I recently came back from 6 months of teaching in South Korea which has been hailed as the epicenter for cool technology. CNN did a feature while I was there entitled “Eye on South Korea”, where they showed robots teaching children, intelligent vacuum cleaners, phones with video projectors and a league of fighting robots. This is to be the first post in a series called “The Korea Report”. To kick off the series, I’ll start by talking about my first impressions of Korean mobile culture.
The phone I picked up while I was in Korea was the LG KE820. It looked great and had features such as TV, mp3 and a mediocre camera. One of the first things I noticed was that Koreans have access to a much larger selection of mobile phones regardless of carrier. I bought my phone from a place called Techno Mart. Don’t let the word “mart” throw you off, this isn’t Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s quaint little convenience store. Techno Mart is a giant, 10 storey building that encompasses over 2,000 stores, a movie theatre and arcade. There are about 2 whole floors dedicated to selling mobile phones so you have to know a little about what you’re looking for or you could be searching for days. Once you know what you want, you then have to use the bargaining skills of an Arab market salesman to get the right prices.
In general, I was not too impressed with the quality of hardware available. Most phones were just generic flip phones or sliders with limited WAP and fairly lame video. While I was there, there was a lot of commotion regarding the LG Prada which, given the iPhone, isn’t revolutionary. The major leap in technology comes not from the hardware itself, but the ubiquitousness of mobile education.
You can do most daily chores with your mobile phone in Korea. When I was taking a taxi or a bus, I could pay with my mobile phone. My Sim card was hooked directly to my bank and every month I would get a bill from my bank or I could have them automatically deduct in a pay as you go fashion. The same system also allowed me to purchase my groceries and many other things with my mobile. With a greater commitment and trust in the technology, we could be doing the same thing. You’ll often hear people in the West say: “Yeah but what if I lose my phone? Then I’ve lost my wallet too” but that’s just the attitude that leaves Westerners unmotivated to educate themselves.
In general, the content distribution and industry as a whole are much more open. Content can be easily downloaded from off deck developers and carriers are pretty open to their customers getting new devices. In the West, we constantly deal with devices not being sold under certain carriers and almost authoritarian rule over our connectivity. If Korea has one thing really going for it in terms of its mobile culture, it would be the fact that as a group, they are a tech savvy people who don’t mind educating themselves about their device’s potential. This fact is quite obvious when you’re riding the subway. Almost every Korean, regardless of age or gender, will be using their mobile device in some way to entertain themselves. They might be listening to music, playing a game or watching the popular Korean mobile TV called DMB.
If you’re wondering about the photo, I decided to use a photo of the girl group Wondergirls because I probably heard their song “Tell me” about three million times in the 6 months I was there. It’s now the first thing that pops into my mind when the words ‘Korean’ and ‘Culture’ are near each other. Check back next week for another post from The Korea Report.
Anyong-hi Ka-seyo!
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