto their screens.

That's a marked contrast to Google's celebrated bare-bones approach, with sparse graphics and a single search box. The company has only recently sought to change its approach and become a place on the Web for people to hang around and not just jump to other links.

Lee Jae-suk, a 24-year-old university student in Seoul, said he prefers Naver for searches because of the wealth of its results that skim websites, blogs, news and video and organize them by category.

"Google's site is just not enough for everything. Their search results especially are too limited," said Lee. "I think Google is paying less attention to Korean Internet users' demands."

A Business Week article from January, 2006 said basically the same thing:

Why is Naver so popular? One reason is that Naver can deliver more relevant search results than Google can, at least on its home turf. A simple Google search will return only certain kinds of Web pages, and a user needs to click another link to find, say, related images or news stories. NHN offers a mix of categories including blogs and community sites unless the user specifies a particular kind of document. A Naver search for a subway station, for instance, will return a map, information on the subway line serving the station, connecting bus lines, restaurants and shops near the station, blog entries mentioning it, and more. "Google has a superb search engine," says Choi Jae Hyeon, NHN's search chief. "We have, however, built up knowhow and a database by extracting knowledge from users' brains."

Blogger The Daily Kimchi offered his take in 2007:

Although I am a big fan of Google's products and services (Gmail rocks my socks), I believe Google will fail to dominate the South Korean online search market. Why you ask? Things work differently here, as Koreans have an immense amount of pride towards their homegrown products and services, as opposed to foreign companies. Prime examples of these failures? Think Walmart (now E-Mart), French retail giant Carrefour (now owned by E.Land Corp), and recent B&Q's failure to penetrate the Korean retail markets. These large multinationals have suffered greatly and have been forced to sell off their remaining stores in the country to local Korean companies (B&Q is still up in the air). Even automobile manufactures have a tough time in the Korean market. The majority of the cars you see here are either badged Hyundai, Kia, or Samsung.

Considering that South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world, the people here definitely are web-saavy. If their preference of internet portals is along the lines of their retail choices, then Google might have a higher mountain to climb than expected. Google Korea might take a large number of users away from Naver and Daum (although Google is now working with Daum), but it will never be viewed as the number one search engine in Korea--the people here won't let it happen.

TDK goes on to compare the simple look of Google to the busier-looking Korean portals, saying, like those interviewed in the AP story, that Koreans prefer a more complex look. I don't know anything about that, but I recall reading something on the Metropolitician a while back (can't find the link now) about the iPod, and how some were skeptical it'd do well because it was too simple-looking, and didn't have any of the bells and whistles Korean consumers, supposedly, expect. In spite, or maybe because of its simplicity the iPod has been popular in Korea from what I hear. If I'm remembering the Metropolitician's point correctly, and I may not be, he said it had a lot to do with how it was marketed, and how it came to be perceived as cool.

A Year in Mokpo looked at "Naver vs. Google" in a November post, and directed us toward an OhMyNews article with a different theory as to why Google failed compared to domestic sites like Naver.

A prevalent theory in Korean dotcom circles is that Google failed to impress demanding Korean customers with its lousy service. This is at least what Naver and other major local portals want Koreans to believe.

Choi Mi Jung, who leads Naver's "Knowledge Man" service, a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia built by the spontaneous participation of Netizens, scoffs at the sloppy interface and unfriendly way Google's Korean site presents its search results. "It is how meticulously their service was designed that made the difference," she says.

However, the real reason behind Google's difficult path in Korea is that its highly praised search technology was rendered practically useless in the Korean language sphere when major portals decided to block Google search robots from crawling around the content they hold, industry observers universally note.

But to echo again what has been said before, given the failures of other Western corporations in South Korea, due to their failures to adapt to the local market or to a citizenry fiercly loyal to domestic products, I wonder just how successful Google and its products can and will be. But I'm not a tech blogger, and don't know anything about that, so others will have to debate what's going on in more detail.



Anyway, related to both the beginning and the middle of this post is the news story I thought of immediately after reading the Hankyoreh piece. A couple of years ago Google was in some trouble for supposedly exposing minors to explicit content. In contrast to Google at the time, Korean portals have an age-verification system, meaning if you search for what's considered adult content you'll be diverted to a screen requiring you to type in your name and national ID number (주민번호). Google eventually agreed to checking users' ages, but not before locals started slinging the mud, accusing Google of exposing their children to pornographic material. As if the search engine is to blame rather than the children actually doing the searching. Keep in mind, too, softcore porn runs on many cable channels after dark, and it's not all that unusual to see a topless woman or somebody's backside go prancing across the screen. And, again, what's preventing a Korean user from just typing in adult-themed search terms, in Korean, to Google.com, rather than Google.co.kr? Unfortunately I can't find any of the original articles on the moral panic, but I remember the hot air and indignation at Google obscured what otherwise would have been fodder for a reasonable debate: whether Google should have to conform to Korea's standards or the other way around.


My friend Google turned up this picture of Kim Hye-su in the film 타짜, on Korean TV every once in a while. Couldn't find the picture of her backside, or one without a blurred nipple, but Lord knows I tried.

Google also ran into some trouble back in 2006 when hundreds of thousands of those citizen ID numbers were revealed to be wholly or partially exposed online. This Chosun Ilbo article makes the connection between Google and the reported leak, but provides no evidence. In fact, it says the number of victims could be much higher than the 900-some-thousand found in the government search

since there is no protection of personal information on international search engines such as Google or MSN.

Gotta love this line, too:

The first six digits of ID numbers, meaning their date of birth, of an astonishing 808,446 people were exposed on 5,344 websites, revealing an abject failure on the part of domestic public agencies and private firms to protect personal information.

Um . . . yeah, the first six letters are the person's birthday, thanks for keeping that secret. Considering the regularity with which we hear about online security breaches here, I don't know if there's anything about Google that makes it particularly less safe. But perception is reality, sometimes, and perhaps it's much easier to prey on the inherent distrust of foreign entities.

How to register with Interpark.com (airplane tickets and online shopping)

Here are steps foreigners can use to register with Interpark.com. Please be aware that, when ordering plane tickets, you cannot pay online. Rather you book the tickets online and will receive a phone call confirming your purchase and giving you payment information. Too many people have bitched to me about that, as if I recommended that policy to Interpark in the first place.

1) On the main page, click on 로그인 (login). You'll see a string of words/tabs on the top of the page, and 로그인 is on the left.

2) Since you don't have a name or a password, click the left tab under the password box labeled "회원가입."

3) After clicking you'll have a license agreement in front of you. Under each section you'll need to click the button "동의함" for "agree." At the bottom of the agreement is a spot for your name (고객명) and your ID number. You will input your name and the ID number on your ARC. Your name should be as it appears on the ARC (not case sensitive, though), and your ID number should be 13 letters if you're not a Korean citizen: 123456-1234567. Then click 확인.

4) If everything checks out, you'll now see an information page. In a box to the right of your name is a place for a login ID. Pick something. Then, you'll have your ID number. Below that is the spot for your address. This is a little tricky. Click on the box and you'll have a pop-up. In the pop-up you'll have a menu with "우편번호" (mail number), "동" (ward) "군구" (county or district) and "도시" (city). You'll use one of these tabs to find your mail number. My address is quite short, so this is what I did: I selected 군구 and typed in 강진. Then I got a list with a ton of administrative divisions. I found mine (동성리, which is the next spot in my address). That's all you're looking for: the next spot in your address. Then, in the next box you can type in additional pieces of your address.

5) Below the address are two spots for the telephone: first is "home number," next is cellphone. I just put in my cellphone for both, as I don't have a landline. Next it asks if you want to be receive SMS notification with your order information. The one below that asks if you want to be notified via SMS of sales, events, and such. Click 수신 for yes (수신하다 = to receive a message), or 비수신 for no.

6) Next, pick a secret number (비밀번호). Type it again. Below that you'll see a series of "hints." Choose one, and in the box to the right, type in the prompt that you'll receive via email.

7) Next, type in your email address. Type in the first part first, then select the domain name. Below you'll see four boxes, and it's asking you if you want to be notified of: shopping information, movies, CDs and DVDs, and travel. 수신 for yes, 비수신 for no.

8) Below that is a space for another address: this is where they'll send the stuff. If you want your home address to be used, retype in your 우편번호.

9) Next is business phone number. If you choose to have stuff sent to your school, maybe type in the number of the receptionist. If not, you can use your cellphone.

10) Next is birthday, and it's asking you if you're using the solar (양력) or lunar (음력) calendar. Chances are you're solar.

11) Next is marital status. 미혼 is single, 기혼 is married. You can enter in your spouse's information, if you wish. 배우자 is "spouse," and there's a slot for his/her birthday.

12) Next is information about your career (직업), salary (월평균소득) and number of children (자녀수). To the right of salary is a menu for the highest level of education completed. 대졸 is for university, 대학원 이상 is for graduate school. Below that is information about your vehicle. But, you can leave all of those boxes blank, if you wish.

13) If you've forgotten anything, a pop-up will show you where. You'll also get a confirmation email . . . hang on to it.

14) If you want to browse flights, click the 여행 tab at the top.

Again, be aware that you can't pay for tickets online. I pulled this post from waygook.org because I got too many complaints---from people who can't navigate the site themselves, go figure---that it was misleading, so I decided to leave them to their own devices. Anyway, what will happen is you'll book the tickets and will get a phone call a short time after. If you don't answer the phone you'll get a text message with an account name (a jumble of letters like "adsfjal").

Also, be aware that the prices for airplane tickets do not include tax.

I'm not big into internet shopping, but if you are you can find a lot of good deals on interpark. There are various coupons available, and a point card program, too. They even have a decent selection of English-language books. Interpark is also often used for concert tickets, so it might be handy to have an account just in case.